When I first talk to clients about making money through videos, they always seem a little unclear what monetisation is and how it works. I thought it best to give some clarity and explain why I feel everyone should be using it.
Monetisation of videos involves advertisements appearing before, during and next to your videos. I’m certain any Youtube video that you’ve watched, you have seen an advert in some form. If you’re not using monetisation yet I highly recommend that you do! these days it’s considered the norm that adverts appear on videos and so you shouldn’t feel like you need to miss out. Plus, if people choose to opt out of adverts, they can do so by signing up to Youtube Red.
So once the adverts appear on your videos…what’s next?
Well…when visitors click on the adverts or watch the trailers, something called PPC or Pay Per Click takes place. This is where businesses pay through Google Adwords to have their banners and videos promoted, and depending on the amount of traffic your channel and videos receive, will affect how much money you make per click on those adverts.
Let’s use an example:
Channel ‘A’ has 100 Subscribers and only gets 20-30 views per video
Channel ‘B’ has 1000 subscribers and gets between 200-500 views per video
If both channels were to have the same adverts appearing on videos, channel ‘A’ may only receive a penny per click whereas channel ‘B’ might be getting five pence per click because of getting more traffic per video. This means those paying for the banners to be shown get more visibility for their money.
If videos go viral or if videos get millions of views, the PPC can increase dramatically. Many of the Youtube creators you see make tens of thousands of pounds and dollars per video through monetisation. There are other factors than can effect monetisation, but I’ll save those for another article as they tie more closely to raising the ranks of videos.
How do I monetise Youtube videos?
Back in the day you had to earn the right to become a Youtube partner. I remember my first video that opened my eyes to the possibility of making money through Youtube. The Xperia Play mobile phone (Playstation phone) had just come out and I wanted to put my playstation games onto it. There were no tutorials on Youtube back then and so I decided to research and make one myself. I put together an 8 minute-or-so video showing how to do it legally and uploaded it to Youtube.
Within two weeks of releasing my video, I received nearly 42,000 views! Shortly after I was contacted by Youtube and given the opportunity to become a Youtube partner. My channel was now monetised. Over the next 4-6 weeks my views continued to grow rapidly before hitting a plateau of around 92,000 views. As this was 5 years ago, you got more money for PPC. I made about £500 ($750) for that one video!
fast forward a couple of years, I filmed myself doing what’s called the ‘INSANITY’ challenge. A DVD box set of workout videos that you follow for the course of 60 days. I filmed myself every day documenting the journey, uploaded all the videos and overtime, these videos were bringing me an extra income of £200 ($300) a month. Now these may not sound like large sums of money, but overtime they all add up! We all start somewhere and that was money that felt as though it magically appeared out of nowhere. So here’s how you too can have some extra cash in your pocket to reinvest back into the channel, or treat yourself to a holiday.
To enable monetisation, head to the ‘Creator Studio’ in your settings and select ‘Channel’, from here select ‘Monetisation’ and follow the instructions to activate your account. SIMPLE! But there is more! Your channel is enabled for monetisation, but until it is linked to an Adsense account, you won’t be making or receiving any money.
On this same page you will see a mini FAQ list of questions. If you see ‘How will I get paid?’ then your channel isn’t fully set up to receive funds. click that option and the link within it to set up an adsense account. Just follow the on screen instructions and your done!
Making money through Youtube videos can be as easy and difficult as you want it to be. But at least having videos uploaded and monetised, you will get the ball rolling and start making you money.
Daniel Colbert AKA CameraDan
To find out more visit www.cameradan.co.uk
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