The Guide to making YouTube Money in 2021!

YouTube money is a term people use for money made via monetized video content on Youtube.

The good thing about making YouTube money is that the work required to make money doesn't scale with the amount of money you are making from your Youtube Content.

A given video can make ten dollars or thousands of dollars depending on how many views it gets and how well it is monetized, but it requires the same amount of work to make either way.

This means that you have a solid incentive to make better videos and persist in
making them so that your videos are more profitable for the work you put in.   

While there are plenty of alternative ways to make YouTube money,
Youtube's partner program is still the simplest to use.

This is because YouTube and Google do all the work of sourcing ads and putting them on your videos, which lets you focus on making video content. As a YouTube Partner, you can also make money from YouTube Premium memberships.

YouTube, however, has a few restrictions on who can join their partner program!
Here are the conditions you will need to meet:

• 1000 Subscribers
  You need to have at least one thousand valid subscribers.
  These need to be actual people and not subs accumulated from dubious sources such as:
  sub-for-sub arrangements purchased sub-packages on gray market sites or any shady schemes.
  
  
• 4000 Watch Hours
  Your videos need to have accumulated at least four thousand hours of watch time in total over the last year. This is actual watch time which factors in how much of a video someone watched,
  not video length multiplied by views.  Remember that most people don't watch the full video through to the end!
  
  
• Complying with YouTube's Policies!
  Your video content also needs to comply with Youtube's terms of service. So make sure your content doesn't violate those terms if you have any videos with copyrighted material that you don't own the rights to or other problematic content then remove it at the earliest opportunity.
  If you are not in good standing with Youtube due to poor behavior or questionable content, then they will not approve your channel for monetization, as they will not be able to trust you.
  
  

Some of these conditions may seem unreasonable, but the harsh reality is that if you don't have enough traffic flowing to your videos to meet these conditions, then the money you would make from ads on them would be chump change anyway.

Focus on building a viably broad audience of engaged viewers first, and then worry about making YouTube money from your videos.

You can find out the current status of your channel by clicking on your account avatar in the top-right corner of a Youtube page, going to Youtube Studio via the link in the drop-down menu (studio.youtube.com), and then going to the Monetization page via the link in the side menu.

You can also go there using the link:
(studio.youtube.com/channel/{your-channel-id}/monetization) while replacing '{your-channel-id}' with your actual channel ID.

Once your channel meets the requirements, you will probably get an invitation to join the Youtube Partner Program. If not, then go to the monetization page mentioned above, and you should find the
option to join. It may take around a month for them to review your channel, so be patient.

The amount you can earn with a Youtube channel monetized via the Youtube Partner Program can vary greatly depending on a number of factors, but you can roughly expect to average around one to four dollars per thousand views.
This can differ for the reasons listed below.

How many views you get obviously plays a huge part in how much YouTube money you can make, and not just because of the scale involved. As you get more views, Youtube will assign you higher paying ads and a larger share of available ad inventory, so you can also make more for each individual view. The reason they do this is a matter of trust. Larger channels with more views per video are easier to test for quality content when compared to thousands of small channels with a wide variety of content, possibly including some content that may be problematic for advertisers.

Which countries you get those views from also plays a part. Youtube needs to match the web traffic your videos are attracting to available ad inventory, and those ads need to be productive with your channel's traffic. If you are getting a lot of traffic from countries with high ad inventory and high ad payout rates, then your video views will be more profitable than if the traffic is coming from lower-tier countries. Generally, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and a few other countries are considered tier one countries as they have a lot of high paying Youtube ads available.

Which category and topics your video's target is also something to consider. Controversial topics may get you a large number of views, but you won't make any Youtube money if advertisers don't want to put their ads on your videos. Comparatively blander topics may attract fewer viewers, but it may be something that advertisers are happier to have their products associated with. This doesn't mean that you should make bland videos, though.  Just avoid toxically and sensationalized nonsense, and you should be fine!

Different times of the year can also affect how much Youtube money you can make. The period just after Christmas is notorious for being a time when advertisers are harder to come by. The summer school vacation, a period in the US, is also a light time of year for ads, as advertisers are concerned that too many people are off on vacation rather than being engaged with video content and its associated advertising.

Getting a video view on a monetized channel also doesn't mean that an ad will be shown on the video. There may not be enough ad inventory available, or the viewer may be using an ad blocker.

Another problem that has thrown a spanner into the works over the last few years is demonetized videos. YouTube uses algorithms to check for content that is not advertiser-friendly, and these algorithms frequently return false positives, which may get your video flagged and demonetized. The appeal process for this is often useless, as Youtube does not have a good support system for their partners, which is what you need a YouTube Network for as they do have contacts! It's also a good idea to have alternative streams of income for your videos that don't leave you, dependant, on the good graces of Youtube and Google.

To work out how much you can earn, try Googling the term:
"YouTube Money Calculator" or visit sites such as YoutubeMoneyCalculator.Com.

You can find a variety of websites like this that will attempt to calculate how much YouTube money you can expect to make, but take the numbers they provide with a large grain of salt. They are just estimates, and the reality of how profitable a YouTube channel might be can vary wildly for the reasons discussed above.

There are a few different ways to make YouTube money without using their built-in ads.

Many of these methods also work alongside the Youtube Partner Program, so that you can get the best of both worlds.

As a Youtube influencer, you will have built up an audience that appreciates your content and looks forward to your posting new videos. As the name implies, you will influence your audience, and they will be more likely to listen to your brand recommendations than they would if they were not engaged with your content and personality.

As long as you are responsible for your approach and don't try to mislead or exploit your audience, you can use your influence to make some decent Youtube money by recommending commercial products and services to them. You can do this overtly by incorporating sponsored ads into your videos, or you can do it more subtly by using brand placement.

Brand placement means using sponsored products as part of your videos. If you are a Let's Play gaming Youtuber, for example, then you could get a sponsorship deal for the gaming chair you use and show this chair in your face-cam video feed. Or you could be sponsored for a drink product and drink the sponsored beverage while talking to your audience.

Either way, you will need to disclose any sponsored content you create to keep things legal. Various regulatory authorities are cracking down on undisclosed advertising content put out by video and streaming influencers, and you may find yourself in trouble with both these authorities and Youtube if you do not comply with their requirements.

While it's probably not as easy to make Youtube money now as it was ten years ago, there are still plenty of opportunities for your video creation efforts to thrive on the platform. New content creators take off all the time, and new video content topics always come into play. As long as you try to make original high-quality video content that engages your audience, you have a solid chance of turning your video skills into a profitable venture. So start planning and making great videos today, and see where your efforts take you.