5 Best Revenue Streams for Video Creators | Ep. 34

What are the most effective revenue streams for YouTube creators? In this episode, I break down affiliate marketing, YouTube ad revenue, brand collaborations, service offerings, and digital products. Learn how to diversify your income and gain control over your financial future as a content creator.

✨ Cringe or Binge: How does your channel rank? Download the VBA app to analyze your channel in 1 simple step. It’s free! https://videobrand.link/app

📹 Be Binge-worthy on YouTube: https://videobrand.link/become-bingeable

🟣 Video Brand Academy: https://videobrand.link/vba

🎥 CRUSH IT ON CAMERA GUIDE: https://vidpromom.com/crush

🎧 Video Brand Infusion Podcast: http://meredithmarsh.co/podcast

📲 Download my FREE Video Brand Academy app! 👉 https://videobrand.link/app

👉 Consistent Sales of Your Course with YouTube: https://youtu.be/GBhulsp0s-4

📹 Follow on YouTube for Video Podcast: https://youtu.be/zkscCExxg9Y?si=B2EAIPxJV0-jEP-7

Transcript

34 5 Best Streams for Video Creators | Ep. 34

Meredith: Well, if you're creating YouTube videos, hoping that it will one day turn into a paycheck, like YouTube is part of your business strategy, your marketing strategy for growing your audience.

Wouldn't you agree that the best way to move forward with your revenue streams?

Content plan is to be proactive with your revenue streams so that you're building them in a sustainable way so that as your audience grows, your revenue streams grow. That's what we're going to talk about here in episode 34 of video brand infusion. My name is Meredith. I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business so that you can build your thriving video brand online.

and if you're like a lot of people who feel like. It takes so much time and energy to put into making videos. I'm, I'm spending all this time recording and editing and I'm not really getting that much back from it. 

Like the amount of time I'm putting into my content is way more than the revenue that I'm getting back out of it. It feels backwards.

The biggest culprit of that is simply spending too much of your energy on low yield revenue streams, like that 6%. Commission from Amazon affiliates or just YouTube ad revenue alone.

And I'm not against Amazon affiliates and I'm certainly not against YouTube ad revenue, but sometimes those are the top of mind revenue streams that YouTube creators and video creators go to because they're, they're easy to access. They're easy to start, But if you keep spending time every week, creating content that doesn't have much of a return for you in terms of revenue, then like how long before you give up or how long before you say YouTube doesn't work, online business doesn't work when in reality it was working, it just wasn't paying off for you as much as you needed it to, to feel the motivation to keep going.

And I've always been a big fan of having multiple streams of revenue. However, if you want to create a sustainable source of revenue from your YouTube content, the thing you want to look at is.

the revenue stream that you have the most control over. So let's talk about the five main sort of go to revenue streams for YouTube and video creators in the online business space and how you can be successful at all of them while diversifying your revenue and creating a sustainable stream of revenue for your business. 

 so number one, I like to say that affiliate marketing is the fastest way to get people to Generate revenue. Um, cause you don't actually need to have a large audience. Uh, and let me just back up real quick. Affiliate marketing is where, for example, um, I recently did a video where I reviewed this AI tool called poppy.

So this is, this is a software company. I started using it, became an affiliate. really liked it, wanted to share it with my audience. So I did a video about it. And now when somebody clicks the link in my description or uses my coupon code, the Poppy software team knows to attribute that sale to me.

If the person clicks the link and signs up to be a customer, a paying customer, then they send me a portion, a commission from that sale. That's affiliate marketing.

And it's great. I love it because I get to promote a product that I didn't have to create. I don't have to do any like customer service or anything like that. I just get to talk about this thing that I really like that I recommend that is really exciting to me. I get to share it with you. I get to create my YouTube video and if you all like it too, then I get a commission from that.

It's kind of like a win. It's a win, win, win situation. It's

And different companies kind of run their affiliate marketing programs in different ways. Like, for example, I used to be an affiliate for a company that would pay me like a lump sum for everyone that signed up for their free trial. So that was very lucrative for me. And eventually they changed their terms, which I'll talk about in just a minute.

Um, but other programs pay a percentage of. Uh, you know, a percentage of the sale. So for example, if you sign up for a software that I linked to as an affiliate and you have to pay every month, that company might pay me out.

Every month, a percentage, or just pay me one, a one time fee, like a one lump sum kind of a thing. So it kind of depends on the company either way is like, is fine. It's just is what it is. However, they can change their terms at any time. And they will, like, if you think about affiliate marketing for a company, for a software company or a physical product company is a way of advertising.

Yeah. What it is that they have to sell. They're getting you to advertise it. And if that's effective, you get paid, you get some kind of a commission. Obviously the more people you refer to a sale, the higher, like the more you're going to make.

If there comes a point in time where they're like, well, this, this advertising, Campaign doesn't work for us. Like we're, we're paying out more than the revenue that we're bringing in. They're going to change the terms, which is what happened with the company that was paying me a lump sum for every lead for their free trial.

And it probably just became unsustainable for them to pay their affiliates for free trials. And now it's percentage based. And the reason why I bring that up is that although affiliate marketing is one of the fastest ways to start generating revenue, and it is a relatively easy way to generate revenue, you really don't have any control over.

Anything they can change their terms at any time. They can even remove their affiliate program completely. So yes, you have control over what you promote. You can talk about the things that you like. You could talk about things you love and recommend you. You get to make those decisions about what you promote as an affiliate, but you don't get to decide what your commission structure is or what the payout is.

And whether they, uh, continue. So I've had affiliate programs that again, change the terms I've had affiliate programs that just say like, at the end of this month, our affiliate program is. Is no longer it's done. We're done. We're no longer paying you, um, to promote our, our product at all.

Which is a big slap in the face. However, when you have multiple revenue streams and you diversify, it shouldn't be that hard of, of a hit, you know?

So I love affiliate marketing when it's strategic for your business. And when you're not relying 100 percent on You know, one or even, or even a handful of affiliate programs to sustain your business and, you know, pay your mortgage and buy your groceries and things like that. Number two is YouTube ad revenue is the, it is the easiest because.

All you have to do is make content. You have to be in their partner program, which I'll talk about in just a second, but there isn't anything extra special that you have to do to generate ad revenue. The more views you have, the more watch time you have, the more people, like the longer people watch your videos, generally the more ad revenue you're going to make.

So it's not based on your number of subscribers and I have 86, 000 subscribers. Subscribers might pay out. Is going to happen and I think maybe like tomorrow and it's going to be like only around like 700 bucks. there's people who have way less subscribers than me that are raking in thousands of dollars a month.

It has nothing to do with the number of subscribers you have. It has to do with the amount of watch time, basically that you're creating on the platform for viewers. I like to think of YouTube ad revenue as the easiest way to generate revenue as a video creator, because all you have to do is make the video.

Is it the fastest? Not necessarily. Um, if you create long form content, you in order to be in the YouTube partner program, you need a thousand, a thousand subscribers, 4, 000 hours of watch time. And there are a few other milestone details in there, but those are kind of the two main things. And for some people, it can take. a long time to reach one or both of those milestones. Shorts monetization is totally different and I don't do shorts and I don't think that shorts are the best way to grow your audience for your business.

So I'm not even sure what the, uh, YouTube partner program milestones are for shorts, but it's like something like a million views in the last 90 days or something like that. super extreme.

but again, just like with affiliate marketing, YouTube can change the terms. YouTube controls how much your, your videos, which are basically like a billboard for companies that are advertising on YouTube. YouTube gets to decide how much your billboard space is worth. So you can go into your analytics, you can look up your RPM revenue per mil, which is revenue per thousand views, and that's what you're generating from your content being a billboard for other businesses.

That's the, that's your portion. The RPM is your portion of the revenue. You can look up the CPM too, which is cost per mil, which is what the companies that are advertising are paying to be on your billboard.

It, it varies wildly depending on your niche. I know that like business and marketing and anything to do with like money or investing, things like that tend to have a higher RPM and CPM. Those, those ad spots are worth more,

But you don't have any, Control over that. You don't get to decide any of that. You just get to decide, do I want to turn ads on this video or not?

And in order to get your payout from YouTube, you have to have generated at least a hundred dollars. So if you make 10 a month in ad revenue, it just kind of accrues. And once you reach a threshold of a hundred or more, then you'll get paid. You know, every month it'll just be deposited into your account directly from YouTube.

Now, be wary of, and this isn't to dissuade you from going after the ad revenue go after the ad revenue, highly recommend it. If YouTube is going to pay you to create content by all means, Take it, right? But one thing to be wary of is putting all of your eggs in one YouTube ad revenue basket.

Because you never know when there's a glitch or something. Some, something happens and it goes away and it's very difficult to reach out to YouTube to get help, to get support, to reach an actual human being is like next to impossible. Last year, YouTube had this really big problem with, um, they called it the invalid traffic They said it wasn't a bug.

I call it a bug, but it basically, the backend of their system detected things in some people's YouTube channels, several people's YouTube channels of all sizes that kind of like flagged the channels and determined them to be, uh, sort of like sending like spam traffic to the videos too.

I can't even fully explain it, but I did do a video on it because it happened to me And it was resolved. However, for a period of six weeks, my ad revenue was zero. Like imagine if. I had relied solely on my YouTube ad revenue, which for, you know, 700 bucks a month isn't exactly enough to sustain my business. But there are people that were making thousands and thousands of dollars a month in ad revenue.

And that was their main revenue stream. And they had to let their staff go because they no longer had that revenue stream.

So again, diversify and focus on revenue streams that you have the most control over. Usually bad revenue is great. It's a great perk, but you have absolutely no control over it whatsoever. So it is kind of like just a perk, just a little extra and not a perk. really something to rely on.

So if affiliate revenue is the fastest and ad revenue is the easiest, I would put working with brands to be, perhaps the, the most pain in the butt ist.

So let me explain what I mean.

Anytime you can make a video about something, whatever topic you're covering and a company, a brand wants to pay you to insert a little, you know, like 30 seconds, 45 second blurb where you're talking about their product or their software.

That sounds great. Especially if the product or software is something you use and that you recommend and you want to tell your audience about, and it's a good fit for your video. It makes a lot of sense.

However, what you don't see on the back end is that when you're working with. A brand on like a sponsored video or a group of sponsored videos or whatever, they basically become your client and you're on their timeline and now there's deadlines on your calendar and there's emails back and forth and there's negotiating the, the pay rate and there's the things they want to have included in your blurb and the things they don't want to have.

And then. You know, what if they want you to redo it or reshoot it? There's all of these extra variables. That can be involved, not always, but they can be involved that you don't always know about up front. You, you might just see it as like, Oh, this brand wants to pay me to talk about their product. And now you're like trying to decipher what's in this campaign brief.

And it can feel like not as easy in practice as it sounds on the surface. Which is why just like with affiliate marketing, I recommend you only work with brands that you really want to work with.

It's okay to be really picky about who you promote on your channel because you know, you want to make sure like win, win, win. That's a good win for you, for your audience and for that brand.

But when you start looking at. multiple sponsored videos with multiple different brands. It starts to feel a little bit like you're, you're like running an advertising agency where you have to run the agency, communicate with the brands, do all the emailing and stuff and create the content. Like you're the advertising agency.

And the talent for the ads

and there are tons of video creators who that's their main, uh, that's, that's their main revenue stream. You know, like every video is a sponsored video and they do a really good job of integrating those sponsored spots and those blurbs into their content so that it's not just like a commercial. It's not just like, You know, this video is sponsored by blah, blah, blah.

But that takes a whole different, uh, a whole different set of skills than just being able to show up and make your content on your own schedule, your own calendar, choose what you say when you say it. So for me, I work with brands sparingly. I'm picky about the brands that I work with and I don't really want to feel like I'm running an advertising agency. And that brings me to revenue stream number four, which is. providing a service like an agency or even like a freelance service, And this is obviously going to also be very niche specific and niche dependent, but I think of things like web design, video editing. I mean, it really doesn't matter what your niche is. If you create video content, uh, you have a skill, you have a marketable skill, you know how to, you know, edit, you know how to make thumbnails, you know how to upload videos.

Like, you know how YouTube works. That's a marketable skill.

And it's possible that if you create content where you're teaching things, you're providing information that even, even if you have a small audience, a small email list, a small community on YouTube, it's possible there are A handful of people in your audience, in your community that just want someone to do it for them.

Whatever it is, whatever it is that you're teaching, they just want someone to do it for them. That could be an opportunity for you to offer a service where you are doing that exact thing. Like I said, I think of web design and like video editing. I used to be a freelance web designer, so that's always the first thing I think of when I think of services.

Because that's not something that people just Like wake up one day and decide, well, I think I'm going to install WordPress and design my website and tweak my CSS, you know,

And then you do have some control over what the services are that you offer, how much you charge. Who you want to work with. And now we're getting into a revenue stream that you have way more control over than affiliate marketing or working with brands or, you know, YouTube ad revenue.

but the fifth revenue stream and my favorite as a video creator, as a YouTube creator, as an online business, Owner is having your own digital products, courses or programs

like services. You have control over what it is you offer, what it is you create the audience that you create it for, but you have the added benefit of. It's not something you have to deliver necessarily, and there's an unlimited number of, you know, models for this, of things that you could offer. I say things like, They're not necessarily tangible things.

We're talking about digital products, a workbook, a course, a template, a, I don't know, an AI chat bot trained to think like you, that'd be, that'd be pretty cool. I have one of those inside of video brand Academy, but what I love about. Digital products, courses, and programs as revenue streams is that you can have more than one. They can serve different purposes. They can provide a different experience for the client or customer, and you get to choose all of that. There is no right or wrong. way to do it or right model to choose.

You get to create that. So for example, I, I just absolutely love the idea that I can put my expertise into a set of videos and a workbook that anybody can access at any time to get started with YouTube. So for example, 30 days to thriving YouTube channel is my course where you can do that. I don't have to show up.

Uh, and like teach you on a zoom call, I can do it once and you watch the recording and it's all laid out step by step, right? You go at your own pace. Nobody has to put anything on their calendar.

You can watch the videos for, you know, as many times as you want for as long as you want. And it's always accessible. It's always there for somebody who just finds me for the first time, or somebody who's been in my audience for a while and now they finally want to dive in.

But I also like talking to my community. I like talking to my clients and customers. So I have a membership where we meet twice a month, um, in, uh, in a group Zoom call. It's not Zoom. We do it in Kajabi. But we meet in a group video. Call where, um, I share what's working now on YouTube. We talk about different YouTube strategies and like what is going to work for your channel, dive into your analytics, answer questions and things like that.

And I love that because yes, there's pre recorded lessons and things, but I also get to chat with you. I also get to connect with you and it's not just, it's not always just me talking to a camera all the time.

so can you see how easy it is to kind of like diversify the different types of revenue streams in your business, but also diversify within each of those revenue streams to guarantee yourself the most. sustainability and the most control over your revenue streams.

and yes, control is an illusion, right? It's, it feels like you have control over your revenue streams. Just like having a job isn't the most sustainable thing in the world either. You feel like you have control over your job, but. You know, your company could shut down. You could get fired, let go, you name it,

And when you have control over your revenue streams, you have the ability to add more, you have the ability to increase your, the number of revenue streams you have and diversify even more. But I think the most exciting part is that. If all you have to do is focus on making great content, making content that follows a really good YouTube strategy so that your audience is consistently growing and returning,

you can develop this, uh, sort of compound effect. As your audience grows, your revenue flows. Love it.

But it can also flow in different directions. It can flow faster, stronger, the more, the more you add to it, right? Does this, is this analogy still tracking?

If you want to hear more about this, I'll link up my video here where I go a little bit more in depth into how on YouTube, you're not just building your audience, you're building your business and I linked to my membership and 30 days to thriving YouTube channel course down in the description as well.

If you wanted to check those out, it's totally up to you, but I'll see you next time.