Hey, guys.
My name is Tim Schmoyer.
And it's Thursday, which means it's time
to do some YouTube Q&A with you guys
just like we do every week.
A common question that I get here is, Tim,
how do I make more money from my YouTube channel?
And a lot of you guys, I know, are doing specifically
how-to channels, tutorial channels, and you're like,
I don't know how to make money off of that.
Well, I went out and asked a friend of mine, Mikey,
who runs a tutorial channel with After Effects tutorials about,
how do you make money on your channel outside of AdSense?
And so he was very kind enough to answer that question
and to make a very detailed helpful video for you guys
about exactly that.
Hey, this is Mikey.
I'm with the channel called After Effects Tutorials
with Mikey.
You'll see that all my tutorials are screen captured tutorials.
I do After Effects tutorials and things like that.
And so I've got notes that I'll be periodically looking
down on in order to do this video.
So just ignore the fact that I've got an iPhone in my hand
and I'm reading from this.
Because when I do tutorials, I don't have a camera on my face.
First thing is you need a YouTube channel, which
I'm sure you all have.
But here's the thing.
Do not monetize your videos through the AdSense
on a new channel.
I recommend about 15,000 to 20,000 views a month.
At that point, you can start turning it on.
Anything before that, you're not going
to be making much money off of it anyways.
Next thing as far as monetizing a how-to or tutorial channel
is you need to find something to give out for free.
And I know I said monetizing, but list building
is the key to monetizing.
Once you have a list, a list does everything.
You can email them updates to new videos,
or you can email them new products, or different things
you're selling.
But without a list, you can't do that.
So in order to build a list, easiest way
is to have something for free.
So for me, my channel, I do After Effects tutorials.
And so things that I started out with giving out for free
were presets and templates.
And so I created a preset for After Effects.
I'd give it out for free.
And then in order for people to get it,
they'd have to give me their email address,
and I could build a list that way.
So I found, for me, there's MailChimp and different things
like that you can use to build a list.
But for me, the easiest was a website called gumroad.com.
Now Gumroad is kind of an e-commerce solution that's
very simple.
You don't have to have your own website.
You don't have to have really anything.
You just go on to the Gumroad site, set up an account,
and you could sell anything, anything digital,
anything streamable.
Anything you can download or stream online you can sell.
You can even sell physical products,
but let's not get into physical products.
So I would set up a Gumroad account.
I had my presets on there.
It's just a digital file people could download.
I'd upload it to Gumroad, and then
I'd send people from my YouTube video saying, hey,
I've got this free product.
It's a preset.
You can just download it for free from my YouTube videos
over to Gumroad.
And then the reason why I chose Gumroad
is Gumroad is a YouTube-approved merch vendor.
So the merch annotations on YouTube,
you can click straight over to Gumroad from them,
and you don't have to have your associated website set up
or anything like that.
So when they would get there, then they
could download the product, and by downloading they
have to give me their email address.
And then Gumroad would keep track of all the emails for me,
and I could send them updates through Gumroad
about new products, or here's a new video I have,
come check it out, or here's a new free product to have.
And it was kind of an easy way to build a list that way.
And especially when you're starting small, like most of us
are, you want easy.
You want cheap.
You want free.
So maybe let's talk about some other products
you can give out for free.
You're not all doing After Effects tutorials.
So say you have a knitting channel.
You can give out free patterns.
Or maybe even just behind-the-scene
videos or photos if you're doing video production tutorials
or things like that.
You can show setting up lights and things like that.
Maybe you doing auto body mechanics
or automotive mechanics.
Well, maybe you've got a 13-step checklist
when you're going through buying a used car.
You can put that together in a nice PDF.
You can have that as a free download.
So there's a lot of different things you give out for free,
but the key is make sure it's digital.
You don't want to worry about physical products at this time.
Especially if you're giving it out for free,
you don't want to have to ship all of these things.
And if they're digital, it doesn't matter how many people
download them, it's not going to be any more effort
or work on your part.
So can't stress that enough.
The next step is basically a step up from a free product.
It's a cheap product, so anything from $1 to $5.
That's kind of like an app, like a $1 app.
Just a, oh, whatever, I'll buy that.
It's only $1.
It's only $5.
Those kind of products is where you want to start.
You don't want to go from a brand-new channel
and doing free products to jumping
in to $100, $150 products.
You want to kind of ease into it.
And especially as you're building your audience,
they're going to build trust in your products.
The longer you've been doing this, the more products you're
giving out, they're going to start to build trust.
And you don't want to jump into a high-value product
right away because you haven't been around long enough
to be selling $150, $200 products.
So if you start with the $1 to $5 products,
it's much easier for people to go,
yeah, you know, I bought this thing for free.
It was pretty cool.
I'll-- I'll give this guy $1.
So these are going to be very similar to your free product
you give out, maybe just a little bit higher quality,
a little bit more value to them, something
that would be worth the $1 to $5.
Again, make sure they're digital products.
You don't want to give out physical products for only $1.
So now that you have some paid products that you are selling,
go easy on the promotions.
OK?
You don't want to overly promote your paid products.
That's not why people subscribe to your channel.
People don't go to YouTube unless it's the Superbowl
to watch commercials.
They go there to get free content, free videos,
free learning, free education, free entertainment.
But they're not there to buy products usually.
So that's the reason why they're on YouTube.
That's the reason why they subscribe to your channel.
But they like you.
They like your stuff.
They like your videos.
And so they'll allow a certain amount of promotion.
But if that's all you're doing, they're
going to leave in a hurry.
So go easy on the promotions and make it natural.
Make it a soft approach.
Now, for me and my channel, I did
this for about a year, where I had free products.
I had cheap $1 to $5 products.
And I hosted it all on Gumroad for about a year.
And at that point, after I did this for a year,
I thought, you know what?
I can justify doing a full-on e-commerce website.
And so about two, three months ago,
I switched everything over to a brand-new website.
It's called cinemaspice.net.
And then I doubled my products as well.
Also, what I found is on a dedicated
website versus Gumroad, people are
willing to buy more things because on a dedicated site
you can have more products.
You can have lots of different items,
and it doesn't feel out of place.
If I have just a few items that I'm selling on YouTube,
that's fine.
But if I have 100 different items
that I'm trying to sell through my YouTube channel, well,
that feels a little bit out of place.
That feels spammy that I have so many items.
Nobody goes to a e-commerce website
and goes, holy cow, why does this website
have so many items for sale?
But if they go to a YouTube channel
and every single video is about a different product,
they would say, why is this channel only selling stuff?
And they'll go somewhere else.
So that's a benefit of having a dedicated e-commerce website.
And whether you're starting small, you're starting big,
you're big right now, or you're going
to be big, at some point you're going
to want to have a place off of YouTube to call home.
And that's what this could be.
It could be a blog with some e-commerce stuff.
But if you're planning on selling anything,
make sure you're set up for e-commerce.
I chose a Wordpress platform with WooCommerce plug-in.
There's lots of different other ones out there,
and they're all equally great.
So just do your research.
Find which one works best for you,
and-- and that's where I'd go from there.
Now let's just talk about a few other ways, few other revenue
sources besides selling products and AdSense.
AdSense on your YouTube channel is not going to be a whole lot.
You're probably going to make a lot more from selling products
than you will through AdSense.
But there's also other ways to make some money from YouTube.
So the first thing is doing sponsored videos
or sponsored, I guess, posts.
And this is where you talk about a product in your video
or do like a, this video is brought to you by this company.
And there's some-- a couple of websites
I want to mention out there that can help you find
these sponsored-- people to sponsor your videos.
The two I want to talk about are--
let me just open up my phone-- reelio.com and famebit,
so R-E-E-L-I-E-O.com and famebit.com.
They'll help you find people to sponsor your videos.
And they'll take a cut of it, but then this
is money that you wouldn't normally have.
And so I've done both of these with--
and they've both been pretty pleasant experiences.
So that's something to check out for doing that.
Or you could just go out and find your own sponsors.
Once you have a sizable audience,
you can go to different companies
and say, hey, this is my audience.
This is my views.
And I think your product would fit really
well with my audience.
I'd like to sponsor it-- you know,
I'd like you to be a sponsor for one of my videos.
And that might be a way of approaching that as well.
Another way to make additional sources of income
would be through paid video blogging.
So this is where-- if you're doing
tutorials or how-to videos.
So sites like Tuts+.
They don't create all their tutorials.
They hire people to do those.
And so these wouldn't be videos on your own personal YouTube
channel.
You would create the video, sell it to them.
And then they give you a flat rate for the video,
and then they host it on their channel.
And for some people, this is a good way
of making some additional money using their video production
and tutorial skills.
Another site would be like udemy.com.
This is where you can do online courses.
Say you're a Photoshop whizz, and you've
got all these different techniques.
You can put together a whole course, upload it to udemy.com,
and then people will pay to have access to this course.
And there's courses on there that you can give out for free.
There's also courses for like $10.
And some courses are $100.
But they do have a lot of different videos through them
and very comprehensive.
But that's another way of getting some additional money.
They may not be YouTube videos going on there.
They'd have to be separate ones.
But it's still something that you know how to do.
And then last, my absolute favorite
is a website called skillfeed.com.
And why I like this is because it's
very similar to Udemy, where people pay and have access
to these-- these videos, but they
can be your YouTube videos.
In their contract, they flat out say,
we don't care if you have these videos somewhere else.
We believe that our site is the best blah blah blah blah,
and so people will pay to go to the site.
And literally, I will take my own YouTube videos.
I'll stick them on to skillfeed.com,
I get money from them.
So additional source.
It's just like getting money from AdSense,
but it's on the skillfeed.com.
And it's actually-- I get a little bit more money
from Skillfeed per video that I do from-- from YouTube.
So it's not a bad little gig.
I've already made the videos.
I already have them on YouTube.
I just need to upload them to this other site,
and I make some money.
Other thing that's kind of cool about it
is there is a referral program, and the link to my referral
is in the description.
So if you want to join Skillfeed,
if you do-- it's visual-based stuff,
so After Effects, video production.
There's even some web programming, Photoshop,
Illustrator, those kind of tutorials.
If you're doing that kind of stuff, it'd be a good place.
Go ahead, click on my link.
So in conclusion, remember that your audience comes first.
Don't do anything that will harm your audience.
But you also have to remember that you
have different audiences in different places.
An audience on your blog-- people
that follow your blog or people in your email list
are going to be different than your subscribers
on your YouTube channel.
People that follow you on Twitter
are going to be different than people who follow your blog.
So you can treat the audiences differently.
You know, it may not be appropriate on YouTube
to do one type of promotion.
But to your blog it may be completely appropriate.
So remember that.
But also remember your audience does come first.
Don't do anything spammy or-- you
don't want to hurt that relationship you've
built there.
Next thing is have fun.
You know, YouTube is about fun.
Online video is about fun.
And it can be a lot of fun, especially
if you're making a little bit of money.
And the last thing is, though, is don't do this for the money.
Yeah, you can make a little bit of money.
You can make a lot of money.
But if you're in this strictly for the money,
you're going to fail.
You're going to get sick of doing all these videos
and not making the money that you wish you were.
Now, if you're one of my followers,
if I've sent you here and you're just
seeing Tim Schmoyer's Video Creators
channel for the first time, make sure you subscribe.
Really great stuff.
If you're wanting to learn more about YouTube
and how to build and grow your audience,
this is the guy to follow.
If you're also checking this out and maybe you don't know me
and you know Tim, please check out my channel,
youtube.com/LongLiveMikey.
There's a link in the description.
And if you're into After Effects or want to learn more
about some video production, I might
have the tutorial just for you.
So thank you for watching, and we'll see you next time.