Making Money on YouTube

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YouTube There are many benefits to posting videos on YouTube. For one, it can help improve your online exposure by giving your potential audience another way to find you online.

Also, because YouTube is owned by Google, they will often display the videos in their natural search results on Google.com. So, not only can people find your videos on YouTube.com, they may also find them in Google as well.

The benefits I want to talk about here are the Partner Program and Individual Video Partnership. As a partner, you can display ads within or alongside your videos and you get paid for every ad click.

Once upon a time, you needed lots of subscribers and views to make money as a YouTube Partner, now you can earn with the Individual Partner Program as explained below.

The programs work very much like Google AdSense. In fact, your earnings and reports are all tied into your AdSense account. If you do not have an account then you'll be prompted to create one once you become a partner.

Getting Accepted as a YouTube Partner

YouTube does not disclose the specific requirements for getting accepted into the program. They simply state you must meet some predetermined criteria that consists of, but not limited to: number of subscribers, video views, video content quality, etc.

Some people have suggested that you need at least 600 subscribers and over 100,000 video views before you will be accepted into the program. Although, I've heard of people getting accepted with less than 100 subscribers. I think a lot depends on the type of channel you have and the quality of your videos.

For example, channels about how to make money tend to have a lot of sketchy, spammy content so YouTube may be more strict with channels that have this kind of content.

How Much Can You Make as a Partner?

Just like the Google AdSense Program, the details of how much you earn per click or your total earning potential are not disclosed. Overall, your earnings depend on how much the advertiser is paying for the ad and how much Google shares with you.

The more related the ads are to your videos, the greater chance people will click on them. Just know that you cannot control what ads show up. That's all up to YouTube. It's important you title and tag your videos accordingly so YouTube can serve up ads that are as relevant as possible.

It's reasonable to believe that certain channels may make more than others due to the nature of the ads. For example, financial ads may pay more than gaming ads.

Benefits of Becoming a YouTube Partner

Aside from the earnings, there are several benefits to becoming a YouTube partner. Here are just a handful...

- Custom channel banner

- Upload custom thumbnails

- Custom video page banner (small banner above videos)

- Custom text on homepage

- 300x250 image option on homepage

Applying for the YouTube Partner Program

To apply for the program, simply login to YouTube and then go to http://www.youtube.com/partners. When you try to apply, YouTube will quickly scan your account details. If you have a decent chance of being accepted, you will be prompted to complete an application.

If you have a small chance of getting accepted they will warn you to come back and apply at a later time.

It should only take a few days to hear back from YouTube after you apply, and if your application is declined, you cannot re-apply for a certain period of time.

How to Improve Your Acceptance Chances

While there's no way to guarantee you'll get accepted, here are some things you can do to improve your chances.

1) Make sure you don't have any copyrighted movie clips or music in your videos

2) Give your channel a theme and post videos that are related to that theme as opposed to uploading a bunch of videos on random topics.

3) Create quality videos with useful information, good lighting and clear audio.

Creating a Channel Banner for YouTube

Once you become partner, you can create a channel banner on the homepage of your YouTube channel. Here's a video on how to do that...

Individual Video Partnership

Recently YouTube expanded their monetization program. Now you can earn money from your videos without being an official YouTube Partner.

If you have one or more videos with several hundred views, YouTube may send you an e-mail inviting you to monetize them with ads.

Since you are not an official YouTube Partner, you won't receive privileges such as a homepage banner, video page banner, thumbnail uploads and more. However, you can still earn revenue on ads displayed alongside your videos.

There are no published requirements for the individual video partnership, so you'll have to wait patiently for the invite from YouTube.

Although I will say, it appears that number of subscribers has very little influence. I know of people who have received invites with under 50 subscribers. It would seem that the number of views on certain videos matters more.

So you may not have a lot of subscribers or total video views, but if you have one or two videos with several hundred or even thousands of views, you may receive an invite to monetize those videos.

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