I wanna let you in on a little secret, my friends.
Um, my YouTube is tanking.
Currently.
I try not to pay too much attention to AdSense numbers, subscriber
numbers, that kind of thing.
But I happen to log into my analytics the other day and notice that my YouTube
revenue, so the ad money, you know, the ads that played before my videos and
stuff, that revenue was down by like 50%.
I'm getting like half of what I'm used to getting this month and
I did a little bit of digging.
I was trying to understand exactly why that is, and some people are
mentioning maybe some like YouTube apocalypse kind of thing going on.
I saw some other tweets that mentioned maybe a potential bug going on.
Um, and then of course there's also just the seasonality stuff,
so, you know, it's a bummer.
We're gonna watch it.
Of course, I don't wanna see that trend continue, but today I wanna tell you why
I'm actually not freaking out about it.
Too much, and those of you who've been with me for a while know the reason is
because like YouTube adson is really nice, don't get me wrong, but it's not
what I rely on to pay my bills, and I actually don't recommend that any content
creator relies on any one stream of income to get them to where they wanna be.
Because the truth is, having diverse revenue streams just allows you to be
more flexible, allows you to scale.
When things are working, pull back when they're not.
And also I, I just find, have like more fun with the whole YouTube
and content creator experience.
So let's talk about a few different ways that you can monetize your
YouTube, even if you don't qualify yet for ads on your videos.
Or if you're somebody like me who's just having a bad ad sense
month, let's talk about how to continue to make money either way.
So first up, let's talk about fan funding and memberships.
Essentially, this is a model that enables your viewers, your community,
that you've built up to pay you, you know, as opposed to going through
a third party, like a sponsor or like, you know, a Google or YouTube.
You are getting money directly from your community, and I think that's really
nice because if you have a really good relationship with your audience as it is,
a lot of times they want to support you.
They want to have a closer relationship with you, they want to encourage you
to make more videos so it can feel really good and it is a little bit.
Almost more stable in many ways.
As long as you are continuing to put out consistent content, consistent
quality content, you can easily maintain that revenue stream.
Whereas something like YouTube ads, some months it's just really up and
some months it's just really down.
Even though my views are consistent and subscribers are
growing and all that stuff.
And today I'm actually working with you screen.
Who knows a little something about memberships in fan funding.
You Screen is an all-in-one platform that lets content creators sell their videos
online and build their membership site, as well as mobile and TV apps within Netflix.
Like look and Feel.
Best of all.
All you screen plans include video hosting and out-of-the-box website.
A ton of built-in tools and plenty of third party integrations.
You screen partners with all kinds of creators, from fitness studios to
educators, news creators, music teachers, bloggers, kids, entertainment, and
anyone that wants to make money from their content can do it with you Screen.
In addition to this, people can also do live streaming behind a
paywall and get their own branded apps built by the U screen team.
So if you're interested in learning more about memberships and building recurring
revenue, be sure to check out U screen.
I will leave a link in the description, but memberships can be a great way
to just, like I said, form a closer relationship with your audience.
The key here is that you wanna give them value.
You know, in most cases, unless you're like a.
Super huge, huge creator or celebrity or something people don't wanna pay just
to kind of hang out with you or just to say they're in your inner circle.
You wanna actually give them value in exchange for it.
So for example, if you're a fitness creator, maybe you are
able to do live workout classes.
If you just regularly post pre-recorded YouTube videos,
maybe you do live workouts.
In your membership, or if you are a food creator, or maybe you do custom
recipes and you take requests from people in your membership to get specific
types of food or things like that.
For someone like me who's a business creator, I can live teach in a
membership, as opposed to just sharing my, again, pre-recorded videos.
I can do live teaching.
Take people's questions in real time.
Or even share things that are maybe a little bit more behind the scenes
that I wouldn't normally share with such a large audience, cuz there are
some things sometimes that I just don't maybe feel comfortable sharing
as a creator to such a vast audience, but to people who trust me and.
I trust in return, maybe I am willing to dive into those juicier topics.
The next option that has really grown for me over the past couple years really
I would say, is working with brands.
It's funny because, so I logged onto my YouTube saw, ad Sense
is not doing well for me.
And was doing a little bit of research on Twitter, trying to
see if other people could relate.
And it's interesting because a lot of people are saying the same thing
that, Hey, my ad sensee is really down, but sponsorships have never been.
Higher and more lucrative.
There's never been more opportunity, and for me, I would say that
has been pretty true too.
Brands, I think, are finally coming around to seeing the
value of creators and not just.
Huge celebrity spokespeople.
You know, you're Kim Kardashians, you're, you know, evil, longoria's,
whoever, but like your smaller creator, your micro creators, even people who
have smaller audiences than me I know are making a good amount of revenue
every month from working with brands.
Because while we may not have those huge, huge, massive numbers, our
engagement rates are generally very high.
Meaning the people who watch you, if you are a small creator,
They really are there for you.
Like they are really invested in what you have to say, and that has a lot of power.
You know, it's, it's also just something that like money really
can't buy relationships, like brands can run ads on Facebook or wherever.
And I'm not saying that you can't have success running ads, but being able
to pay for a spot in someone's kind of inner circle is really, really valuable.
I get the question all the time.
How many followers do you need to start working with brands?
And honestly, I think I probably started working with brands around like a
couple thousand subscribers on YouTube.
I do wanna say though, like pay less attention to that subscriber number
and more to engagement numbers because times have changed a little bit since I
had, you know, two or 3000 subscribers.
Nowadays, brands really are looking at when you post something, what
percentage of your audience actually cares what percentage of your audience.
Actually clicks on a link.
And so paying attention to these metrics can be incredibly helpful for you when
you're going to pitch yourself to brands.
If you don't yet have a lead magnet or an email list or just something that
you can track a little bit of data from.
Work on that.
Build an email list.
Encourage your audience to sign up for your email list.
What this is gonna do is it's gonna enable you to be able to have a metric
to show to brands and say, Hey, look, this email list has a conversion rate of.
30% whenever I mention it, or I've built up an organic email list
of 5,000 people just by sharing the link in my YouTube videos.
Imagine if I had something interesting to provide them, like a discount code
to your product or a free trial of your product or something like that.
So make sure that you are building some story, you're creating some
case study, and then you wanna build what is called a media kit.
A media kit is basically a resume for creators, so that's gonna have.
All of that data, you know all of the information that
you know about your audience.
So who tends to watch your, your content?
Is there a particular gender that watches your content more?
A particular age group.
You can get all that stuff from your analytics and your social media
tools, and then also just post some standout content that you've created.
If you've worked with brands already, then definitely highlight that, but
even if you haven't yet, You know, I would maybe share a link to my
podcast playlist and say, this is the project that I'm the most proud of.
I put the most energy, time, effort into the video podcast.
Check out how well some of these episodes have performed, and just
start reaching out to brands.
I work with a partnerships manager now, which has been really helpful just to
have another pair of hands, but I don't think that you need one until you start
getting a ton of inbound requests.
You know, once your email inbox starts to get a little bit overwhelming for
you, that's a good time to maybe look at bringing somebody on the team to support.
But for the longest time, I was managing my partnerships by myself and.
You can earn a lot, for sure, even as a smaller creator.
So don't sleep on those opportunities.
Just reach out, introduce yourself and see where the relationship goes.
And then the last way that I wanna talk about today is how
I have made the majority of my money actually from YouTube.
It's not through ads.
Or brand sponsorship, but it's been through digital products
and memberships as well.
Digital products could be anything from like an ebook to a course, to a class, a
recipe book, a download, a workout guide.
You know, there's so many different things that you could sell online,
but I always think it's super helpful no matter what you do.
To have one digital product and one service or physical product, like
depending on what you do, but just have a couple of different options or
things that you could sell to people.
If they say, Hey, Latasha, I love your videos.
I'd love to work with you.
Having a course, having a membership, having a consulting call, having
something that you can always offer people can be really lucrative.
I started with a very simple, I think it was like a $97 course, evergreen
course, meaning I wasn't having to.
Create content for it every week or every month or anything like that.
It was just, I created it and then it was out into the world.
I kind of think of it similar to a book.
You know how you write the book, then you launch the book and then
it's out there into the world.
That's how I started and it was like the little engine that could,
I started by making like a couple hundred dollars a month from it,
and it just scaled over time.
I introduced new courses.
I pulled the lever on the courses, meaning that, you know, I started
to promote them more actively.
Increased value to them.
If you are looking to take, you know, a 97, a $47 product and turn it into a $597
product, add some element of community, again, that's where you screen in.
Memberships can really come in handy as you can couple your digital products with
a membership or with some type of a live component to them, and that really adds
that personalization and that adds that.
Thing that nobody can replace, nobody can replace you.
So those are things that I've done that have really helped amplify the value
of my digital products, and also just made them stand out in the market.
You know, there's lots of just evergreen courses and lots of
templates and things like that out there, but there are not a lot of.
Accelerator programs like the one that I offer that offers group coaching calls
and membership forums and things like that in addition to the learning content.
So again, if you are interested in learning more about memberships or
anything like that, uh, check out you screen in the description box.
I'll also leave a class that I have that helps you decide which
type of digital product is the best fit for you if you're not sure.
What you wanna create quite yet.
Those are a few ways that you can monetize YouTube outside of ads and the
typical stuff that can sometimes cause a headache like they're causing for me.
Don't worry, I'm okay.
We'll all be okay.
I'm not freaking out.
But if you do enjoy this video, please do share it.
That really does help.
More than you know, it's a free thing that you can do.
Um, share it with a friend, share it in an email, post it on your
Instagram story, Twitter, whatever.
If it was helpful for you, and leave me a comment.
Let me know how you plan to monetize your YouTube or content in general.
Curious if you've tried any of these things or if this, you know,
sparked anything for you as well.
I'd love to know, and thank you again to you screen for sponsoring.
I'll leave their link in the description and I will talk
to you all in my next video.
Bye.