3 ways I earn good money from YouTube without being monetized
I earn a decent amount of money from YouTube even though I’m still 550 subscribers and 3,000 watch hours away from being monetized.
How do I accomplish that?
This is the power of what I call “stacking” your content.
One piece of work should have many layers of potential earning power.
Put another way, a piece of content born on one platform shouldn’t die there.
If you take the time to conceive of an idea and put in the effort to see it all the way through to the end, there’s no reason you shouldn’t push a little harder to reshape it for other platforms.
More platforms, more money
If you’re going to be in the content business, you should be trying to establish a presence on as many platforms as possible.
The more eyes you can get on your stuff, the more momentum you build for your work overall (and the more money you have the potential to make in the long run).
When I publish an article on Medium, I intend to eventually turn it into video content.
And when I publish a video on YouTube, my intention is to find ways to make money off it on other platforms until I actually do get the subscriber and watch hours I need for actual monetization.
Let me quickly walk you through the 3 ways I make money on YouTube without being monetized.
Written content
All my content creation begins on Medium because, quite frankly, Medium rules.
The bar is super low for monetization, which means you can start earning money almost right away.
I’ve earned more than $1,000 here in each of the last two months, and most Medium articles I write I can easily use as an outline or rough script for a YouTube video.
So in a way, every time I write on Medium I’m kind of being paid to develop video content.
That’s not all.
Judging by the comments, people who enjoy my writing also enjoy my videos, and vice-versa.
So when I publish a video about a topic I think my Medium readers will like, I write a short article about the topic and alert people toward my new video.
I’ve written 12 of these “pointer” articles so far, and together they’ve generated $35.74.
That may not seem like much, but it sure beats zero dollars.
It’s also important to keep yourself motivated as an early-stage content creator with little wins like this.
This isn’t life-changing money by any means, but I’m only five months into building a side hustle business and at this point, any revenue is exciting and encouraging!
Oh, and I also embed my relevant YouTube stuff in my articles all the time, which helps grow my video audience.
Synergy!
Affiliate marketing
It’s a lot tougher to suss out exactly what the source of my affiliate income is, but there are times when I suspect money is coming from a video source.
Most of my modest affiliate income comes from Amazon Associates.
Although I know some is coming from Medium articles, I also have affiliate links on all my videos.
I’ve made $14.31 since the start of 2023 on that. Again, not a ton, but not nothing. Plus, as I mentioned, I’m only 5 months into building a side business — these things take time.
Here’s another example of affiliate income I’m fairly certain came from a video.
A couple of weeks ago I published this video:
In the description, I put a link where my Canadian audience can sign up for a Wealthsimple account and get between $5 and $3,000 to start trading (here’s that affiliate link if you’re interested in getting started with trading/investing).
One person signed up the week I published the video, which meant $5 in my pocket (*shakes fist at Wealthsimple for not making it $3,000*).
These are just some small examples of how you can monetize your unmonetized YouTube videos.
I’m sure you can think of some others based on the subject of your content.
Growth on other platforms
As I’ve written on numerous occasions, as a content creator you should always be thinking about growth.
Where else you can expand?
I recently realized that I still have a sizeable gap: web search.
Although Google does point to my work on Medium occasionally, the paywall serves as a barrier for some people.
But if I can repackage that content yet again and drop some ads on it, I’ll be able to make more money.
So this month I launched a couple of standalone websites: one about content creation and one about dividend investing.
Since I can see where my traffic comes from, I know that my YouTube videos are already directing people to them thanks to links in my comments and descriptions.
I’m still in the process of getting ads set up, but once they’re there, that’ll be another way my unmonetized YouTube account is helping me make money.
I’m also launching newsletters, and again I know that links on my videos are already directing traffic to my nascent Substack accounts.
When I add paid tiers to those newsletters — you guessed it — more revenue for me.
In summary
I hope you’re starting to see that your intellectual property doesn’t need to end on the platform you initially publish on.
By remixing your own stuff in ways that are appropriate for other formats, you can open many more doors to side hustle income.
You can even get paid to make YouTube videos while you wait to get monetized!
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