5 ways to monetize your YouTube channel in 2022

How to monetize your YouTube channel in 2022

It’s almost impossible these days to grow big on YouTube if you don’t focus on a very specific niche.

This means that it’s hard to get the numbers of views that will let you monetize your channel with ads.

You can already make a significant amount of money with even a small subscriber base on YouTube by leveraging YouTube to drive traffic to other sources of income that you have.

We’re gonna be looking at 5 ways to make money with YouTube, not necessarily on YouTube, and why ads are probably not your best shot at success if you’re looking to make a living from your channel in 2022.

Let’s dive into it 👇

How to monetize your YouTube channel with AdSense

This is probably the lowest hanging fruit when people talk about YouTube monetization…

But let’s be real, it’s kinda bad.

If you’re not lucky and part of a couple niches that actually make money when people watch their videos, well…

I have bad news for you.

It’s probably much less money than you think, and it will take a long time until you get there.

See below to get some stats or calculate your own on this website.

As you can see, 20k views per day may net you anything from 1k to 1.8k per month, but those are big boy numbers!

So now what? It’s not time to give up just yet…

Instead, let’s look at some alternatives that will allow you to make good money even if your content is very niche.

How to monetize your YouTube channel with a paid newsletter

Content is king.

You’ve probably heard this a million times before…

And that’s because it’s true.

In recent years, the amount of people that have launched paid newsletters has been on the rise.

If you post content on YouTube that you know is valuable to a very specific audience, and they have a clear benefit from it, consider monetizing your newsletter

Some clear benefits for your reader are:

• They make more money from what they learn
• They can get an edge in their job
• They save a lot of time
• They can discover new opportunities
• And much more

Make sure that your videos are a sneak peek of what’s to come in your newsletter and that you stay consistent.

You’ve probably heard about Substack before, but Ghost for example is quickly becoming popular as well.

And here is a list with 7 other alternatives that you can check out.

Because. Why not?

How to monetize your YouTube channel by launching an E-Commerce store

Is there a low-hanging fruit product that you can create and sell that makes sense for your audience?

Then it’s worth investigating the effort it requires to do just that.

The cost of spinning up an online store has gone down drastically in the last couple of years, and it’s now easier than ever to get started.

More and more creators are dipping their toes into D2C brands and while that is profitable, you should also be aware that it’s not the easiest thing to do.

If you still want to go for it, tho, make sure to check out something like Shopify to get up and running fast.

Btw, did you know that I also run a successful store in the mewing niche?

And YouTube is one of my main acquisition channels 🤯

That and organic search traffic from Google!

In the end, you can’t beat free traffic 🙏

How to monetize your YouTube channel by building a course

It seems like a lot of people are building courses these days…

And that has a couple of reasons:

• Courses are a no-brainer to charge money for, and they build on top of your existing content
• They tap into the audience that you’ve built up
• More and more course building platforms like Mighty Networks are popping up, making it super easy to build and launch a course
• They don’t require much maintenance

So if you’re already making a bunch of videos for a specific niche, it’s worth thinking about doubling down on a specific topic that you’ve already seen traction with in your videos!

Jaume Ros is a great example of someone that has been providing valuable content in the SEO space for a long time now and is launching his first course soon.

See how he plugs it in the beginning of this video 👇

As you can see, his views aren’t crazy, but he will be making a lot of money with the course regardless because his niche is hyper-focused and his viewers are highly engaged.

In addition to that he uses his channel to build up himself as an authority in the space which helps drive more leads for his consulting services and other projects.

How to monetize your channel by building a SaaS

Are you a developer, or you’ve always wanted to build a product?

Great.

So are we 🤝

YouTube done right can be one of your most powerful acquisition channels.

You can give value before you ask and funnel people into the landing pages of your product.

Now that’s where you make the actual money, and subscription revenue is one of the most predictable sources of revenue you can ask for.

Basically everything that you can write a blog post about, you can make a video about

Then you can use the video to repurpose it for a bunch of other social media marketing channels.

Meaning, with one piece of content you can have serious impact on your customer acquisition.

If you want a great example of someone running a YouTube channel and building a SaaS business at the same time, check out Simon Høiberg.

I've linked one of his videos below 👇

Similar to the course monetization, he makes informational content on his channel and uses that to educate, inspire and entertain others.

They in return will check out his product if Simon has given enough value upfront.

The product is positioned in a similar niche as his channel.

And boom he gets a new lead…

YouTube as an acquisition channel is great because:

• It’s more personal
• You can build a strong relationship with viewers, people will almost feel like you’re friends
• Even if people don’t buy your product the first time they look at it (most people don’t) every time you make a new video, you get a new chance at convincing them

So if you can afford the overhead of creating videos (yes it takes work) this can be a great way to solidify the relationship with your customers and make them raving fans

Runner ups

Those didn’t make the list but are worth looking into anyway 👇

How to monetize your channel with affiliate marketing

This one is probably a low hanging-fruit for most people.

Find a couple products in your niche and join their affiliate programs.

Not a bad idea, but I wouldn’t rely on this stream if you’re just starting out.

Your affiliate income will be very much tied to how much traffic you can generate, similar to your AdSense.

But it’s something you can do next to the other income streams we've outlined in this article.

How to monetize your channel with consulting

Consulting can be a great option if you’re posting videos in a field like programming, finance or digital marketing where freelance and consulting positions are widely available.

The bad thing about consulting is that you can’t scale yourself like you can scale some of those other monetization options.

With consulting, income streams are tightly coupled to how much time you can put in…

Always keep that in mind and try to optimize for non-linear returns

Monetizing with a mix of income streams

Now, you might be thinking this is all fine, but why should I just do one of these?

And you’re right, you don’t have to stick to one of them, but try to spread yourself too thin, especially in the beginning.

You want to find one channel and ride it until you see diminishing returns, then start experimenting with others, find another and double own on that.

What to focus on when monetizing your channel

• Build a great relationship with your viewers, engage with them as much as possible
• Stay laser-focused on one specific niche with your content
• Give a lot before you ask
• Enjoy the ride and don’t just do it for the money
• Build out one income stream first before experimenting with others
• Ride one income stream as long as it keeps producing solid returns

Conclusion

Growing to a size that makes it viable to spend a lot of time making videos on YouTube is hard.

It’s possible to do this with ads, but it’s probably not the best way to do this…

Especially not in 2022.

Instead, try to leverage your knowledge about the niche you’re making videos for in other ways.

The popularity of Indie niche creators are on the rise and people are willing to shell out some extra bucks for their favorite creators.

It’s more important to build a good relationship with your viewers.

Try to go for non-linear returns when building these and things that make you money for a sustained period of time (like courses)

Doing this becomes easier every year as more and more products are made to make it easier for you to get started.

So…

What are you waiting for?

If you want to know my secrets and how I grew my channel to 4000 subs in three videos, check out this other article I wrote.

Btw, did you know that adding subtitles is one of the easiest ways to boost your YouTube SEO?

That's why we build our tool in the first place ✨