Okay, Listen, I know that it's like this massive dream for anybody starting on YouTube to hit that 1000 subscriber mark and that 4000 watched hour mark so you can get monetized.
But I'm here to tell you that you don't have to wait for that big moment to actually make money on YouTube.
You can start making money on YouTube as a very small creator, And honestly, from day one, So if that sounds like something you're interested in.
many times people get started on YouTube and think that they have to wait until they're monetized to make money, And it's honestly not true.
If you will play your cards right and do things in the right way and treat YouTube as a business from the very beginning.
You can already be making money by the time you hit that point, We're going to talk about three ways to make money on YouTube without being monetized.
How to make money on YouTube as a small creator with affiliate marketing
Number one, and this is probably the place that most of you will want to start. And the place that I would recommend you start from the very beginning, and that is affiliate marketing.
What is affiliate marketing?
Essentially, it is when you get paid a commission to promote someone else's service or product or thing. Okay.
So if I'm doing a YouTube video and I'm like, Oh my gosh, these headphones are so awesome, you should check out the link to them below and it's an Amazon link, then any time someone clicks that link and buys something, I will get a commission.
They don't even have to buy the headphones, but if they click through that link to buy something, I get permission from them.
Amazon is a great place to start with affiliate marketing because anybody can apply and be accepted. There are some rules around how much do you have to sell in the first like 90 or 60 days with Amazon, but for the most part, it's a pretty easy thing for people to hit.
So Amazon Affiliates is a great place to start with affiliate marketing, but understand that almost every company has an affiliate marketing program.
So on my channel, if I talk about TubeBuddy and I'm like, Oh my gosh, I love TubeBuddy so much and I send people to the TubeBuddy link that is my affiliate link.
I will get a commission from that. Okay. A little like secret nugget here. I would recommend that you start with software that is a monthly service and charge people monthly because generally, they are going to pay you monthly, and then that can become a really regular income stream rather than hoping that people constantly click your links in the description for those headphones.
And if you're wondering how to get people to actually click your affiliate links, there are a few ways that you can do that.
- Mention Them On The Video :
You can verbally tell them to do that in the video, so you can be like, Hey, if you want these things, it's linked in the description, or you could pop the link across the screen.
- Links in Description
The most common option is to just constantly have your description ready with the affiliate links that a lot of people are going to want.
for example, in the description of Youtuber's videos, you have a ton of links for like most frequently asked questions:
- what maximizing?
- What camera am I using?
- What lots of I use, what software do I love?
All of these things I'm asked on the regular so I go ahead and put the affiliate links to all of those in all of my descriptions.
How To Make Money on YouTube with Digital Products
So the second way you can make money on YouTube without being monetized is with digital products, I have talked a lot on my Blog about digital products.
So if you need more help there, you can come on over and hang out on my Blog.
However, the basics of this are that you're selling your own digital goods, So things like templates like let's say Canva templates or Photoshop templates, Lightroom Presets, workbooks, really anything that you can create and then put up for people to purchase from you can make you some great money before you're even monetized.
So as an example on this one, let's say you do a video on your channel about how to grow on Instagram, Like maybe that is your channel and you want to talk about how to grow on Instagram and you do this video, but you have Lightroom Presets that you use and you know that people are constantly asking you how you get your photos edited that way or how things look that way.
You can go ahead and create Lightroom Presets that can be shared with other people and you can sell them.
So if you are creating this video about how to grow on Instagram and you know that people are going to want your presets after you show them your Instagram you can totally mention it in the video and be like, Hey, I have some presets available for you there,$5 or whatever the scenario is, The link is below in the description, and when someone watches that video and wants to purchase as presets, all they have to do is click that link and you've made money.
How to Make Money on YouTube with Sponsorships
So the third way that you can make money without being monetized and by the way, this is not an exhaustive list.
These are just the top three ways that I would recommend people to start making money.
If you're ready to make money without having to wait to be monetized. And also, even if you are monetized, these will all work too, So the third way is sponsorships.
with sponsorships generally, you are paid for your audience size. So if you're a smaller creator, you're not going to be able to make as much money as someone would say 100,000 subscribers or 10,000 subscribers even.
But that doesn't mean you can't do sponsorships. It doesn't mean that you can't get sponsorships. There are a lot of companies out there that pay micro-influencers that specifically want to pay smaller creators because they know their audiences are engaged and that can be worth their money.
So if there's a system or a product or a company that you just absolutely love is not going to hurt anything to reach out and see if they're interested in a sponsorship again.
You're probably not going to be able to charge someone with more followers or subscribers than you have, but that doesn't mean you can't charge anything or that it's not possible.
You can get sponsorship deals from the jump, especially if you have other social media networks or other platforms that you can utilize to sweeten the deal a little bit.
So let's say you don't have that many subscribers here on YouTube, but you have two or 3000 followers on Instagram. That's not a ton.
However, that's enough to where our brand could potentially see you as a benefit to them. So sell it as a whole package rather than trying to just, you know, say, Hey, I want to do a YouTube sponsorship, but I only have 100 subscribers.
Maybe see if you can bring other things in to sweeten the deal. So hopefully that helps put you on the right path to making some moolah and not having to wait for that 1,000th subscriber like glorious moment, you know?
And I highly encourage you to go back to any old videos you've done and updated the descriptions with affiliate links with products of your own, with anything that is going to help you make money.
Because I promise you, if you're putting content on the Internet, somebody has a question somewhere about something that they see in your videos.Or that you've mentioned that you're probably not making money from.Very recently I set out to buy some new audio equipment.
I think I was looking for a new podcast microphone situation, and I went on YouTube, of course, to like look at reviews and see what people were saying.
And there was this one creator who tremendously helped me make my decision, and he had no affiliate links in his description of the products he was talking about.
So that was a massively missed opportunity. So if you've put out those kinds of videos before where you're talking about something that you could be an affiliate for, but you weren't at the time, or you're talking about something that you could create a digital product for, definitely.