Breaking Down the Numbers
My channel got 4.1 million long form views, but it made me 4.9 million that’s 121 per view or what equates to a 1211 RPM. Now, this isn’t just ad revenue and what’s funny is, if I only did ad revenue like most YouTubers do, I would have only made about 79000 that’s only 1.6% of the total we made. So did we actually break YouTube, or did we just discover the next big thing?
Discovering New Revenue Streams
It’s time to show you how you can do this yourself. In 2024, we made 5.79 million total. That’s not just YouTube, but these three revenue streams are just from YouTube. This is with a relatively small YouTube channel. At the time of this recording, I have 184,000 subscribers. At the start of 2023, I had 92,000 subscribers. So, in under a 100K sub YouTube channel made over 4.9 million in revenue. It took about 2 years to get to this point.
Diversifying Revenue Streams
So how do we do it? Let’s look at the revenue streams. The first one is sponsorships. Even though we’re a small channel, we can still get sponsors in our niche. It’s about doing what big YouTubers do right. We made 252,000 from sponsorships.
Affiliate Marketing
Adding affiliate links into your YouTube videos can be a great way to start making money even before you are approved into the YouTube Partner Program. By strategically placing affiliate links in your videos, you can earn a commission for every sale that is made through those links. This is a great way to start generating revenue from your YouTube channel right away.
Ads and Sponsorships
Once you are approved into the YouTube Partner Program, you can start earning money through ads that are displayed on your videos. The amount of money you earn from ads will depend on factors such as the number of views and subscribers you have. Additionally, you can also start looking for sponsorships once you have built a substantial audience. Sponsorships can be a great way to earn additional income from your channel.
Selling Your Own Product
One of the most profitable revenue streams for a YouTube channel is selling your own product. By developing and selling your own product, you have the potential to scale your business and generate significant revenue. It is important to focus on growing your audience and building trust with your viewers before introducing your own product. By following the correct order of revenue streams and strategically implementing them over time, you can maximize your earnings on YouTube.
Building Your Email List
So you enter a niche where you can teach not just entertain, so you can have affiliate videos. You can make ad revenue and sponsorship revenue over time, but you can also sell your own product. The first step here is building your email list, so you go from YouTube. Algorithm teaching, based on keywords in your niche to an email list.
Simple Steps to Build Your Email List
Building your email list on YouTube is actually super simple. All you do is add a link to a web page in every single YouTube description, directing people to click on it in your videos. This goes to an opt-in page where people enter their name and their email address. They get into your email list, where you then send them an automated series, including a lead magnet of some kind like a checklist or a PDF.
Monetizing Your Email List
In my case, it’s a video course. You get for free when you watch that you can then go to the sales page that directs you into enrolling in our coaching program. It has testimonials. It has exactly what you get all of the different modules and phases: checkout page getting a discount going right into the school community, which has tons 3900 people learning about blogging content creation, upwork agency work all of that stuff.
Interactive Community
Building a huge interactive community is essential because people really strive for communities, not just a course that people abandon but a course that’s living breathing updated with a calendar with Q&As, with a classroom with all kinds of different updates and 40 hours of video content.
The Setup
Creating a profitable content business through a YouTube channel involves the use of various technologies. Firstly, you need a YouTube channel with engaging video content. To further enhance your business, you can create a web page using platforms like clickfunnels. This allows you to hook up an email provider such as active campaign to drive more engagement with your audience.
Enhancing Your Business
To optimize your sales process, you can use tools like Sam Cart or Thrive Cart for your checkout page. Additionally, using platforms like Teachable for your community can help in hosting your course videos and creating a supportive learning environment for your audience.
The Components
Key components of your content business include the opt-in page, sales page, and checkout page. The opt-in page should have a compelling headline and three bullet points highlighting the value propositions of subscribing to your email list. On the other hand, the sales page should provide detailed information on what the audience will receive, including testimonials, bonuses, modules, and FAQs for clarification.
Closing the Deal
Finally, the checkout page plays a crucial role in converting potential customers into actual sales. It should clearly outline what the customers will get, ensuring transparency and building trust with your audience.
Earning Potential
While the earnings from a small YouTube channel may vary, implementing a well-thought-out content business strategy can significantly increase your revenue. By utilizing the right technology and focusing on creating valuable content for your audience, you can potentially earn a substantial income through your YouTube channel.
Building Your Email List
When starting out with a small YouTube channel, one important aspect to consider is building your email list. By creating a lead magnet and utilizing automation tools, you can effectively capture the email addresses of your viewers and potential subscribers. This allows you to nurture your audience and eventually guide them towards your paid offerings.
Crafting Your Offer
Understanding the pain points of your audience is crucial when crafting your offer. By engaging with your viewers through YouTube comments and surveys, you can gather valuable insights that will help you create a more comprehensive video coaching program. This offering should provide value above and beyond what is available on your YouTube channel.
Monetizing Your Content
Once you have built your email list and crafted your offer, it is time to monetize your content. By promoting your video coaching program to your subscribers, you can generate revenue through paid offerings. This monetization strategy can significantly increase your earnings compared to relying solely on ad revenue from your YouTube channel.
Scaling Your Business
As you continue to grow your email list and refine your offerings, you can scale your business and increase your revenue potential. By consistently providing value to your audience and adapting to their needs, you can maximize the earning potential of your small YouTube channel.
Creating Valuable Courses
This has to be transformational in nature and really actually work right, so you have to actually deliver on what you’re saying now what’s good here is: you don’t have to be a video expert in any of this. To create a course, I’ve seen plenty of $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 plus Mastermind groups in school that have like the videos are just like screen shares of spreadsheets and random stuff right.
Price of Education
The price of education is dictated by the ROI or the value that they can get out of it. So if you can teach somebody how to make a million dollars overnight, that’s worth a lot of money, so you want the value of your course to be 10 times higher, at least based on the price. So if a price is $1,000, that student needs $10,000 worth of value.
Simple Woodworking Example
If you teach piano, if you teach woodworking it’s really simple. Woodworking, you create a woodworking lead magnet – my top 10 favorite tools right and then through the Emails, you send them to your course all the designs and woodworking stuff that they could possibly want to learn from beginner to Apprentice to expert.
Common Mistakes
Now most people don’t do this, because they don’t know how it works. A lot of people that teach on YouTube. They can see they have a website. They have some type, of course, but it’s like a 7 course that isn’t valuable or their backend Sales Systems just aren’t working.
Understanding the Backend Sales Systems
The key to making money on YouTube is not just about getting views, but also understanding the backend sales systems. This includes click-through rate, retention, thumbnails, and creating engaging videos. Many people overlook this aspect as it involves various pieces of information.
Building the Sales System
There are two main ways to build a sales system for your YouTube channel. The automated way involves setting up web pages such as opt-ins, sales pages, checkout pages, and course enrollment. Alternatively, you can opt for a more manual approach by directly interacting with potential viewers through platforms like Calendly.
Launching a Course
If you have been building an email list but have not yet sold a course, you can launch it by sending out a series of three emails. The first email is an announcement, the second focuses on results-based transformation, and the third includes details about what they will get with a link to the sales page.
Building Trust with Your Audience
The key to successfully selling a product to your audience is building trust over time. By consistently providing valuable content and engaging with your viewers, you can establish a relationship based on trust. This makes it easier for them to purchase a product or course from you at an affordable price.
Comparing Advertising Platforms
Advertising a high-priced coaching package on Instagram to an audience you have not built trust with may prove to be challenging. In contrast, having a YouTube channel where you have been sharing knowledge for a few years and offering a lower-priced product can lead to higher conversion rates as your audience already knows and trusts you.
Revenue Potential with a Small YouTube Channel
The conversion rates and sales are a lot easier. So lets take a look at the math on revenue and what you could build here so lets say: theres a small YouTube channel, theres 100,000 views a month and its automated. That could be a 1 view to lead conversion rate. Pretty typical thats 1,000 leads per month. In your email list and then a 2 conversion rate to sale, we have about 4.5, but a 2 would be 20 sales a month, $500 a sale that could be $10,000 a month Al.
Alternatively, with the more manual sales approach, you could have 100 qualified leads per month coming through your calendly link, thats, just a simple 0.1 conversion rate from YouTube view to qualified lead. If you close, like 30 of these people at $1,000, thats that could be $30,000 a month, so these numbers scale the higher you go.
Monetization Strategies for Small YouTube Channels
So if you want to make a lot of money on YouTube without going viral without needing millions of views, but just with a small, consistent Channel, this is what I would do. So you want to focus on two things: first, affiliate marketing and selling your own product. So if you teach in a niche with simple talking head Style videos, you can have affiliate opportunities, make money that way and you can sell your own product.
You also want to pick a niche that you’ll work on for years, not 90 days. This is not a get rich quick scheme.
Building Trust and Consistent Content
This is about building trust and creating a backlog of content that gets consistent views. Hundreds of thousands of views every single month. It’s also a lot easier to create talking head videos that teach instead of a bunch of crazy videos out in the world where you need a videographer and crazy concepts and ideas.
Keyword Focus Videos
You want to do keyword focus videos at the beginning, so keyword research on YouTube is crucial. This helps YouTube understand what your channel is about and what people are searching for in your niche. Use tools like Vid IQ to see which video keywords people are searching for on YouTube so they can find you easily.
Thumbnails Matter
The key to getting better at YouTube is focusing on your thumbnails. Thumbnails can make or break your video’s success. If you’re teaching something valuable in a niche and you’re talking, you don’t have to worry so much about the perfect execution or editing for retention. But if you don’t have a good thumbnail, your video may never be seen. Focus on creating really good thumbnails by incorporating theories behind it, such as colors, fonts, trend spotting in other niches, and different types of thumbnails.
Consuming YouTube to Understand
The first step in understanding YouTube and getting good at it is consuming content on the platform. By watching and analyzing other videos, you can learn what works and what doesn’t. This will help you improve your own content and grow your small YouTube channel.
Thumbnails
For video retention and engagement, it’s important to consider your thumbnails. When creating content for your channel, don’t underestimate your ability to teach others. You don’t have to be an expert in a specific field to share your knowledge and experiences. In fact, viewers often appreciate seeing someone who is on a learning journey themselves, rather than a so-called “Supreme expert” who knows everything. Embrace your journey and share what you know.
Minimum Viable Studio
Creating content for YouTube doesn’t require a fancy setup. You can start with the basics, like filming on your iPhone with natural lighting from a window. As you progress, you can invest in better equipment like cameras, lighting, and maybe even a green screen. The key is to start creating and consistently uploading content to stay engaged with your audience.
Building an Audience
Focus on creating valuable and engaging content that addresses the pain points of your viewers. Over time, you can start building your email list and survey your audience to better understand their needs. By gradually introducing your own products through email marketing, you can establish a simple and scalable education business on YouTube. This approach can potentially lead to earning $1-2 per view on the platform.
Learning and Growing
Success on YouTube is a result of continuous learning and experimentation. It’s important to learn from failures and iterate on your strategies. By making use of the full potential of YouTube as a sales engine, you can tap into the immense opportunities available on the platform. While many content creators may not be taking this approach, those who do stand to benefit from the vast potential that YouTube offers.
If you’re interested in delving deeper into the step-by-step process of growing a successful YouTube channel, click the link in the description below to access more resources and guides.
The Potential Earnings of a Small YouTube Channel
Many people dream of starting a YouTube channel and making it big, but the reality is that only a small percentage of creators actually achieve significant success in terms of earnings.
Monetization on YouTube
To start earning money on YouTube, creators must first meet the platform’s eligibility requirements for the YouTube Partner Program. This includes having at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time in the past 12 months. Once approved, creators can monetize their content through ads, channel memberships, merchandise shelf, and Super Chat and Super Stickers.
How Much Do Small YouTube Channels Make?
For small YouTube channels, earnings can vary widely depending on factors such as niche, audience size, engagement, and watch time. On average, small creators can expect to make anywhere from $0.25 to $4.00 per 1,000 views. This means that a video with 10,000 views could potentially earn between $2.50 and $40.00.
Additional Revenue Streams
While ad revenue is a common source of income for YouTubers, there are also other ways to make money on the platform. Many creators earn additional revenue through sponsored content, affiliate marketing, selling merchandise, and offering paid subscriptions or exclusive content to their fans.
Building a Following
Building a loyal and engaged audience is key to increasing earnings on YouTube. Small channels can work on improving their content quality, consistency, and marketing strategies to attract more subscribers and viewers. Collaborating with other creators, participating in trends, and engaging with followers can also help grow a channel.
While it is possible to make money with a small YouTube channel, it requires dedication, hard work, and a bit of luck. By focusing on creating valuable content, engaging with viewers, and exploring different revenue streams, small creators can increase their chances of earning a sustainable income from their channels.