What strategies have you seen work out there
for monetizing your audience outside of AdSense,
and outside of YouTube?
Brand deals, swag, I mean, there's a lot of different--
Yeah.
Especially now, like, people are like,
Subbable, TubeStar, Patrion.
Like, there's all these platforms for crowd funding.
There's all these different people
trying to figure out AdSense isn't cutting it.
You want to create content that's
more brand friendly for you.
So whatever you-- and also, too, you've got to be aggressive.
I think the one thing that I should have been doing
is like, hey, you know, I'm making this cool video,
would you like to put your name behind it?
I loved this device so much that I reached out
to the company a year and a half ago and asked them,
would you be interested in doing a contest on my channel
so I could give away one of these,
and they were all for it.
We kind of did it the backwards way.
We started out with something that was already making money
not on YouTube, and then we started
doing YouTube after that.
Yeah.
So right now for Robert's channel,
we use YouTube to drive our traffic to our site.
So we actually have a membership side
called therobertjonesmediaacademy.com.
Robert We built the web end of it
before we ever went to YouTube.
YouTube is a secondary thing for us,
so I think you need to look at all your revenue sources
before you jump in.
And if you're already in YouTube,
look at the kind audience that you have,
and what items that they really want,
and if they can use your education, or your products,
or whatever it might be.
And then build you a membership site,
or a continuity side that will fit
that, because that residual income, you just can't beat it.
I would say make sure it's a product that you're
passionate about, make sure it's a product that you
feel like they really need.
Don't just do a product to do a product to make money.
Don't just make a t-shirt to make a t-shirt.
Don't just have a product.
Make it have something of value.
Like, every video, people are like,
hey, where did you get that shirt from?
So I started making my own shirts,
or like, making my own little like, small, like, level
merchandise.
And just kind of wear them in videos.
They ask me where I got it from, well,
there's a link in every video and every description.
Go there, check it out, and they'll buy it.
And you'll wake up one day, you'll
have more money there than you have in AdSense.
Is that working out pretty well for you?
Oh, yeah.
Big time.
Like, yeah.
I really almost, like, do t-shirts rather than
YouTube right now.
Monetizing outside of YouTube is actually
better than my monetization in YouTube for me personally,
and I don't know, this doesn't necessarily
work for any niche, but something,
that if people don't know about affiliate marketing,
it's something you definitely want to jump into.
So it's pretty simple to set up an Amazon affiliate account
and say hey, if you're interested in this product,
there's links in the description below.
People click on those links.
99% of the time, they don't end up
even buying the product that you linked to, but Amazon,
you know, the cookie's life is 24 hours.
So I start selling One Direction posters,
you know, a bunch of copies of Twilight novels, Hunger Games.
A bunch of, you know, Justin Bieber albums on MP3, just
simply because people are clicking on those links, right?
I think the biggest thing is really
displaying your personality.
Brands are looking for personable people
and personable channels, rather than just the content itself.
So don't be afraid to kind of like,
step outside of your content, let your fans,
or your viewers know who you are.
And also kind of learn who they are,
because that's what a brand is looking for.
They want to know who they're advertising to.
So the better you know your audience,
the better you can tell them who your audience is.
I have checked my analytics, and I find that I actually
have a large number of people in the 18-35 year old range, where
most people have a younger audience.
So that allows me to talk to brands
who try to get consumers that are older,
and they'll maybe work with me, even sometimes
over a large channel, because my fan base is an older audience.
So you've just got to learn, like,
what you have to offer, and then just use that to your advantage
as best you can.
Every YouTuber, they have something special about them,
so you have someone who sings, and they make their money off
of iTune sales.
For me, I don't have music that I personally sell,
so what I do is I sell my stock video footage.
So for me, that's kind of something most people don't
know about, is most of my money doesn't come from YouTube.
It comes from selling stock footage.
So that's how I can actually fund it.
And then I do brand deals, and that's
kind of the second revenue.
And then third is actually YouTube.
And then eventually I'm gonna do merchandise.
I just haven't started that yet, because I'm-- so many things
at once.
I can only do much, you know?
So when you're up on the giant rope swing,
and you're just getting like, tons of stock footage up there,
and you're kind of like double dutying it, or--
No, so, I shoot the rope swing in a video, and then TV,
they see it, and they're like, we
want to use that for a news story.
We want to buy 30 seconds to show of it on TV.
Or Mountain Dew sees something, they're
like, we want to use that for a commercial.
Can we buy 20 seconds?
So that's kind of how it works.
And then below, there's an affiliate link for this hat.
You could buy this on Amazon.
I actually don't know if that one's available.
Would someone buy this shirt right here?
Would anyone buy that?
Oh, they would?
I'm thinking about it right now.