- YouTube just made a huge update to monetization
that affects small YouTube channels.
So now you actually will have access
to what used to be called the YouTube merch shelf,
used to require you to have 10,000 subscribers.
You'll get that with only 1000 subscribers
if your YouTube channel is monetized.
This is a huge and unprecedented update.
We've really never seen YouTube
lower the requirements for something by this much.
YouTube has also partnered with Shopify
and YouTube and its merch shelf has been rebranded
to YouTube Shopping.
So if you do have a monetized channel,
you're gonna see that change in your monetization tab
when you go into YouTube analytics.
This has a lot of huge implications
and I'm going to definitely be covering it
in some future update videos,
but there are a couple of main things
that you do want to be sure you're looking out for,
because if you have been wondering about
"How can I sell digital products online?"
Or "I want a few more options
when it comes to print-on demand products,"
maybe you want to make something like a planner,
a physical planner, or maybe you want to do a journal,
or something like that and sell that to your audience.
Well, now you have that ability by combining YouTube
with Shopify and having it display below your videos
using what used to be called the YouTube merch shelf
and is now rebranded to YouTube Shopping.
There are some other YouTube Shopping features
that are becoming soon to YouTube Shorts,
as well as the ability to tag products in your videos.
But that is gonna be something
I will have to cover in another video,
because they're slowly rolling out access to those features.
Some people have an early beta of it.
You may have seen that on a couple of videos.
I do not have access to that yet,
but I do have access to the new YouTube Shopping feature
when it comes to connecting a YouTube channel
with a Shopify store.
And this is huge if you wanna sell your own products.
Up until now, we've had options like Spring for creators
and Spreadshop who I use,
who also sponsors some of my YouTube videos,
and we're gonna be doing a dedicated setup tutorial
for the YouTube merch shelf.
But what I really wanna do
is talk about the opportunities that this creates
for you to directly sell your own products to your audience
and that it's gonna be a little bit complicated
for some of you in terms of the setup process.
I've already set up my existing Shopify store
for Create Awesome Things
and connected that to my podcast channel.
My main YouTube channel still has
my Spreadshop connected to it
so that you can buy merchandise like the Creator hats,
shirts, and hoodies.
But with the podcast channel, I connected my Shopify store,
and now I can actually sell the digital prints
of my photography and my artwork to my audience.
But if I wanted to,
I could also sell digital download products like templates,
motion graphics, and sound effects packs.
This is huge for any of you creators who have been looking
to make a little bit more money,
maybe even generate passive income through those products.
The big difference here
is that Spreadshop costs you $0 to sign up for,
same thing with Spring, formerly Teespring.
Those are print-on demand stores
that cost you $0 to sign up.
In fact, if you wanna sign up for Spreadshop,
you could use my link in the description down below,
it costs you $0 to do that.
But with Shopify, you do have to spend money to make money.
You know, kind of as usual.
The difference here is that there are a variety
of print-on demand products
and you can even set up physical products,
maybe you can even manufacture your own products,
you can sell them through your Shopify store
through e-commerce.
And so the variety of options
and customizations available to you
are like pretty significant here,
but it does require a lot more effort and work on your part.
Using something like Spreadshop is much easier,
but the difference is now
that you get to have all of that stuff
integrated into the YouTube's system
and not have to really do a lot to push your audience to it.
It's a lot more visible since you can toggle
and have the items display below your videos.
Also, you do get a tab over on your YouTube page.
It's getting pretty crowded over there,
but you could tab over to something called Store.
You also get a YouTube Store link.
So this also makes things easier to promote.
You could also use this
in promotions for your community tab,
and it might be easier to get your audience to buy into.
I'm definitely gonna be covering some videos
to help you make digital products,
because I think that's one of the strongest plays for this,
since unlike when you do print-on demand products,
like you know, t-shirts, hoodies, hats, that kind of thing,
you don't have the upfront cost of production
when it comes to digital products,
it's really only an investment of time
for the most part to do that.
And so a lot of you would stand to make more money.
And I think for a lot of people who are artists, animators,
video editors, graphic designers, and so on,
that this is going to be a very,
very lucrative opportunity for them.
I'm also gonna cover the better parts
of setting up a Shopify store and things like that.
I'm also gonna teach you
how to set up a store in Spreadshops
since that's a $0 opportunity.
There are things that I plan to make
to kind of coincide with this new shift in YouTube.
And, again, I think it's just really cool
that we've seen them go from, you know,
being gatekept with 10,000 subscribers,
all the way down to 1000 subscribers.
So now there are a lot of small channels
that have access to monetization opportunities
that they've never had before.
And I think that that's actually really cool,
and that's progress that we're finally seeing
and that we've all been hoping for.
Out of all the ways you can sell digital products online,
Shopify is not really that expensive
when it's all said and done.
Also, at the same time,
it's one of the most trusted platforms
when it comes to e-commerce,
and it's ultimately really changed the game.
I have plans to actually do a digital template store
built completely on Shopify.
It's something I've been working on behind the scenes
for a little bit over a year now,
but it's been extremely slow
'cause I'm being a perfectionist about it.
But I do plan to build a creator template store.
A lot of you have bought digital products
from me in the past, like the YouTube starter kit.
And so you know that as a graphic designer,
someone who has that background,
I like actually building these digital assets
and products and download bundles.
And I also think it's a great way
for you to be able to expand your creator business.
Now, a system I use for that is Kajabi,
which does not directly integrate with YouTube,
that's one of the downsides.
And up until now, if you had a Shopify store
and you weren't a huge creator,
you didn't have that direct integration with Shopify
if you wanted to do something similar.
But now, because of this partnership between YouTube
and Shopify and the rebrand to YouTube Shopping,
you're gonna have that opportunity
if you're someone who's interested
in either selling physical or digital products
and having the opportunity
to have full customization over that
and to be able to just make a greater variety of things
that you can directly sell and monetize.
And the best part is
that you get to essentially keep all of this money,
it's not split like the YouTube Partner Program,
and I wanna make that clear.
I know that you're used to the YouTube Partner Program
where there's a 55-45 split for the creator
and things like Super Chat where there's a 70-30 split,
or even YouTube channel memberships
where there's a 70-30 split.
But when you have your own e-commerce store like this,
that split doesn't exist.
If you sell a physical product, then there's the cost
of making it that comes out of those profits.
But when it comes to digital products,
your margins are a lot higher.
So whenever you sell something like
let's say you sold a $20 t-shirt,
you might make $5 off of that t-shirt,
so that's a 25% profit margin.
But if you sold a digital download for $20,
you're probably keeping something close to the 95% of it.
So you're basically keeping about, you know, 19 bucks
and some change.
That's a pretty significant difference
in profit margin here.
Something else I do wanna remind you of is
you may not realize this as a smaller channel
if you're new to monetization,
but creators with 1000 subscribers
who qualify for YouTube monetization
and are in the YouTube Partner Program
do have access to chat support
when you wanna reach out to YouTube.
You don't just have email support, you have chat support.
This is something that you had
to typically be a much larger channel
in order to have in the past,
but now it's something that's accessible
to millions of creators who've never had it before.
And that's something that I covered in my update video
last year for monetization when they made that change.
But some of you still just weren't aware of it,
so I wanted to bring it up here
because we have a lot of people
who are new to the YouTube Partner Program.
Like I said before,
there are more features that are gonna be rolling out
with YouTube Shopping and even more monetization methods
like YouTube Live Shopping, and also product tagging.
This is also gonna be similar to what you've probably seen
with Amazon's live shopping experience.
And you've probably seen something similar to this
in Instagram before as well.
I'm going to be covering a lot more
around crater monetization as we go on
because a lot of these platforms
have just decided to finally embrace the creator economy
in the same way that YouTube has all along.
And I couldn't be happier about it.
I'm here to help you secure the bag.
That's kind of one of the recurring themes of this channel
is we're helping creators get this money.
So if that's something that you are more interested in,
let me know about creator monetization features
that I haven't covered that you would like me to,
whether it's YouTube,
or whether it's some of the other platforms,
or if I need to do update videos
for monetization requirements.
If you have questions,
you can leave them in the comments section.
I'll try and answer questions there,
but I also am happy to make some videos about this for you.
If you have questions or have specific tutorials you want
like stuff on Shopify or stuff about making merch,
then happy to talk about that as well.
As always, thank you so much for watching
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today.
Take care.