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How to Earn Money as a Small YouTuber
Creating content on YouTube is now more common than ever, but that doesn’t mean that YOU can’t earn a slice of the pie too.
15 years ago, the thought of uploading regular content to YouTube was not only uncommon, but also downright embarrassing in the eyes of many. Flash forward to the chaotic year of 2021, and people all over the world are trying their hand at becoming YouTubers. For the creativity, for the fame, for the money.
However, just as many can quickly become discouraged. Climbing the heights on a platform like YouTube isn’t as simple as publishing a video and waiting for thousands of fans to appear overnight. Earning a steady income from it is even more challenging.
Can small YouTubers earn money? Or are the financial gains of sharing one’s thoughts, knowledge or lifestyle online reserved for those with a vast following? The old disappointing phrase “don’t quit the day job” springs to mind…but earning money on YouTube is very much still viable for smaller creators.
At the moment I have ~6,500 subscribers on YouTube. I still very much consider creating video content a side hustle. However, it’s still helping to move those little numbers in the bank account in the direction I prefer them to move.
With the wee bit of experience I have so far, I want to share four ways in which you can earn money as a smaller creator.
YouTube Ads
The first, and perhaps most obvious, route to building an income through YouTube is with adverts.
YouTube will begin to allow monetisation of your channel through its membership programme once you reach two specific milestones:
- 1,000 subscribers
- 4,000 hours of watch time in the past 12 months
Both can seem incredibly daunting when you first set up that channel, but through consistent and good quality work, nothing is stopping you from getting there. Once you’ve been approved for monetisation, those pennies and pounds (or cents and dollars, or cents and Euros etc) will start stacking up.
You’ll find that different videos will perform better than others in terms of revenue. This can be down to a number of factors, such as
