How do You Make Money With YouTube? An Easy Beginners Guide

YouTube’s growth has made it a serious place to make money with and if you follow this beginners guide I set up, I’ll show you how to do it correctly.

This is a search engine I’ve been doing more and more work on in recent years (because it’s #2 on the search engine usage, with Google being #1) and discovering a number of different ways to make money with it. In the process, I’ve been able to see which methods work best and share them here with you here.

Now I’m not saying that my approach is the best or only one there is, but it works and I’ll prove it too.

One of the awesome things about this place is that there’s a number of ways you can monetize on it and here are just some methods:

• You can sell affiliate products directly THROUGH YouTube. 
• You can monetize through ads (as long as you keep the video content uncontroversial and clean).
• You can build an email list on the back end and then monetize through that approach later.
• And there’s many more YouTube options to make money with.

But while these options and whatever other legit ones you can find, all have merit, there’s really 1 main thing you need to do in order to make ANY of them work:

Here’s how to make money off YouTube videos (The key to success):

Create video content that’s popular for a large, specific niche audience, so it gets targeted views, and thus allows the above options to actually work. In this beginners guide, I will show you SPECIFIC examples of how this can and should be done.

Your job after reading this content will be to follow this guideline and do this yourself. It’s possible that if you’re just getting involved with YouTube and making videos there, that you may not create viral videos, but that is OK, because the goal isn’t really to create viral ones, the goal is to stick to the main point I just mentioned which is creating (once again), video content for a large niche audience because the views these bring in will result in more money being made.

Let’s start with affiliate marketing and YouTube:

Since affiliate marketing IS my main thing ($1 million sales with affiliate marketing proof), and I have made a lot of my money from YouTube with this method ($20k YouTube report), this is where I’ll start:

There are 5 steps I follow for affiliate marketing through YT to work:

And here is a video showcasing this formula and specific examples of mine:

Note: I apologize if I went too fast in the video. I was very inexperienced in video making at the time I did this, but there have been improvements since! The tutorial I’m giving you is still very much legit and works!

In that above example, I used the niche topic of hiking backpacks. But to provide you with more references, let’s use 2 more examples:

Niche idea 1: Drones.

• I would use this niche topic, identify the best subjects people talk about with regards to drones.
• I would also list the most popular drones on the market.
• However many ideas and products I could come up with, I would make a YT video on ALL of them.
• I would probably sign up with Amazon or other companies where I can sell drones from. 
• Here is a case study of mine on drones and another affiliate marketing case study from someone who does very well with this exact niche.

Either way, with the large list of topics and products I’ll be making videos on, I’ll commence making them, with either my phone or a camera. With drones, I’ll review them and leave affiliate links for people to buy them in the description.

With drone topics, I’ll probably ask people to sign up to my YT channel.

And if I run a blog, I’ll add an extra link on each of the videos I make back to my blog. This method will allow my blog to get higher rankings, get more traffic and make more sales.

This is how I’d “execute” the YouTube/affiliate marketing formula here. 

Why this formula formula works:

First, a popular niche topic is itself popular among large groups of people. Therefore, creating YouTube videos on the said subject, will likely get you a lot of views to begin with, specifically TARGETED views and what that means is that the people watching your videos will be more likely to buy from you.

Think about evergreen niches. This is what you should target if you decide to start your own YouTube channel and want to make sure your videos get noticed and watched.

Second, popular topics usually have new products come out for them, which provide a lot of video content you can make. For example, with the subject of drones that I used, anytime a new model comes out that is from a popular brand, there’s tons of YouTubers making video reviews on it and getting at times 100k+ views. 

And for that matter, popular products will always be getting search traffic.

That means each time you do create a video review of a popular topic, you’re almost always tapping into a popular niche market. And even if a product loses it’s popularity, the niche you’re involved in will always carry new popular ones to keep reviewing on YouTube, always.

Third, there will ALWAYS be a demand to review popular products on YT. The video above shows me doing that for backpacks, but you can honestly use any hot niche this way and find tons of hot products to review. Use the best seller method I talk about.

Through it, you’ll be able to find a lot of products that are hot, and be able to review them on YouTube, and promote through it as well. Think about it, I simply did a 3 minute video reviewing a hot selling backpack and it’s gotten so many views and sales from that. Imagine if this same formula was multiplied 10x or more? 

If you can produce high quality reviews (You can use a phone or if you’re recording on your computer, use things like the Yeti microphone to record your voice and if you wish to record your screen, use places like ShareX), you will be able to execute the affiliate marketing formula successfully and the more content you make this way, the more money you will be able to amass as a result.

Other examples of this YouTube formula working:

Again, I have outlined details and sales figures of different videos I’ve made on YT that have made and are making money. Here is that YouTube case study and this is a quick breakdown of the report (details are in the link though and you will be able to see the exact videos for reference):

Additional ideas:

Sometimes you will encounter niche topics where you have SO many possible products to review (such as backpacks) that you’ll want to make videos of top 10 lists. These are GREAT for getting a lot of views, because one video can encompass 10 popular products and multiply the traffic by several times. 

How do you make money on YouTube with your own product or service?

The formula is pretty much the same with this method as it is if you were applying the affiliate marketing method above, but it does become a little more meticulous depending on the niche topic you’re involved in. If you were to come to me and ask how to promote your product on YT, I’d ask, what is the actual product? Is it really a product or some sort of service?

If it’s a product, then my advice is this:

Find niche audiences which are best suited for the said product and make videos on popular subjects for which the product would be a perfect pitch for. As an example, let’s suppose that the product in question is some sort of diet book. I would advise you figure out which audiences would like this diet book and make videos on dieting topics and covering controversial ones as well, then explaining how your diet book would help and linking to the product page.

If it’s a service (say bankruptcy services), then my advice would be this:

Have a personal blog or official site where you collect leads and help with bankruptcy services first and foremost. Then head over to YouTube, make your own channel and start creating videos where you talk about different kinds of bankruptcy questions you get. Each video should cover a different branch of bankruptcy and you should title each one you make with a question, such as question many people ask on this subject.

Then with each video you create, link back to your blog so people can visit it and hire you for services. 

A great additional tip:

Whatever niche you’re involved in, look up other videos on the subject and see how many views other competing channels are getting. Use the ideas they’re talking about to create your own (UNIQUE) content.

More awesome tips: Run a blog site in addition to your YT channel.

If you watched the video I put above, I suggested you also create a blog because nowadays, YT channels can be shut down for many reasons and in my experience, it’s best to own a site you have full control of that no one can shut down (unless you do illegal things, which of course, you should not!).

The formula to running a successful blog is very similar to running a successful YouTube channel and you can pretty much associate the same 5 steps I listed above for this subject too. But just case, here are the 5 steps, but for blogging:

In fact, blogging has been my the MAIN driver of income for me in the $1 million+ sales I’ve made and YouTube has been slowly rising in terms of helping that number grow.

Since Google is still above YouTube in online searches, why wouldn’t you want to take advantage of that? I would say that making YouTube videos is easier than creating long blog posts, but since I do this full time, I’ve gotten used to doing both and have really enjoyed the process.

Hint: Linking together your YT videos and blogs is also a great way to multiply traffic and improve rankings (It’s basically backlinking).

Side note: Why is there no guide on making viral videos? Because they are overrated:

Very often, the view count of a YouTube video is commonly associated with the success it has, and in some rare cases this is true, but if your ONLY goal is to create viral YouTube videos (A million+ views), you are actually missing out on making good money and here’s why:

1) The odds of making a video viral is rare.

Unless of course you are a popular creator, which is also rare. And I believe that focusing on this goal is like playing the lottery. Unless you have some sort of cute animal you can “exploit” constantly, I wouldn’t bet on making viral videos. 

2) Monetization options are limited even if they do go viral.

Because viral videos typically do not attract niche audiences, but a wide array of them, you are only really limited to making money off advertisements and while that’s good, it’s limited.

Here’s an example:

A video showing a cut dog that gets a 1,000,000 views will likely make a few $1,000 from ads it runs and if you’re OK with that, NO problem, go for it.

But if you take a niche specific video that sells a high quality dog training guide (a niche) and it gets 10,000 views via the methods I told you about (1% of 1,000,000 views), and promotes another, more detailed dog training guide on the back end that sells for $50 and that guide sells at 1% of view (one out of every 100 viewers buys from it), you will make 100 sales, $50 a piece and earn $5,000 from it. 

Tell me then, in this example, did it really “pay” to make a viral video with a million views, when one that got about a 100% LESS views earned 5 times as much?

No it did not.

And this is an example I do not see anyone talking about, yet run into VERY often. And it’s the same for blogging too, which like I said I currently do more off than video content creation. The blog that gets the better targeted traffic (laser) is the one that always makes more money, while the blog that gets broad, none specific traffic (even when it gets more visitors), can barely monetize as well and is often reliant on display ads.

And ALL of these options can be monetized without spending a penny. I will eventually put up a guide to YT ads where I’ll show you how to increase making money through most of these options above, but I’m currently testing this personally so when I make it work like the very guide I’m giving you here, I’ll provide you with it.

My final thoughts:

If you look at ONE of my YouTube channels here, you’ll notice a majority of the videos I’ve been making do not get many views. I would say the ones which pass 500 views should be considered decent. Now I know many people will think that videos with views of over 100k are the truly serious ones to consider, but remember what I said about the quality of the views you get and consider the amount I’ve made despite the low view counts.

With many of the videos I create, especially those I’ve been making recently, the views I get are from targeted visitors, and therefore the value of that view to lead a commission is higher. I don’t care about monetizing through ads on YouTube, I know the real money is made from targeted views being sent to a targeted offer and the better I’ve gotten using this formula, the more I’ve made, which is why I’m ramping up my content creation there.

But the formula I have given you to use absolutely works. You may not find that the initial videos you make will be very profitable, but the practice you put into making your own videos will make you better and you’ll be able to find and create better quality reviews and videos in the process. 

You will see that this method works, the more often you do it 🙂