How To Make Money On YouTube Without 1,000 Subscribers

because this means that to make money on YouTube, you don’t have to meet the minimum threshold requirements for the YouTube partner program of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 cumulative watch hours.

How Your YouTube Videos Can Make Money

You can find financial success as a video creator and digital marketer no matter how many subscribers you have, even if that number in the double or triple digits!

Small audience? Budding business? No problem!

In short, there are 2 main ways to make money on youtube:

1) Sell your own thing

2) Monetize through YouTube ads/ the YouTube Partner Program

Lifting The Veil On Profits Versus Popularity

The beautiful thing about YouTube is the more you work on your channel, the more it will work for you. One mistake that often derails YouTubers is similar to “shiny object syndrome.”

This means instead of pouring your energy into well-crafted videos that help your audience solve an issue in their lives, you get distracted by trends and start to create videos based on trends with the hopes of going viral.

Say it with me, “Popularity doesn’t equal profit.”

While it can be tempting to get caught up with vanity numbers such as how many subscribers your channel has and how many views each of your videos are getting, remember the end goal isn’t just to be well-liked, even though having a viral video can be very exciting.

Instead, focus on uploading videos that align with your content plan, your audience’s needs, and your own goals for your content.

With the right strategy, you can plan to be popular and, more importantly, profitable.

There are 2 main challenges to both becoming popular and being profitable on YouTube:

1) Getting started

2) Getting enough watch hours and subscribers

First, let’s address the getting started part.

How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel As Soon As Possible

It’s a great business decision to create your own channel on YouTube, but the “how” of generating money on YouTube gets tricky. In fact, most business owners freeze and take a detour (ahem, that stack of amazing ideas doodled in that abandoned notebook) before ever making their first YouTube video.

The key is to plan content and upload videos that help your target audience in a strategic way. Ideally, you’ll create such powerful, informative, helpful videos that viewers will glean the solutions they’ve always wanted from your channel, experience positive changes in their lives, and share your new videos with all their friends.

That will ignite growth for your YouTube channel as their friends share with their friends and your video views skyrocket. Right?

Well, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Again, the trick is to craft videos perfectly targeted for your ideal viewer/customer.

This means before creating your YouTube account, making your first video, creating live streams, or ever uploading recordings into your YouTube Studio, you need to know who your ideal audience is.

Identify Your Ideal Subscriber and Customer Avatar

Whether you dream of making money through sales of your products and services or through Google Adsense, first, you need to know who you’re creating videos for.

Your customer avatar is the unique individual you most want to serve with your content. This ideal customer has a very specific lifestyle, personality, education, career, and family. They also have a unique set of questions you can answer. You should be able to imagine this target customer falling in love with your channel and your product/services since you’re so helpful and knowledgeable on this topic.

They’ve likely spent months or years and too much energy searching and hoping for the right someone to help them in this particular content area.

As you narrow your ideal audience, consider their age range, gender, location, type of employment, lifestyle, and the average length of engagement or “watch time.” The more you know about your target client, the better you will be able to cater to their needs.

Once you identify who you’ll be creating content for, it’s time to create videos that solve their challenges, make life easier, educate, or entertain them. Perhaps some of your content will check a few of these boxes!

Think of yourself as the bridge between what they already know and what they searching for or need to know. Spend time thinking about those people and the type of content they want to watch. Then reverse engineer your video content to fit what that perfect subscriber needs.

Create A YouTube Channel That Appeals To Your Ideal Audience

Approach your content and the creative process with longevity and sustainability in mind. Becoming successful on YouTube isn’t about creating one video or live stream. Your goal is to create lasting opportunities for your target audience and build your client base over an extended period of time.

Make your videos appealing by educating or entertaining your viewers, adding fun segments, tieing in pop culture references, and offering free downloads or coupon codes to your viewers.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• In what area or niche do I have unique knowledge that I can share?
• Which challenges can I solve or make easier?
• What would they type into Google?
• What type and length of videos will attract more people like them?
• What can I add or remove from my videos to hold their attention longer?

People who aren’t successful on YouTube usually are not focused intently on creating content their viewers want to see. Most times, they’re more focused on what they want to create but aren’t necessarily thinking about the end user’s experience. Remember, keep everything focused on your audience to make money on YouTube.

Use Cohesive Branding to Attract Subscribers

In terms of user experience, don’t just think about the content inside your videos. Your video titles and video description matters. Both of these video components should include SEO-friendly, highly searchable phrases, and keywords so that users can at-a-glance understand what your video is about and whether it’s worth their time.

Related content: How to Write Your Own Podcast Show Notes (same as your YT vid description)

Design your YouTube channel’s entire look and feel specifically for your target customer. Make sure your YouTube channel art, including your banner and your profile picture, reflects a cohesive brand using the same color scheme and photos.

That same color scheme should be on your YouTube video thumbnails (the cover image for your video), and if you want to get fancy, you can upload your logo image as a watermark that will appear on all or a portion of your videos (settings inside the channel branding section on your Youtube account).

Your YouTube channel is an opportunity to build brand recognition, establish a cohesive message across platforms, establish a relationship with your viewers, and earn money.

Create Content Specifically For That “Perfect” Client

To make money as a full-time content creator, you’ll always adapt and fine-tune your content with your audience’s fluctuating desires and needs. Your dedication and consistency in creating high-quality content that serves them well will be the driving factor to earning the watch hours and making money on YouTube in more ways than one.

As a video creator, if you’re wondering, “How can I stand out among all the existing YouTube content?” The key is finding the gap in the existing information currently available to your ideal viewer. The next step is plain and simple –

Commit to bridging that gap.

To identify the gap, start by picking out questions you typically hear from your clients or potential clients. Try to come up with FAQs for your niche and create a series of YouTube videos answering one question per video. Make each video informative, comprehensive, and without a bunch of fluff that wastes people’s time – trust me, their attention spans are short, and they want to get to the point ASAP.

After creating this first series of YouTube FAQ videos, continue to fuel your audience’s progress with other tips, resources, how-to’s, and encouragement along their journey. Encourage interaction with you in the comments and on social media no matter how many subscribers you have, and you’ll soon see where people are getting lost or where they need more information. Be the person to answer their burning questions and help make life a little easier for them.

Build Sustainability Into Your Workflow

While it likely won’t be your key to overnight success, YouTube can be extremely profitable when done right (perhaps with some guidance? hint hint). A crucial component to the formula for making money on YouTube is not to expect immediate results.

Whether we’re talking blogs, podcasts, or videos, making money as a content creator takes patience and calculated sustainability so that you can be consistent for your audience. It takes time to gain traction on any medium, and YouTube is no different. As a YouTube channel owner, you have to commit to building your content library over time.

Design a content creation workflow that allows you time off and supports your energy throughout the weeks and months. That might mean you create 2 videos per week for 3 weeks and then take a week off.

If Wednesdays already tend to be your high-stress days at work, don’t add video editing to your to-do list on that day. Add time-blocked appointments with yourself to your calendar for drafting scripts, recording, and editing/ post-production components like descriptions, thumbnails, and video titles that your audience will likely click on.

Make content creation and your desire to make money on YouTube work for you as much as you’re working for it.

Whatever you do, don’t:

1) assume you can record and edit and post a video all within the same week

2) plan to record one video per week on a consistent day at a particular time

I promise you, these two tempting hustler-style workflow assumptions will trip you up at some point! (I know because I’ve been there.) What makes it worse is when you get off-kilter once, it becomes even more likely that your content creation wheels might completely fall off the bus.

Include a Call To Action In Every Video

Not only should each of your videos help your ideal client in some specific way, but it should provide your viewer an opportunity to take the next step with you. That means during the drafting phase, you’ve got to decide what action you want your potential subscriber to take.

Whether you’re aiming to grow your channel so you can earn ad revenue one day or not, you should be directing traffic to a platform you own – your website. Naturally, as you help people resolve issues, feel better about themselves, or achieve goals in their lives, they’ll want more.

I bet you already planned to ask them to “Like and Subscribe to this channel!” and maybe you already planned to remind them to “click the bell so you’ll get notified when a new video goes live!”

But here’s the deal. Just like you don’t own your social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, you don’t “own” subscribers to your YouTube channel. Your account on any of those platforms can be frozen, hacked, or deleted at any time.

Let’s hope you never experience having your account on any platform suspended and have to fight to get it reinstated (I have!), but if you have your loyal fans on an email list, that occurrence will be much less traumatic since you’ll still have an opportunity to connect with them.

At the very least, your main CTA (call to action) on every video should be to join your email list. They can opt-in for a freebie of some sort, whether that be a coupon code or a PDF lead magnet. Either way, your first step to establishing a direct connection with your audience is getting their name and email address.

On every video, clearly and concisely invite your viewers to become a

subscriber to your email list in addition to subscribing to your YouTube channel.

Once they’re on your list, they should be met with a welcome sequence of emails that reassures them they made the right choice, allows them to get to know you more, and lets them know how to do business with you.

Whether you sell merch, provide a subscription service, offer coaching, or have created a paid membership program, establish a path that leads your YouTube video viewers from discovery to curiosity to interest to raving fans.

How to Generate Revenue From Your YouTube Account (with or without the YouTube Partner Program)

If your goal is to monetize via your own services and products, do the math on how much money you need, how many widgets you need to sell, how many viewers you need per video (not every viewer is a purchaser), and how many videos you need to make to reach your target revenue goals. It’s only up from there since people can continue viewing and buying from your old videos forever.

To convert your audience to clients, invite them off of YouTube, ideally to your email list. You can even invite them to follow your social media platforms or encourage them to watch your videos on your own website, where you have a related blog posted (right? RIGHT?!).

It’s important to have a way to connect with your audience so that when you have an online course, service offering, or you’re an affiliate for a product, you’re able to directly share that oppportunity with your potential clients.

Similar to how one can make money podcasting, things like online courses, sponsorships, brand deals, paid membership programs, partnerships, affiliate link promotion, collaborations with brands, eBooks, consulting, coaching, and subscription services are the top ways to make money on YouTube. Some YouTube partners even sell their own merchandise, like t-shirts, totes, coffee mugs, and jewelry.

One of the fastest ways to earn money is through an affiliate program. If you go this route, only add affiliate links to products and services you know, use, and love. Consumers can sense it when you’re only promoting a product with hopes of generating revenue, especially if it’s misaligned with your messaging, brand, or lifestyle.

On the other hand…

If your goal is to monetize via ads as a YouTube creator, do the math on how many videos you need to create at each length to generate 1,000 subs and 4,000 watch hours. Keep constant track of the amount of time people watch, where they fall off, and whether they subscribe.

Be agile with your content, CTAs, video lengths, and more so that you can experiment and do more of what works as you learn user behavior.

Understanding Analytics and Using That Info to Make Money on YouTube

Factors YouTube takes into account to justify rankings are the number of viewers that subscribe to your channel after watching a video, the minutes viewers watch your video, how many comments are left on your videos, whether they share your video with anyone, the ratio of thumbs up to thumbs down, and even the click-through rate on the YouTube search results.

For example, if someone clicks on your video but leaves after a second or two, it can actually hurt your rankings because this user behavior can be an indication that the content wasn’t meeting the viewer’s expectations. On the other hand, if a viewer watches an entire video, that’s great news for your YouTube analytics.

Explore the information available on video views, watch time, and how viewers found your content in the analytics section. Try to find out what phrases they typed into YouTube search, what other YouTube channels they subscribe to, and more about their demographics. All of this information can be used to inspire additional content and more robust video descriptions as you lean in on the topics your ideal audience craves.

Additional strategies for growing your audience include creating partnerships with other YouTubers who have a channel similar to yours. Just like podcasters do interview swaps and get booked as a guest on other shows, you can feature each other as guests, do shout-outs, or co-host a short YouTube series. Any content created together should be a win-win for both creators and audiences.

Another option is to ask popular YouTubers with high subscriber counts if you could feature some of their videos and content on your site and if they might do the same for you. Ideally, this would attract your shared niche audience to both channels, increasing your number of subscribers.

Increasing Your YouTube SEO to Attract a Larger Audience

Beyond tweaking video length, content, and frequency, as a content creator, you have to discover what’s attractive and interesting enough to your target audience to make them click on your video in the first place.

Your video title and the first three sentences of your video description will either attract your ideal customer or deter them. This is where your keyword research becomes imperative.

Figure out the key phrases and questions people search for in your niche. Then, use those keywords and phrases to inspire your creative process, and be sure to include them in your video titles and the first paragraph of your descriptions, making them highly searchable.

I know it’s tempting, but don’t pursue keywords with 15,000 or more hits per month. Those keywords are too saturated, highly competitive, and difficult to rank for.

Since Google owns YouTube, they’re always working to understand what keeps people watching and clicking on more videos. As they learn more, they adjust the algorithm and keyword research accordingly. So, plan on updating your keywords along with your video descriptions to remain highly ranked.

Learn more about SEO here – use the same techniques as if you were writing for blog readers!

Grow Your YouTube Account by Creating Videos For Popularity And Profitability

When planning your content, your purpose should be to show your audience that you’re the top resource for the kind of information or experience they seek. To do so, find the balance between what you’re knowledgeable and passionate about and what your viewers want to see.

Do they want to be entertained or told a story?

Or do they just want a quick tutorial to tell them exactly how to do something?

As you’re scripting your content, think about your viewer’s journey and the relationship you want to build. When you meet someone for the very first time, you want to provide this person with basic information about who you are and what you are about. Then as the relationship grows and evolves, you can start to gradually provide more in-depth content.

You can even help guide your viewers through your content to help them gain the information or knowledge they desire. One way to help guide your viewer is by using cards that pop up as overlays in the corner of the video to suggest another video on a related topic. Another way to help your viewer connect the dots is to provide links to related, helpful content in the description.

Even if you begin by monetizing your own way and are making a killing at selling courses or coaching through YT, eventually, you’ll hit the 1000/4000 requirement and get to join the YouTube Partner Program.

About the YouTube Partner Program and YouTube Premium Subscribers

Through YouTube’s partner program, you can make money on YouTube through ads placed before or during your video. You’ll also connect your Google AdSense account to your channel and allow them to place banners on your video.

YouTube’s partner program is only available once your channel has reached 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past 12 months. Once you reach this milestone and set up your account as a YouTube Partner, you’ll be able to make more money on YouTube without any extra work.

There is one catch. You aren’t automatically inducted into monetization even once you reach 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time.

You have to set up your Google Adsense account and join the YouTube partner program.

Once you agree to follow YouTube’s monetization policies and live in a country where the YouTube Partner Program is available, you can enable monetization on your YouTube channel.

Pro Tip for Joining the Partner Program:

Begin the setup/registration before you reach the minimum threshold for watch hours and subscribers. If you reach this milestone without completing the setup, Google can automatically begin placing ads on your videos without your consent and without paying you.

YouTube Premium subscribers are now what used to be called YouTube Red subscribers. These are viewers who pay a subscription to YouTube to watch videos without advertisements. This has no effect on you. You will still make money when these viewers watch your videos once you are registered for the YouTube partner program.

Even if you don’t reach the heights of the YouTube partner program quickly, we have already discussed several more beneficial ways how to make money on YouTube.

Can You Monetize YouTube, Even with a Small Audience?

Yes! You can 100% monetize even the smallest niche audience using your YoutTube channel as the primary driver for potential customer reach and acquisition.

The keys to making money quickly on YouTube, regardless of subscriber count, are:

a) Create curated content that connects a specific person (ideal client) with a solution to a challenge they face

b) Build sustainability into your production schedule so that you can produce videos for your audience on a consistent basis for the long haul

c) Include a clear CTA on each of your videos that invites them to subscribe to your email list

d) Adjust your content, video length, frequency, keywords, and offerings based on your target client’s behavior (through analytics, surveys, and your interactions with them)

e) Lead viewers and email subscribers toward your paid products and services

Remember, making money through content creation, even via YouTube videos, is a long-term commitment and may require a significant amount of work upfront before you see results. You have to allow time for potential customers to discover you, time for search engines to rank your content, and time to develop a library your viewers will love.

So, begin with the end in mind. Take your time, identify your audience, serve their needs, and focus on becoming the authority figure in your niche.

Your YouTube channel can be integral to creating a powerful brand and open the doors to many other opportunities. It’s not too late to earn money on YouTube. In fact, it might be the perfect platform for you to start making more money online.

While it may not feel like passive income at first, creating a YouTube channel for a dedicated audience allows your content to work for you, even while you sleep.

If you need some guidance during the channel set-up process, would prefer not to edit your own videos, or need keyword-rich YouTube channel and video descriptions, I’m here to help!

Need a little nudge to get started?

Consider this, there are over 5 billion YouTube videos viewed every day, with those video views generating over $13 billion in ad revenue alone.

There’s a huge opportunity for you to monetize your brand using YouTube.

If you’re like some creators, perhaps you’re worried that YouTube is too saturated for you to see any real success. That couldn’t be further from the truth! While it’s true that there are an estimated 57,000 (and counting) years of content on YouTube, there’s still plenty of room for you.