- So, I'm currently making over $2,000
a month off of ad revenue on YouTube.
So, this video is all about what I'm doing
to get to that level and some tips
and practical ways that you can get there too.
(energetic techno music)
Alright, so I am down here at sunset.
Finally got around to making a video today.
It has been a very long day
and I'm about to start about 10 days of shooting,
so this is the last video I can make for a while
'cause I am like non-stop go-go-go,
heading to Kansas City next.
So, let's talk about ad revenue.
I've have actually gotten this question a lot recently.
People just asking, do you actually make money off YouTube?
And the answer is, of course, yes.
There is money to be made off YouTube.
It's not huge sums of money that are coming from
the ad revenue, but it does build over time,
and like I was saying, over the last few months,
I've been making over $2,000 a month,
and it's just continually growing every month.
So before I go through what it takes
to get that kind of ad revenue,
I just wanna let you know, at the end of this video,
I'm gonna give you five tips
and an actionable sequence that you guys can use
to help you boost your view count and all that.
And that's one of the main things, which is view count.
So the more views that you get on your channel,
the more that you're gonna get paid by ad revenue.
Makes sense, I mean, obviously.
More views equal more money in ads.
So, what I'm gonna talk about
is how you get your view count higher.
View count, obviously, will drive things
like subscribers and all that good stuff,
but if we're just talking ad revenue,
we're not talking about any
of the other revenue streams on YouTube,
we're just talking ad revenue, then what matters
is getting people to see those ads on your videos.
So what that means is getting more views
on your videos, in general.
Your videos have to be advertiser friendly,
you have to have all your videos monetized,
because if they're not, obviously,
you're not gonna get the ad revenue.
So, views, videos monetized, and that's what's important
to make more money with the ad revenue.
So right now, on my channel, I'm getting anywhere
from 20,000 to 30,000 views a day on my videos.
That's all of my videos as a whole,
and 20,000 to 30,000 views on my videos
is equaling about $2,000 a month, give or take.
It goes a little bit up and down,
depending on how many views I had in that month.
But as my views go up on my videos,
so does the amount of money that's coming in per month.
So all my videos are monetized.
Almost all of them.
There's a couple that's not, just for music issues.
So that's something you definitely have to clear.
If you're looking for specific YouTube music,
I'll put a link down in the description.
But all my videos are set around five to 10 minutes.
My longer ones, 30 minutes.
Those ones I'll put multiple ads in.
And so that's one thing you've got to think of.
If you're doing a longer video,
it's worth putting multiple ads in that video.
So, if you're doing a 20 minute video,
maybe you put an ad around the 10, 12 minute mark.
Because when you have people
engaged with you for 10 minutes,
they're not gonna click off when the ad pops up.
So, for my 30 minute videos,
I may do one or I may do two ads within that,
'cause that also is gonna bring more ad revenue
into your videos.
So shorter videos, I would not put multiple ads.
You know, five minutes, don't do it.
10 minutes, don't do it.
But once you start getting into that 20, 30 minute range,
if you have longer videos, definitely use some ad breaks,
because that's gonna help
drive more revenue into your videos.
So, how do you get more views,
which is kind of like the whole purpose of this video.
Well, it's actually a lot simpler than you may think.
So YouTube is like the second biggest
search engine out there.
Google's number one.
Which Google owns YouTube,
so between Google and YouTube,
you have the biggest search engine at your fingertips.
So any content that you create
is being put into this search engine.
So, the idea behind getting more views
is create content that people are searching for.
Even if you're a vlog channel,
and you're just doing vlogs and they might not be
the most searchable thing in the world,
well you could filter in searchable videos here and there,
and you can drive more views to your channel,
which is gonna help your channel grow,
get more ad revenue, do all that good stuff.
Making your content searchable is kind of the key
to getting more views on your channel.
And when you content is searchable,
what's gonna happen is that new viewers
are gonna come for that specific video,
and a lot of times they'll subscribe,
and they're gonna stay,
and they're gonna watch more of your content.
So, if you are a channel that does,
like more vlog style content,
well your searchable videos
are gonna drive more views to the channel,
and then those people are gonna stay longer,
and watch more videos, and as a whole,
your channel is gonna grow because of it.
But it all starts by creating that searchable content,
because unless your content's searchable,
people aren't gonna find your channel.
And that's kinda one of the key things,
especially for smaller creators,
is that you need to be able to be searchable,
to be able to have new people find your channel,
because you're not gonna have, necessarily,
the drive of, you know, a subscriber base
that's really gonna push your videos higher.
And from my experience of starting with vlog style content,
I really saw this transition.
So, when I first started, I did just vlogs
and my subscriber count was low,
and my view count was super low.
As soon as I started introducing
more searchable content into my videos,
overall, the views on my channel went up.
And, on each of my vlogs,
I did start to get more and more views, per video.
And so now, when I put out a video,
I'm getting more views right out the gate,
which is basically helping my entire channel as a whole.
But where I saw that change,
is when I made searchable content.
And when I made searchable content,
my channel grew and all of my videos benefited from it.
Searchable content gets you more views,
more views gets you more ad revenue,
and that's how it all works.
So let me give you five tips
on how to make more searchable content
and how to figure out what it is
that you should shoot on your channel.
Alright, I got a dinner to go to tonight
so I need to take one of these birds and head home,
and we're gonna finish up this video if this,
that one doesn't work.
And we'll finish up this video when we get back.
Alright, so I've got five tips for you
that's gonna help you get more views on your channel.
The first is research.
And this is probably the most important aspect
to getting more views by using searchable content.
So you need to figure out what people are searching for,
otherwise you won't know what to actually produce.
So, there is a tool that I use.
It's called Keywords Everywhere.
And it's a Chrome extension.
And so what it basically does
is that any time you have a search box, anywhere on the web,
that tells you the search volume
that's going into a keyword, in that search box.
So, if you go to YouTube and you say GoPro HERO7,
and you type that in and what's gonna happen,
it's gonna show your search volume
right underneath the search bar.
So what that does is it tells you, right there,
how many people are searching for that per month.
And that's a huge indication
'cause you can look at different topics
and different keywords, and know that,
A, this is getting a ton of searches
or it's not getting any searches at all.
And that will tell you right there
if this is searchable content or not.
So you've gotta figure out what types
of videos you wanna shoot,
and then go in and start doing some keyword research
by putting in the keywords that are associated
with the video that you want to produce
and see if they're even searchable keywords.
So let's take a look at two keywords
that I might do on my channel,
GoPro HERO7 and DJI Mavic 2 Pro.
That's two cameras that I've been working with recently,
and it's two videos that I might produce.
So when you put in these keywords in the search bar,
the search volume for GoPro HERO 7 is 880 a month.
So there is some search volume there,
but it's not a huge number.
When we put in DJI Mavic 2 Pro,
you get a search volume of 110,000 a month.
So that's way higher, but the other thing
you need to think about is your competition.
So I use TubeBuddy, and it's another extension.
It has a lot of features just for YouTubers, in general.
I'll put a link down below in the description
to both of these tools.
But it can show your competition on the side.
And so, my competition for GoPro HERO 7
is actually not that bad.
Whereas, DJI Mavik 2 Pro, the competition is insane.
So, if I was deciding between these two videos to shoot
I would choose the GoPro HERO 7,
because that video is more likely to rank.
And ranking's important,
because when people are searching for a topic,
if you're one of the first few results that pops up,
your video is gonna get views.
So my second tip goes along with this.
Say you've chose your topic.
You know what you're gonna do.
Now, after you've produced your video
and it's all ready to go,
you need to come up with a title, description,
and tags that all include the keyword
that you were searching for originally.
So make sure that your keyword is somewhere in the title
and you wanna put it closer to the front of that title,
if not the very first thing in that title.
Then you wanna make sure that, in your description,
that in the first sentence you have your keyword,
and then also in your tags,
you wanna make sure that you put the keyword.
Basically what that's telling Google,
is that this video is about this topic.
And when you do that it's gonna rank higher.
And then with that, you obviously wanna have
a thumbnail that looks good, that's eye-catching,
that's gonna be something someone wants to click on.
If you make a thumbnail title description
that is not actually about the video,
then basically people will click on,
and then they're gonna click off right away,
which is gonna negatively affect your video.
And you don't want that to happen.
You want people to click on to your video
and then stay and watch,
because YouTube will rank you higher,
the longer watch time that people have
on your video and on your page.
So tip number three is ad captions.
And this is just as important as your title,
your tags, or your description,
because it's another way that Google can crawl your video,
and see what the content is all about.
So, basically it takes the script, it can read the script
now that you've put it into a text format,
and then Google knows exactly what's in that video,
so it's gonna push you higher in the ranking system.
It's also gonna push you higher
just because you are now making your video
more accessible to more people.
So Google rewards that.
And it's a simple thing to do.
I use rev.com.
It's probably the easiest way
to put captions on your YouTube videos.
They link up directly with your YouTube channel.
They'll take your video, do all the captions,
and automatically insert 'em back into YouTube.
It's super easy and it costs a dollar a minute.
So, I do this with almost all of my videos.
What I'll do is, just when I produce my video,
either I'll make it unlisted, get the captions ready,
and then when I release it,
the captions are ready to go when it's released.
If you wanna try this on your channel,
I'll put a code down in the description.
This gives you $10 free at rev.com.
So you can try this caption tip on any of your videos,
up to 10 minutes, completely free.
So I'll put that link down in the description
with the other links.
It's something that I highly suggest you do
and as soon as I started implementing this on my channel,
I started seeing more views coming through on the videos
that I'm putting captions on.
Tip number four is about cards and in-screens.
So, earlier, when I was talking.
So when I was talking about watch time,
that is an important feature
that YouTube uses to rank your videos.
So if somebody watches your video,
and then decides to watch more YouTube videos after you,
YouTube will now rank your account
higher than other accounts.
Because watch time is important.
YouTube wants people to stay within their platform
and they want them to binge.
So if someone sees your video, watches it,
and then decides to watch another one of your videos,
or a similar video on someone else's channel,
your channel's gonna be rewarded
because that person entered YouTube through your video,
and they stayed for x amount of time.
So if someone binges for like an hour,
that's better than if somebody just came,
watched your video, and left.
And so this is where cards and in-screens come in.
Basically, anywhere within your video that makes sense
to put a card to another YouTube video, do it.
So, if I was talking about how to sell stock footage
somewhere within this video,
I would pop up a card, right at the top,
that says go to my video on how to sell stock footage.
And what that will do
is if somebody's interested in that topic,
they're gonna click that link
and they're gonna continue watching videos.
So your watch time is gonna go up.
And this is the same thing with end cards.
You're gonna want, at the end of your video,
to have at least two videos.
I, typically, for those two videos,
will let YouTube decide one on the best video
for the viewer, and then the second,
make it a video that's related to this video.
The goal of that is that
if you're gonna be watching this video,
that you'll click one of those, and go watch another video.
It all centers around this idea
of keeping people within YouTube and watching videos,
because that's gonna help your videos, as a whole,
rank higher, gets more views,
gets more ad revenue, all that good stuff.
And tip number five is to make sure
that people stay when they watch your video.
So there's two things that I would say.
First, you need to have a good hook.
You need to have something within the first 10 seconds
that tells exactly what your viewer
is gonna see in this video.
So at the beginning of this video, what did I do?
So, I'm currently making over $2,000 a month
off of ad revenue on YouTube,
so this video is all about
what I'm doing to get to that level and some tips
and practical ways that you can get there too.
Okay, so that tells you exactly
what you're gonna see in this video.
Now, after that, I put my intro sequence.
And I suggest just making an intro sequence.
Look, there's a card right up there.
And I would suggest that you make an intro sequence,
because an intro sequence is a great way
to tell your viewer what kind of channel
that they're watching.
If this is a new person that's never seen you before,
this is a chance to just basically put a little snippet
of what this channel's all about.
So I put filmmaking in mine, I put travel, adventure.
So you get a sense of that this is a filmmaking channel,
but there's some sort of travel
and adventure element to it as well.
So a viewer instantly gets a feeling
of what they're gonna find in this channel.
Having that hook and having that intro sequence
will help keep a viewer in your video and keep them watching
so they stay engaged with your video,
instead of just clicking off.
If you just start a video
and it's not that exciting at the beginning,
people are more likely gonna click off,
and then your watch time's gonna go down,
which is not gonna let you rank higher.
So those are five tips that I use all the time
to help my videos rank higher, to get more views,
to get more ad revenue, all that good stuff.
Guys, if you're interested in more
about the things that I do on my YouTube channel,
I'm gonna put a whole section
in my Creator Film School all about YouTube,
and just my experience in YouTube,
and the things that I've found have worked,
that have not worked.
Go to creatorfilmschool.com and sign up
to get the notifications for when that launches.
That's gonna be a big part of the film school.
But, guys, if you're new to this channel,
make sure you hit that subscribe button.
There's a lot of awesome filmmaking tutorials,
some camera reviews, some other good stuff.
And, guys, I'd love to hear from you.
Do you guys have any tips or tricks that you use
that help drive more views on your videos?
Because I know all of us are interested in different ways
to grow our channel and to get more views on our videos.
Alright, guys, that's it.
I'll see you on the next one.