Make Money on YouTube using Your Blog
If you want to make money on YouTube then don’t forget about using your blog to help you get more views. In fact, a blog and YouTube have really good synergies and should always be used to complement each other.
I discovered this last year when I was still a full-time blogger and was publishing a YouTube video almost every single day.
You see the link to my blog I placed in the ‘Information’ section of the YouTube video was actually counting as a valid backlink and although most website analyzers didn’t show this I knew it to be true because the blog was getting some awesome early traffic.
And vice versa, with the Blog getting traffic I was able to direct some of this search engine organic traffic to the videos. That’s because I made sure each blog post had a video in it, which is actually good SEO these days anyway. So it’s a win-win.
And as you probably already know how to make money on a blog, let’s talk more about how you make money on YouTube, instead.
Make Money on YouTube
Making money on YouTube is really easy and very similar to making money on your blog. In fact, you’ll use the same Adsense account you’ve already established for your blog.
But similar to blogging, it does take a little time to build your audience before you get the views needed to make a proper living from YouTube, but as a bonus, you can also get backlinks for your blog with very little effort.
However, that said, if you already have an audience for your blog then this will be much easier for you to get traction quickly on YouTube.
OK, let me teach you how YouTube works and how you make money on YouTube.
First You Create a Video
As YouTube is a video search engine, you’ll need to create a video, to be included in the search results. Now before you start freaking out by thinking you don’t want to be in front of a camera you need to understand there are many ways to make a video for YouTube. Here are the most common ways of making a YouTube video.
Face to Camera – This style is typically used by vloggers (video bloggers) or as a way to connect directly with your audience.
Interview – Rather than be the one in front of a camera, perhaps you can interview someone else in your niche and let them be the star.
Live Action – When you just want to capture what you’re seeing while talking you would just capture live images to keep it interesting for the viewer whilst you chat to them.
Explainer Videos – These have become quite popular and use animations and voice-overs to explain your point of view.
Screen Capture – Maybe you just like to teach people how to do things on their computer, so a screen capture video works best for that style of YouTube video.
How to actually make a YouTube video is beyond the scope of this article, but each of these styles are easy to search on the web and you’ll need to choose at least one you’re comfortable with if you want to make money on YouTube. Here’s a little more information on setting up your YouTube Channel.
Next, You Publish Your Video
OK, now you’ve made your video it’s time to publish it.
First, you’ll upload the video to YouTube then you’ll need to add in a title and a description of what your video is about. This is where being a blogger will really pay off for you, because just like with blogging, keyword research is really important.
Make sure you use keywords or phrases in your Title and reinforce them in your description section. Your description can be really long so don’t hold back, and keep adding in those keywords and phrases 🙂 Learn about Keyword Research here.
Next, you’ll need to add a few Tags which are again just your keywords and phrases.
Finally, you’ll need to make a thumbnail picture that really ‘pops’ and gets the attention of people searching for your content. You can select a thumbnail from the video, but it’s always a better idea to make a custom thumbnail and upload that for your video.
Then when you’re done, you’re ready to hit publish.
Making Money with Your Video
Now you’ve published your video you just need to attract people to watch it.
The advertising revenue stream is setup by linking your YouTube Channel to your Adsense account and then selecting monetize for each video you want to make money on YouTube.
So instead of just putting on ads from the get-go consider leaving off the distractions of advertising until the video starts getting consistent views.
You see in order to make money on YouTube, you first need to attract a regular viewing audience and if you already have blog traffic you’ll understand why making YouTube videos makes sense for that audience.
Yes, you’ll already have traffic going to your video if you embed it into a popular blog post, and this sends YouTube a strong signal that your content is worth appearing in the YouTube search results, which should in turn, get you more views.
IMPORTANT: You need consistent traffic to your video to continue appearing on the first page of the YouTube search results. So make sure you promote your video on other social media sites to continue to drive traffic to the video, and then YouTube will take care of the rest.
So let’s see how much money you can make on YouTube.
How Much Money can you Make on YouTube?
Money made on YouTube can be calculated using this simple rule of thumb.
1000 views are approximately equal to $1.00
This is just a rule of thumb number, and it’s typically higher than this, but it really depends on if people are watching or engaging with the ads or just skipping or closing them. And as the video becomes more popular, you’ll find that YouTube doesn’t even let people skip over the ads which means more money in your pocket. Cha-Ching!
Now if you’re in a really small niche, you might not find there is enough traffic to make any real good money with YouTube, so you’d be best to make videos that actually drive traffic back to your blog.
A call to action in the video or at the end of the video might get people back to your blog where you can finally convert the sale.
A quick way to add a call to action button in your video is by using an ‘Annotation’, which can be setup after the video is uploaded. See here how to do this.
So this is a quick overview on how to make money on YouTube. Was it helpful? Do you want more in-depth information?
I’m mindful that this is a blog on starting a blog and not a YouTube channel, but I’m happy to share the information I’ve gained over the last year in making YouTube another income stream to make Leaving The RatRace a real option for everyone.
Here’s a quick video explaining the basics of making money on YouTube.
