Is YouTube Monetization all it’s cracked up to be? | Ep. 18

Monetizing your YouTube channel is a significant milestone, but is it really as great as it seems? In episode 18 of the Video Brand Infusion podcast, I share my journey from earning 12 cents to $14,800 in a year and the realities of ad revenue. Discover why relying solely on ad revenue might not be the best strategy and how creating your own digital products can be more profitable. Niche Pursuits RPM Chart:  https://www.nichepursuits.com/youtube-rpm 

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Meredith  
Yes, getting monetized on YouTube is a great milestone to reach. It feels good to get that like stamp of approval from YouTube. But is getting monetized on YouTube really as great as it seems? Let's talk about it here on episode number 18 of the video brand infusion podcast. My name is Meredith, and I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business for consistent revenue in your business. And I get why most people want to have a monetized channel. Let's be honest. You upload videos, and YouTube says, Cool, we'll share a little bit of our revenue with you. And I'll be honest, I think when I first started YouTube, I didn't really know that YouTube did pay creators. I was just looking for a place to put my videos for my blog. But a few months into it, I remember opening the YouTube Creator Studio app. This was in 2015 I noticed that it said I had made 12 cents and 12 cents. I know it sounds like nothing, but I was over the moon with the fact that my content created that 12 cents out of out of nothing. Now that was back in the day when there were no milestones that you had to reach in order to be monetized. You were basically monetized immediately, and you didn't have to wait till you had, you know, 1000 subscribers. And we'll talk more about those milestones in a moment. But that initial 12 cents eventually turned into $12 and eventually turned into $100 and then, you know, 203 100. So let me give you a little side note. Give you some context here the most I ever made in ad revenue from YouTube, specifically in a calendar year January to December was 14,800 and that was like my sixth year on YouTube, and it was 2021, so lots more traffic, lots more views, lots more ad revenue to be earned during the pandemic also has to be, I don't know, taken into account there, because it hasn't. It's not like it has gone up since then. And I had a conversation several months ago with somebody who said, how many subscribers would I have to have in order for me to just like, create videos about my topic, and just kind of like, live off of the ad revenue, and I, like quietly died inside to hear that question, because, first of all, the number of subscribers you have is irrelevant. But also there is this misconception that that's what that's what you do on YouTube. You upload videos. YouTube pays you, so I get the lure of just show up, upload your videos, get paid for that. But in order to generate, like a significant amount of revenue with your youtube content, you have to treat it like a business. And if you're going to treat YouTube like a business, you would see that the amount of effort you put into creating videos in exchange for what YouTube is willing to pay you in terms of ad revenue is pretty bad compared to other revenue streams that would require the same exact amount of time and energy on your part, and this only applies to you, obviously, if you create content as a means to generate revenue for yourself, personally or for your business, or even just for the channel to pay for itself. You know, pay for the gear, the supplies, the computer, you know, the software. Because if you only ever rely on YouTube ad revenue to generate the income for you and your business, then you risk investing in a platform that can decide one day that, hey, we don't think you're eligible for ads anymore. Plus, when you rely on ad revenue, the game of YouTube, the game that you're playing becomes, you know, like, let's try and get as many views and as much watch time on our channel as we can, which doesn't always lead to the most like, high quality, useful, helpful content, because you're just there to get the views. But if you make this small tweak to your YouTube strategy, and how you approach your YouTube strategy. How you approach your revenue generation on YouTube. It wouldn't matter whether your channel is monetized or not, whether YouTube decides that your channel should be monetized or not, or whether you're eligible for ad revenue, because you've reached those milestones, which is, you'd need 1000 YouTube subscribers, and you need 4000 hours of total watch time in the past 12 months, and you have to be like in good standing with the community platform, with, you know, community guidelines and those kinds of things. But it won't matter how much YouTube, besides your content, is worth. Let me show you an easy way that you can generate revenue with your content, regardless of your monetization status on YouTube, I have said, and I will always say, the best revenue stream is the one that you have the most control over. And let's just be honest about one thing here, because we as humans, we like to think that we have control over, like, everything, right? Even if you have a full time job, you think my job is safe, I have control over my job. And things can happen. Jobs can go away. Ask me how I know before I was a full time, you know, working for myself, content creator, I worked for a company that had been in business for 30 years. It was a family owned company. It had been passed down from one generation to the next. It was a healthy company, well known company, great reputation in our area, and they eliminated my position. If you need living proof that good jobs can go away, this is it. I am that living proof. My point is, are we really in control of anything? No, not really. It's kind of an illusion. That's why I say that the best revenue stream is the one you have the most control over, in terms of what exactly it is that you are creating, what you're selling, how you sell it, and what you create content about, and the price of that thing and the manner in which that thing is delivered. It could be a physical thing. It could be a digital thing. It could be a service. And one of the biggest roadblocks that I run into with my clients and students and even myself, like back when I first started thinking about, like courses, and, you know, creating an online business and stuff like that, I thought I had to create this, like big course, this, like a program, like, with multiple videos and lessons and modules and PDFs and bonuses and like, one cohesive package, like I thought that was the only way, and I guess probably the reason why I thought that was because that's what I saw other people doing. But the truth is, even a simple, you know, $12 guide or planner or some kind of a digital download puts you in a much better position, business wise, from a business perspective, than trying to generate revenue with ad revenue on your videos. And there's a couple reasons for this. Number one, you're generating a list of buyers. So for future products, programs, services, down the road, you have known buyers who you can market to with YouTube, you don't know who sees the ads that play like they are not your customer. That viewer is not your customer. They're just your viewer. They are now the customer of the company that's running the ads and using your channel as their billboard. And number two, this is, I think, the most interesting part, because if you do the math, you might be thinking, What in the world is Meredith talking about? How am I going to create meaningful revenue, significant revenue with a $12 digital product, and I hear you like it sounds silly, but hear me out, because the math, maths. So let's talk about the fact that, depending on your niche, you're going to generate a certain amount of revenue per 1000 views on your channel. So YouTube calls this RPM, which is revenue per mill. Mill means 1000 so for example, I went I looked up@nichepersuits.com

Meredith  
which I think is a reputable source. They have a whole table with the niches and the RPM averages. So somewhere between $1 per 1000 views and $22 per 1000 views is what you'd be looking to make. So it completely depends on your niche. So for example, I don't even really know where my niche falls exactly, but probably somewhere in social media marketing, which according to the table and niche. Pursuits.com runs about $12 rpm, and that tracks, by the way I looked at my analytics, it is about that. I think it's more like 13 something on my channel, but $12 RPM, that means for every 1000 views, you're gonna make 12 bucks. So if I publish a video today, and I get 1000 views today, and that's it. Those are the only views that happen on my channel. I'm probably going to make $12 if I publish a video every week for the next year, and every single one of those 52 videos get 1000 views, and exactly 1000 views, that's a total of 52,000 views, which comes out to be $624 of course, you know that's that's not how YouTube works, right? You don't get cabbed at 1000 views or anything, you know, silly like that. But to make the math simple, let's just think about it in that way, for every 1000 views, that's 12 bucks. Now let's just say if you had a channel about backyard gardening, let's say backyard gardening in the Northeast. Let's make it really nichey niche. I love a nichey niche. If you created a $12 guide with like a planner, a calendar and a checklist of exactly when to plant, what to plant, what to look for, as far as like the seeds or the plants, what to put in your soil, when to fertilize and like where in your yard or where in your garden, how to plan it out and where to plant everything to like, optimize your garden. You could create several videos about, you know, all of those topics which attracts, literally the ideal customer for that $12 guide, because no one's gonna watch a video about, you know, how to lay out your garden, unless they're interested in planting a garden, right? And it's different, depending on where on the earth you live. Hence why I love a nichey niche. Now, you could take that same exact scenario and say, Well, I'm gonna run ads on this channel, and I'm gonna publish one video every week, and I'm gonna do that for a whole year. And if you had a $12 RPM, that would be $624 right? But imagine if you made a sale for every 1000 views, just one sale for every 1000 views, for $12 you have made the same amount that you made in ADS. But doesn't it seem pretty likely that you will make more than one sale for every 1000 views, for every 1000 people who watch these niche videos. You don't think there's more than one person who would want that guide for 12 bucks. You see how. It doesn't matter how many views you get on your videos, your RPM is still capped. It's still whatever YouTube decides to, you know, essentially sell your channel for because your channel is just a billboard for other businesses. You're capped, but you're not capped on the number of cells that you can make from your content. And we all know that your videos have the potential to reach way more than 1000 views. Imagine 100,000 views. Imagine all of this spider web of videos. I talked about that in episode 17. Imagine this whole spider web of videos that are all sending people to this one $12 digital product with no cap in sales, no cap in views, and the algorithm is just sending people that traffic. They're sending people to your channel. They're sending people to your revenue stream. This is almost exciting enough that I want to start a gardening channel, which is not going to happen, because I am the worst at gardening, and I'm actually, like, not even interested in it at all, but it makes a great example when you're talking about, like, niches and things like that. Now, the wrench in this plan, the the gotcha, is that I was using math for a $12 RPM, which, according to the table that I found, and also backed up by my own analytics, is roughly about $12 and that's for the niche of social media marketing. Gardening doesn't fit in that niche. I think gardening probably fits into the lifestyle niche, the best I can tell, and according to this table, it's less than $4 for RPM. So that means if I did start a gardening channel, which I'm not, then I'm probably gonna make less than $4 for every 1000 views, so I don't get to do. Choose the RPM, but I do get to choose the price of the digital product. And by the way, if you are in the gardening niche and you want to tell me what your RPM is, I'm very curious. Now that I've done all of this work, just shoot me a message, DM me on Instagram or something. I'm really curious about this. But do you see how creating and promoting your own product, even if it's something small, something easy, something digital, something like insanely affordable, like $12 is actually a much better investment into your business and into your long term revenue than trying to get monetized and putting your energy into getting monetized with YouTube ads. YouTube ads benefit the people that are placing the ads. And YouTube with low cost, low barrier to entry, digital product, you create it once you sell it to as many people for as long as you want. It's not a complicated course. You don't have to have videos. You don't have to have videos, guys. It doesn't have to have lessons and modules and bonuses and a live stream group get together thing every single month. It can just be a one time purchase that people download, and if you make it insanely useful and helpful and make it worth well over $12 it's gonna save your customer over $12 at the store when they're looking at their soil and their fertilizer and their seeds, it's gonna save them well Over $12 worth of their time, because you've done all the work for them, you're just selling it to them for 12 bucks. You can create it in Google Docs if you want to. It's actually so much simpler than relying on ad revenue, which can go away at any time. And I'll be totally honest with you here, I overlooked this when I was first starting, I did create a digital like an ebook as my very first digital product, but I also created videos to go along with it. And anyway, I have overlooked, like easy to create digital download guides as a revenue stream in my business, because sometimes I overcomplicate things. That's why I'm creating this podcast, so that I can, sort of like if I could go back in time and tell myself, that's the information that I'm putting into this podcast. I do have an idea for a digital download that I need to make a decision about, because if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna do it, I need to start planning it now so that it's ready for 2025 but if you've been listening to this video brand infusion podcast, or watching the videos, you have heard me talk about creating a set it and Forget it, YouTube funnel. But if you've been watching and thinking, Well, I can't do that because I don't have a course, I don't have a program. But what if you have some resources you can put together in Google Drive and export as a PDF and get it out there and get it going, and Forget trying to get monetize and monetize yourself, then you can create a set and forget it. YouTube funnel, so that as you build your binge worthy channel, as you build your spider web, you're not only growing your audience, but you're generating revenue in your business. So in episode one of this podcast, I cover exactly how I set up a set it and forget it. YouTube funnel with my course and show how you can take that same exact setup and apply it to your channel. And it works with a course or a program or even a service, and it definitely will work with a digital product, download guide, type of a thing as well.