Making money from YouTube videos
I’ve recently received lots of emails telling me how simple it is to get rich by making YouTube videos, and there are even predictions floating around cyberspace that the majority of consumer traffic on the Internet will be driven by video marketing. So I thought it might be worth a closer look.
Interestingly, this “flavour of the month” idea of making money with YouTube videos isn’t new at all. It’s been touted around for months at least, if not years, but it seems to have suddenly become more popular. The official YouTube Creator blog announced a big change back in April about how it had just got easier to make money with ads on YouTube. Previously there was a lengthy process to go through to become a YouTube partner, but now just about anyone can benefit from placing adverts on their videos. The rules are fairly straightforward – you must own the copyright for all the material you post in your videos, or hold the rights to use it all. By the way, that includes music!
Social Times published an article just over a year ago in which they reported that some people are making six-figure incomes from their YouTube videos. The trick seems to be to go viral. Even cute videos of your kids can do it.
Surely it can’t really be so easy? As with anything else, there’s bound to be people gaming the system and pulling strings behind the scenes.
I guess all this “Get rich quick with YouTube” must be true, because I read in The Sun (one of Britain’s most notorious tabloids) about how Brits are making heaps of money from their YouTube videos. It all looks like a load of rubbish to me. Apparently someone has made a fortune by uploading a video of his baby son biting his other young son’s finger. And a teenage girl who makes videos of herself dancing in her bedroom has become a huge hit with Japanese teenagers. There’s more examples, but that’s the gist of it.
Despite it being reported in The Sun, much of this is believable. Making money online has rarely been a case of talent and hard work resulting in fair rewards. All too often, it’s easier to reap more financial rewards by creating great sales pages and being good at marketing, rather than trying to create something genuinely useful, interesting or entertaining. As I wrote a couple of days ago, John Chow says to do the marketing first and only then think about what product you might produce to fulfil the promises you made in your marketing promotions.
This Is Money also has an interesting article about how people are getting rich with YouTube videos.
So, is this the latest bandwagon to jump on? What do you think?
No doubt there’ll be plenty of “Get rich with YouTube” MMO offers around now. I guess my next task is to have a look at some of them. No doubt, I’ll find some of their “secrets” to share with you.
PS: If you want to start making money with YouTube videos, then you need to sign up for the YouTube partner programme. They have a page to help you do so.
2 Responses to “Making money from YouTube videos”
I like that bit about doing the marketing first! 🙂
That really does say it all, doesn’t it?!
I know a couple of people who make a decent bit of money with youtube, but I bet that for every one that does there are a few hundred who never break even.
Yeah, that kinda surprised me too. I normally create something and then try to promote it. Obviously I’ve been going about things the wrong way.
Theo and I have a book which is being published in the next few days. Time for a bit of pre-sales promotion! Let’s see how it works.
I’m not keeping strictly to the “market it first” rule as it’s taken us several weeks of team effort to create the book, but it’s nearly finished so I might as well have a go at pre-selling.