Make Money with YouTube

Posted by Felix Okoli on Thursday September 26, 2013 at 9:31:10:

When it comes to making money online, not many Kenyans know that they can also make money from Google's YouTube - The world largest video site.

Based on my experience, here are 2 ways I know one can make money with YouTube while in Kenya

1. YouTube Partner program
2. Affiliate marketing with YouTube

YouTube Partner program
===============
This is basically a program that involves creating a lot of educative or entertaining videos, uploading them to Youtube and allowing people to watch it for free. Where does the money come in? Well, you just need to ensure that your videos get popular and then apply for a partnership program with Youtube so that you get to make money from adverts by the side just like Google adsense works for bloggers. With YouTube, you get to create and own rights to your own videos and when they become popular, you would be able to monetize it. YouTube allows people to sign up for a channel for free just as if you were starting your own TV station and yet it is for free. It may be a tech, comedy, spiritual or just tutorial video that is useful to people.

I would advise however that if you want to make money from this method, you should create videos that target the global audience and not just Kenyans alone since I don't think most Kenyans watch YouTube like other countries like China, USA or UK. Create a video that attracts global audience and you'll be able to make money money as a partner.

Personally, I've not had much success with this area but I'm working on it. In the past, most African countries were not allowed for the progam but now they are and countries like Kenya and Nigeria have been included. I've also written about the publishing program here.

Popular YouTube publishers who make tens of thousands of dollars from their channel include guys like Shane Dawson and Sxephil. The more cool videos you create and publish, the more likely people are going to love and subscribe to your channel and hence the more views you will get.

2. Affiliate marketing with YouTube
This is another method to make money with YouTube which has actually being working for me. This is basically about doing affiliate marketing like you normally do but also leveraging on the power of YouTube. It has to do with converting YouTube traffic to your affiliate landing page.

If you are an affiliate to a merchant who sells products or services, your main job is to drive potential customers to your merchant's website using the affiliate link that was given to you and this ensures that you get rewarded with a commission.

Now, as a YouTube publisher, you get to add a lot of details to your video when you upload and publish it on your channel. You are allowed to add details like a title and a description for your video. It is in those description details that you can add your affiliate links.

Personally, I uploaded a parody video about a song on YouTube and noticed that it had a lot of views. I then included some affiliate links to it using Google url shortner and noticed that I got more conversions from that YouTube channel than from my own blog.

So what you basically need to do is create a a video that is related to the affiliate programs you are signed up with and include your affiliate link in the description of the video. Since most affiliate links tend to be long, it's better to shorten the url using Google's url shortner and then place them close to your YouTube videos. The more video views you get, the more likely potential customers are going to go to your affiliate page.

How do you get paid?
===========
It depends on your affiliate program or YouTube payment options. YouTube normally pays through Google using a foreign cheque or Western union when your earnings have accumulated. For affiliate programs, it depends on where the merchant ix located. Local merchants can pay you straight to your bank account while foreign merchants can pay you via western union, Paypal or cheque. Large affiliate sites like Amazon can also pay you by means of gift cards and bank wire when your earnings accumulate.