(Even without Showing Your Face)
$26,000,000 !!
That is the amount of money Ryan Kaji of the YouTube channel Ryan’s World earned in the year 2019.
If you have any interest in YouTube money-making or just YouTube in general, you know that this kid is the highest-earning YouTuber at the moment.
But, do you know Liam, Courtney, or Audrey? Of course, you don’t!
Liam wants to become a YouTuber but he feels like he isn’t good enough, thus he never got around to posting a video.
Courtney has been posting videos, but she can’t seem to garner enough viewers or make any money from the site, on top of that, she is not comfortable showing her face on the camera.
And then there’s Audrey, she has been scoring subscribers left and right, but she has made no money as of now from YouTube.
We all know some Liams, Courtneys, and Audreys.
In fact, we ARE Liam, Courtney, and Audrey, wanting to use the largest video sharing platform on the internet to make ourselves some cash.
Well, there is good news for you! YouTube is not a zero-sum game. For you to do well on the site, someone else does not have to be a loser.
With the growing use of the internet all over the world as well as our dependence on YouTube for education to entertainment, this site is growing exponentially, making room for everyone to benefit from it.
YouTube is indeed a positive-sum game.
So yes, now we know there’s enough room for everyone on the site to make money. So, why are so many people failing? How do we make money from the site?
Well, we are here to provide you the answer to your 26-million-dollar question.
To get to the bottom of the solution, we first need to look at the pain points we have. There are multiple hurdles that are preventing you from getting the bread.
Aspirations and Hurdles
We know what a great platform YouTube is, and we all aspire to make a name for ourselves through it.
But first, we need to touch the basic requirements set by YouTube.
To become eligible for YouTube ad revenue, a channel must secure 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers in the past 12 months.
To make it simpler for you, if you upload a 10-minute video every week for a year, you will need about 462 viewers per video on average considering they watch the entire video every time.
That doesn’t sound like a lot but it is easy to get demotivated if you aren’t hitting the numbers in your early days.
Wait! there is more to it, we think YouTube pays us for subscribers or views.
But it pays us for ads watched or clicked on.
So, the number of views or subscribers you have might help you earn money, but the correlation is not as strong as you think.
A lot of us want to make videos for everyone with no clear goal. Moreover, many of us aren’t comfortable showing our faces.
And there is also a lack of understanding in terms of the YouTube algorithm.
And finally, hustling for that ad revenue while there are a lot more ways to make money using YouTube has been the most common problem.
But there are people who have overcome these struggles and now rein the leading video sharing platform, and we can take a lot of valuable lessons from these channels.
Let’s have a look at the top 10 most subscribed YouTubers, excluding companies.
1. PewDiePie – 107 Million Subscribers
PewDiePie started his YouTube journey in 2010 and became the most subscribed channel on the platform in 2013, this guy literally held the spot for 6 years straight making gaming and entertainment videos from his room by himself.
He is the inspiration of every person wanting to start YouTube from scratch.
2. Kids Diana Show – 64.5 Million Subscribers
This channel took on the then niche and now the most popular category of kids’ toy reviewing and entertainment content.
The channel features Diana along with her sibling, Roma.
3. Like Nastya – 61.4 Million Subscribers
This channel follows the same formula with young Stacy playing with toys and doing other entertaining activities that attract kids.
4. Vlad and Niki – 53.9 Million Subscribers
Yep, you guessed it. Another channel where kids who are siblings play with kids’ toys and record their daily activities.
5. Dude Perfect – 53.6 Million Subscribers
After PewDiePie, this is another OG YouTube channel, this channel consists of 5 dudes who are great friends doing amazingly sporty and athletic tricks since 2009.
6. MrBeast – 44.1 Million Subscribers
This is one of the fastest-growing channels on YouTube doing unbelievable videos that will make your jaw drop.
Their videos use hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars and they make it all back through sponsorships and merch sales.
7. Badabun – 43.4 Million Subscribers
A channel of Spaniards making cool street videos of asking people various burning questions. The show has a very TV reality show vibe and is considered super entertaining.
8. JuegaGerman – 41.5 Million Subscribers
He actually has another channel with 41.7 million subscribers where he doesn’t post anymore. This is an OG YouTuber making videos ranging from comedy skits to videogames and anything in between.
9. whinderssonnunes – 41 Million Subscribers
Whinderssonnunes is a Brazilian YouTuber making comedic content ranging from parodies to music and some daily life vlogs.
10. Felipe Neto – 39.7 Million Subscribers
Neto is another Brazilian YouTuber making comedic videos on popular topics. He also scored a Netflix Original for himself.
We can learn a lot of things from these YouTubers, but more on that soon. Do you notice something weird?
Where is Ryan Kaji? Didn’t he earn $26 million last year alone?
Well, this shows how the number of subscribers does not directly equate to high revenue. Let’s have a look at the top-earning YouTubers of last year, and all of them are millionaires!
1. Ryan Kaji – $26 Million
Ryan reviews toys and records his daily life playing and experimenting with different objects. He amassed massive numbers of kid viewers who don’t need to subscribe.
Right now, he has multiple clothing lines, toy lines, and a lot more. He signed with Nickelodeon as well as Hulu. All this from a toy review YouTube channel!
2. Dude Perfect – $20 Million
The 5th largest YouTubers are only second in terms of earning. Their athletic sports videos break all the world records, they currently have a show with Nickelodeon from all that success.
They also have a mobile app and great merchandise.
3. Anastasia Radzinskaya – $18 Million
This 5-year-old plays with toys, and her father puts them out in 7 different languages. Just like Ryan, she has garnered a massive viewer base and brands are sponsoring her like crazy.
4. Rhett and Link – $17.5 Million
If anyone understands YouTube, it’s Rhett and Link from Good Mythical Morning. These OG YouTubers started with eating food but now have multiple channels, podcasts, books, merch lines, and what not.
5. Jeffree Star – $17 Million
From being a MySpace famous musician to the king of YouTube makeup channels, Jeffree Star has had a long internet career. He has countless beauty items selling all over the world every day and his tutorials, reviews, and constant drama involvement keep him at the very top.
6. Preston Arsement – $14 Million
Gaming is as big as it is now thanks to YouTube. And another guy to cash in on this is Preston. From popular COD videos to funny pranks, he is a top entertainer. But his biggest source of earning is probably all those Minecraft servers he owns.
7/8. PewDiePie and Markiplier (Tie) – $13 Million
These two are the faces of YouTube gaming. Running the show for years, other than massive ad revenue, they’ve had their clothing, gaming accessories, and other various merch lines.
They also get big sponsorships and brand deals all the time. They have both had their own original shows to add to all that.
9. DanTDM– $12 Million
Dan combined the two biggest genres, gaming and kid’s content with his child-friendly Minecraft and Roblox videos which gave him a massive viewer base.
He quickly moved on to Fortnite when it became the talk of the town. As a massive gamer, his brand deals, merch, and world tours get him all the money in the world.
10. VanossGaming – $11.5 Million
Another large YouTube gamer, Evan has used games like GTA V and Minecraft and posted compilations of them on YouTube. His hilarious content got him all the deals a YouTube gamer can get.
We can already tell there are multiple ways to make money off of YouTube.
Now, let’s dive deep into all the ways we can use YouTube to generate ourselves some sweet revenue.
Ad Revenue
Let’s start with the obvious one. As mentioned before, to be eligible for ad revenue, a channel must reach 1,000 subs and 4,000 hours viewed content in 1 year.
After that, they can enable monetization in their channel by selecting the YouTube Partnership Program and creating a Google AdSense account. However, YouTube will only start paying you once you have $100 in your account.
But how much can you earn from the ads? You certainly don’t get to keep all the money from there. YouTube takes a big 45% chunk from what the businesses pay for their ads. So, for every $100 paid by the advertisers, YouTube keeps $45 while giving you the remaining $55.
YouTube ads earn in 2 ways, CPM and CPC.
In CPM, a viewer must watch minimum 30 seconds of an advertisement. For shorter ads, one must watch at least half of it.
In CPC, the latter requires the viewer to click on the link to generate some revenue for YouTube and the YouTuber.
On average, each ad view or click generates around 3-10 cents for the channel. So, if your video gets 1,000 views, you are likely to earn somewhere between $3 and $10.
The rate may vary depending on various factors, but this draws a pretty good picture of what you can earn from the ads.
If you hit a million views, you might earn as much as $10,000 from it.
Affiliate Income
Affiliate income is earning a commission when someone generates sales from your provided link. This is a very popular method to earn some passive revenue. Businesses only pay you when they generate sales, so they have no risk involved here unlike advertisements.
There are various programs that offer these services. Amazon offers up to 10% commission while Click Bank can get you anywhere between 1% and 75%.
You can also reach out to businesses yourself and negotiate a good deal that goes with your niche.
To draw a picture, YouTube channel ‘Think Media’ negotiated a deal with Organific on its product Green Juice.
The video where he recommended the product generated $1,200-1,600$ in ad revenue in 4 years, but the video has made over $10,000 so far in 4 years with his 30% commission from each sale. It is still steadily providing him income after all these years with the link sitting in his video description.
Sponsored Videos
This is perhaps the biggest form of influencer marketing. And you don’t necessarily need to be a big channel. The brands understand customer psychology and the power of the trust influencers’ have earned, whether big or small.
This is a directly paid promotion where a brand sponsors a video for you where you endorse their product and tell your viewers to buy it.
There are many marketplaces for influencer marketing such as Grapevine Logic, Crowdtap, Fambit, etc.
These sites require very few followers so you can list yourself there easily.
For small or mid-level YouTubers, one may ask 5-15 cents per view for the average views their videos generate.
So, if your average video generates 10,000 views; you may ask for $50-$150 for the sponsorship. Another way is to charge based on your subscribers; you may ask for $2,000 for a video if you have 100,000 subscribers.
For a real-life example, small channel Business Film Booth with 4.27k subscribers was offered $100-$150 along with the product for free for a software review, which he declined as he didn’t like the product.
Donations
Donation is another great form of earning money from your viewer-base. In this format, your viewers pay you money so you can keep providing them with content.
There are multiple ways your viewers can financially support you. The most famous one is Patreon. Patreon works as an intermediary platform for the transactions to take place.
Channels provide various special rewards as well as shoutouts to its patrons who support the channel. The channel may also simply ask for the support to keep producing regular content.
Patreon itself takes 5% of the paid amount as commission and the rest goes to the YouTubers. On average, $12 is paid per month to support users through Patreon. If you are a small YouTuber, your loyal viewer-base might pay you a regular amount that helps you out. But, once you get big, Patreon can be a massive revenue stream itself.
In 2018, YouTuber Suede did not even have 10,000 subscribers. But he was able to create a loyal fan-base that earned him around $3,000 a month.
Merchandise
There are two ways to go about this depending on your choice. You can promote your business or merch on YouTube to give your business a boost, or you can become a YouTuber first and then create merch for your fans and sell them.
Merchandise does not only generate revenue for you but also increases your brand value. You may sell beauty items, t-shirts, toys, and whatnot depending on your niche.
Your viewers will buy these as a sign of loyalty to you, or they may buy it because it provides them with great service and solves their problems.
You may work with sites like Oberlo to save you the hassle of dropshipping your merch, you can also partner with creator networks like DFTBA.
Massive YouTuber MrBeast sold his 40 million subscribers limited edition t-shirts for $35 each through his own e-store. He sold 68,337 t-shirts in a month, which puts the revenue just from that one merch at nearly $2.4 million.
Crowdfunding
If you’re trying to get a project running that interests your fan-base, you can get them to fund the project for you.
There are sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo that facilitate these crowdfunding services. One of the examples for this is Laser Unicorns’s 2013 Kickstarter campaign for the movie Kung Fury, which had a goal of $2,00,000 but reached well over $6,00,000.
Licensing
If you happen to make a viral video, you can license that content so people will have to pay you every time they want to use your clip.
There are various sites that provide licensing services. Juken Media is one of them. You can license and put up your content on the website where people will pay to use it.
One famous example of this is the famous Chewbacca Mom. The viral video was licensed and sold at as high as $299 depending on the video quality ordered through Juken Media.
Superchat
YouTube Superchat was introduced in 2017 where viewers can directly donate to the channel during live streams.
In this model, when a YouTuber goes live from his or her channel, the viewers can donate money to show support. However, YouTube keeps 30% of the revenues generated from this service.
As of September 2020, Japanese channel Coco Ch. has earned nearly a million dollars from the Superchat service.
Memberships
YouTube now offers a membership service for its users. The service is similar to Patreon where paying subscribers known as members will get access to exclusive content.
To enable this service, you will need at least 30,000 subscribers. However, the number is 1,000 subscribers only for gaming channels. You also need to be a part of the YouTube partnership program.
YouTube gives the creators a lot of freedom as they can set a fee of $0.99-$100 per month as membership charges. However, YouTube will keep 30% of the revenue generated from this segment. Users can expect earnings similar to Patreon’s earnings from this service.
Now you know that there are a lot more ways to earn from YouTube than relying on the advertisements.
The best thing about these is that you don’t even have to be a big YouTuber to start earning your bucks. You just have to play it smart and use the right strategy. So, how do we get the stakeholders to pay us money? We have tips for that as well.
How to Start a Successful YouTube Channel
Remember Liam? No, you don’t, because he didn’t start his channel.
The first step to becoming successful is to take the first step itself. You don’t need to be perfect.
Get Started
You don’t need to dish out the most well-thought video out there. You want to become a YouTuber, you want to earn money online. But you’re holding yourself back by postponing your start.
Of course, you know PewDiePie. The guy started from his room with no camera, just recording himself playing Call of Duty while commenting on it. He literally did not edit his videos.
He was elated when he hit 100 subscribers. 10 years later? He is a millionaire with 107 million subscribers.
Select Your Niche
Selecting your niche means selecting what you offer to the viewers. Your video must be relevant to what people want to see, but you alone cannot do everything.
People watch videos to satisfy their various needs. Tech channels are not doing comedy, comedy channels are not doing makeup. You cannot review a smartphone today then make a comedy skit tomorrow.
Even if the individual video is good, you will not be able to create a loyal viewer-base. You need to become the name people choose when they want a specific need fulfilled.
Do what you are passionate about but stick to your niche.
Target Group
Choosing your target group is very important when you start. No one, literally no one can cater to everyone. If you go on blindly trying to make everyone a viewer, you will end up getting no one.
If you make gaming content, you can be all loud and cursing like PewDiePie, or you can be child-friendly like DanTDM.
But a person who enjoys swearing will not watch content directed towards 5-year-olds.
Choose your target group based on your niche, your location, the age-group, and even gender you believe might be more interested in the content you post.
Purpose
Your every video does not have to perform the same way. Some are meant to be quick viral while some are meant to bring in viewers over the years.
Make sure whether your video is communicating with your subscribers or new viewers. Change things up occasionally and give people a reason to stay and choose your content over others’.
Money
You don’t need to score tons of viewers in a video that might bring you steady affiliate earning from a small number of loyal viewers.
10,000 viewers might get you nowhere, but 1,000 paying viewers will do you wonders.
Decide your money-making methods.
Some videos are there to get you more views, some are there to get you more money. And some can get you both. Decide how each video will work beforehand.
Saturation and Differentiation
People often feel discouraged to venture into a saturated market. But a saturated market proves there is a demand for that type of content.
It only means if James Charles can become a millionaire from doing makeup videos, so can you!
However, it is not in what you do but more about how you do it. Differentiation will make you stand out.
Come up with propositions that make you unique. You can venture into a saturated market and gain some viewers just because of the demand.
But to lead the sector, you must show why you are the best at what you do.
Algorithm
Regardless of what people say, the YouTube algorithm plays a vital role in your success. You need to understand keywords that get more views and tags that recommend your videos higher.
Watch time has become increasingly important. Live streaming will help you with that as a live video of a few hours will add to your annual watch time more than many well-produced short videos.
VidIQ is a great extension that provides you detailed analytics and also suggests your keywords, tags, and what kind of videos you should produce to cash in.
Integrity and Consistency
The core part of being successful at YouTube is to create a good impression. Holding on to your viewer-base no matter how small or large will reward you in the future.
Make sure you are listening to the feedback your audience provides. Give the people what they want, and they will surely give you back.
Be consistent and keep uploading even if the growth is slow.
Never ever endorse products you yourself do not believe in. The moment you lose the trust of your audience is the moment you lose grip on your channel’s future.
These are some key advice to follow to be successful at YouTube. But you will also need some equipment that will allow you to create top-notch content.
The Tools You Need for a Successful YouTube Channel
Camera – To record your top-notch videos
Additional Lens – To adjust to different needs and situations
SD Card – To make sure you don’t run out of space while recording
Tripod – To keep your camera steady while recording
Microphone – To give your audience the best audio experience
Lighting Halo Ring – To give the viewers a good view of yourself
Battery – To make sure your camera doesn’t die
You know your revenue streams, your channel prerequisites, and your tools. But there are still different obstacles you might face during implementation.
For one, you might not want to show your face on the camera. There are successful channels that are going strong without showing their faces.
You need to focus on your content and make sure your tools are top quality.
YouTube legend Matt Parr has been doing great without ever showing his face. If you focus on your content and serve your audience, you are likely to succeed.
But what better way is there to learn succeeding on a video making platform than through an expert video course?
The Best Course to Provide a Comprehensive Guideline on YouTube Success
Tube Mastery and Monetization is a course that teaches you everything from understanding the basics of YouTube to building your channel and succeeding with it.
The course has 7 modules starting from a simple overview to complete detailed plans of scaling your channel. You get lifetime access to all the content provided with the course for a one-time payment.
The course comes from Matt running 9 channels and earning six figures from them. They tell you the EXACT strategies with a real example of starting from scratch to gaining 5,00,000 subscribers in only a year.
Originally coming at $997, the course currently only costs a One Time $597 on a special offer.
The fact that they provide a 100% money-back guarantee within 60 days if you are not satisfied only speaks for the quality of the course.
Enroll now at: https://go.mattpar.com/tube-mastery-4
The Takeaway
YouTube has been a platform for the common people for ages, yet people have become extraordinary by taking small steps on the site.
As a positive-sum game, YouTube provides you with limitless opportunities. By following the right guideline and strategy, you can make a living off this platform. Consistency and determination will do wonders for you.
Now you know the ropes of YouTube money-making. So, the only road in front of you is forward.
