Monetizing A YouTube Channel Before Ads


Youtube video transcript

If you’re a fan of Jim and Ricky from Income School, you probably already know that YouTube is a great opportunity for us content creators to make an income, but take my example for this channel. It took me over 12 months in order to get those minimum 4,000 watch hours and 1000 subs. That’s a long time to wait in order to put ads on it, but you can monetize as early as day one.

Let’s talk about how to. Hello, YouTube and a very special hello to all my subscribers, my name’s Phil. And welcome to my channel where I document my journey, building an online income. If that’s something you’re trying to do as well, why not subscribe? Cuz I share all my. Insights and everything I’m learning with you guys.

Okay. I want to talk about money. I want to talk about making money on YouTube before they let you put ads on it. Because in fact, you can do this from the very first day that you start shooting and you won’t have to wait to get an income. So there are different ways in order to do that. But I wanna talk about what I did and what I’m planning to.

So the first method, and it’s a really good one is affiliate marketing. So if you’re not aware of what affiliate marketing is, it’s when you basically suggest a product. And if someone buys through the link that you provide, or what coupon or anything like this, then you get a commission of that sale.

Sometimes it can be a small percentage. If, for example, you are using Amazon. Or with certain programs, it can be quite a big commission. So this channel is really documenting my journey following the Project 24 method, which is the system that’s promoted by Jim and Ricky from Income School. So I’ve been a member for over a year now, and I just signed up for my second year recently.

So what I can do because I’m a member of project 20. Is to recommend that to other people. Now I do it through this channel because I’m sharing my stats. I think I kind of show that it does work certainly in terms of getting the traffic. Now, I’m still pretty early on in this stage, I’m only a year into Project 24, which is saying.

24 months in order to replace your full-time income. So I’m about halfway through, but I think just, it shows that it does work if you put the effort in it does work. So I think when you are recommending an affiliate product, it’s really important that you actually do use that product. You do know a lot about it and you can stand by it.

So with Project 24, I actually got 22 percent. Commission on the sale, which if you’re any good at maths works out to about a hundred dollars every single time. Now I’ve never really spoken about how much money I make from this. I never really mentioned whether or not I’ve made any sales, but in fact, I have done and we’re gonna talk about how much money this channel has managed to make through the last 13.

Okay. So I launched this channel back in August, 2019, and it finally reached the minimum of 1000 subs, 4,000 watch hours around September the 16th, 2020. So it was a little over a year in order to get to that stage with about 63 videos. Posting once a week. As I said, I’ve always been trying to promote the Project 24 course because it’s something that I do myself and I really do think it’s worth the money.

And so in the. That period, last year I managed to make $3,744 and 60 cents. And that’s with a commission, which is about 22%. Originally we only got the commission on the course, but now they also give you a commission based on buying the AKA Bardo. . So if we look at exactly how much money I made and when I made it my first sale was back in October, 2019, but I was paid in November.

So these figures are the pay day, which is all, is the month after the commission’s being made. Originally the first payment I got about $96 because at that time Income School was charging the fee to the affiliates. And then. Sort of December, January made one sale into February went to two sales March.

There were three sales. And then into April it’s four sales. So every month it was going up by one sale on average then in April a week before the end of April. End of May, I should probably say they decided to change the affiliate program. They upgraded the kind of the software and things like that.

The other thing they changed is I believe beforehand it was a 30 day cookie, then it was only a 10 day cookie now. And it took me a while to get back into the program because. The channel was originally called Income School student, which was a trademark infringement. And it took a while for them to tell me that.

But as soon as they told me in about 30 minutes, I’d changed the channel name and got a new URL and domain, all that kind of stuff changed to passive income film. So in may I only managed to get about 88 dollars. And I think this is also because. We’re doing a special deal for Project 24 for COVID 19, they dropped the price.

So the commissions had dropped as well. And this kind of carried on until June only made about, I think about two sales there, $188 then in July, I dunno what happened, but their new system was a little bit strange. It had lots. It shows you when you’ve made a sale and when you’ve made a pending sale.

So I thought that I had several pending sales. They’ve changed the rules. I’m not gonna get paid for that because now they have the rule that it’s not the last link that’s clicked. It’s the first link that’s clicked. So if you recommend Project 24 to a new person that’s never seen their sales page and they buy within 10 days, you’ll get that sale.

Even if they click on a hundred other people’s links in between. And then this is actually. My honeymoon, we went away for a holiday and I woke up one morning to having $1,400 in my PayPal account. I really thought it was a mistake. I thought they were gonna ask me for that money back, but apparently not.

And this is the point where I could invest in a new camera and things like that. And then, because that was a back payment also in what would that be. August. I got another kind of a back payment of $655. And in the last month I’ve only made a couple of sales. So I’ve made it, I think. Managed to convince two people to join Project 24, which is really good.

And another two people bought Acabado, which I also think is a great theme. Very simple does what it needs to do. Great for blogging. So that gives me a total of $3,774. And the thing is, this is for this course, but this could  equally be for any kind of a. Product, any digital product out there. If you can get a nice commission and you really believe in the product, you can really recommend it to people.

And on YouTube, they see your face, they see what you are doing. I think it does convert a lot better, even when it’s quite an expensive kind of product that you’re recommending. So if you want to make money through affiliate marketing, Make sure that you pick a product that you can really stand behind. And if it’s something like a digital course, that’s really great because the commissions are normally higher.

And the thing is. I don’t feel bad recommending Income School because it really has helped me for someone who’s in the same shoes as I was a year ago. It’s absolutely the right fit. So I have no problem being a little bit salesy, really recommending that if you’re going to pick a really crappy product some something off click bank that really is not worth the money you’re gonna.

Your reputation with your audience. So never promote something that you don’t believe in. That’s my philosophy. And it’s really something I had to come to after years of doing the wrong thing. So another way that you can start monetizing a YouTube channel. From the get go is by offering services.

What I’m planning to do with my other YouTube channel, the IELTS grind, which I run with my friend, Michael, we’re, both English teachers, and we’re in the IELTS niche, which is an exam. In order to go study abroad to get immigration access to certain countries. So what we’re doing, we’re actually building a course, we’re building an info product.

So what we’re going to do is use our YouTube channel as a marketing stream. So we know that we’re probably not gonna get a lot of money through ads and things like that. If we ever get to our minimum 4,000 watch hours and 1000 subs. We’re about 330 now, and the watch hours around the 200 mark.

It’s not really that close to joining the YouTube program. But we do get viewers. So what we can do is recommend a course. We can push them over to a newsletter. We can get access to people through the YouTube channel, and then we can sell them. The course, the other thing we’re gonna be doing is services.

So within our niche, we can do things like writing correction. We can do speaking correction. We could even. Classrooms can do lessons with students, all of those things we could do through the YouTube channel. And this is a great way to make money early on is to offer a service. Or to push your own info product.

So here’s the thing, right? I mentioned that this YouTube channel is really monetized through the affiliate program for Project 24. And it makes a lot of sense because that’s the only thing I really talk about here. I talk about how to blog, how to build a YouTube channel and how to use the Project 24 method.

It really does fit, but what if you are like in the pet niche? Can you actually promote Income School through something that’s not connected to making money online? Of course because your audience are people and they’re probably people within your audience that want to make money online. They want to make an extra little side income.

So all you could do is maybe create a post. This is how I make money online. Or have a few ads with a link to Project 24 or whatever sort of program you want to promote though, you have an audience. If you have an audience, you are able to recommend a product. And if you really believe in the product, you won’t feel weird recommending it to an audience from a niche that may not be connected.

So guys, hopefully this has been a bit inspiring. Even if you are a long way off your minimum, 4,000 watch hours and 1000 subs, don’t forget, you can still make money on YouTube and you can make a quite decent little income if you put the work in. Thanks so much for watching. If you’ve enjoyed the video and you’re not a subscriber, why not subscribe?

And if you want to start promoting Project 24 and you are not actually a member. Perhaps you’d like to join because I found it really useful. And if you’d like to check out the link in the description, it really helps me out. And I think it’s gonna help out you guys as well. So I will see you in the next video.

Thanks so much. See you later.

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