Advertising on YouTube is by far the easiest way to make money. It is so simple that once you set yourself up for ads you don’t have to do a thing. In fact, once you are set up, you can have your channel automatically set to monetize all of your future uploads. That way you can be sure that YouTube will place ads on your videos and pay you if people engage with those ads.
Getting set up is pretty simple. All you need to do is type “AdSense” into Google and register for an account. Then you can follow the steps from there and do what you need to do to make sure everything is set up properly. Then you will be able to link your AdSense account to your YouTube channel by becoming a YouTube Partner.
This basically means that you are verified and able to have ads on your videos.
In general, you can expect to make about one dollar for every 1,000 views you get on YouTube. Therefore, you need to get lots and lots of YouTube views in order for you to make YouTube a full-time income. In addition, you need to have tons of YouTube subscribers so that you can continue getting those views. Generally, you can expect to start making real money when your subscriber count reaches 30,000 people. At that point you will probably be making an average income. You aren’t going to be rich, but you won’t be below the poverty line either.
Of course, the more people engage with your ads the more money you can make.
Therefore, if you receive 1,000 views and 500 people click on your ads you are going to make a lot more than one dollar. The more people engage with your content the more value YouTube associates with it. In addition, the more views on each of your videos the more you get paid for each ad that will appear there. The reason is because YouTube recognizes that your video is getting traffic. That means the ads on your video are more likely to be seen if they are on your video than if they are on a video that receives less traffic. Therefore, they can charge more for ad placement on your video. When they charge more, you get paid more. It’s as simple as that.
If you choose, YouTube will place a few different types of ads on your videos. They may show a full preview, banner ad, or popups. With YouTube ads there are two ways you can make money. The first way is if someone watches the ad on your video all the way through. That means they don’t skip the ad and go straight to the video or they don’t close the ad if it pops up when they are watching the video. The second way is if someone clicks on the ad in your video. Obviously, you will be paid more if someone clicks on the ad as opposed to if someone only watches the ad.
Now, one thing that you need to be smart about is not clicking on your own ads.
You can’t simply start telling all of your friends to watch your videos and click on your ads so you get paid more. No. Google monitors the clicks and they will know whether or not you were really interested in the content of that ad or if you were simply clicking on it to boost your income. In fact, if they detect that your ads are getting false clicks they may even ban you from the AdSense program. That would suck because then you wouldn’t be able to make any money from Google AdSense on YouTube or on any of your websites.
Another cautionary statement is to wait to place ads on your videos until you are getting several hundred views on your videos and have at least 100 subscribers.
This is important because YouTube may revoke your partnership if they think your channel isn’t generating enough traffic to justify charging their customers to place ads there. In addition, Google may suspend your AdSense account if they determine that your websites aren’t receiving enough traffic.
Therefore, before placing ads on your YouTube videos, or on your website, make sure you are continually getting enough engagement. For YouTube this means having at least 100 subscribers and getting a minimum of 50 views on each video.
For your website it means having at least 500 hits a month. Even though you want to make money as soon as possible it is best to be patient and wait until you have the traffic. This way there will not be any problems down the road and you can continue to be paid for ads well into the future.