How to make money on Youtube?
Travel around the World making (and being paid!) to make videos for Youtube? Well, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 5 months.
If you’ve ever made, or I guess even watched, a video on Youtube there is now a huge opportunity for you to make money online with Youtube.
You don’t need 10 million views on your main channel like I do, all you need is a video camera, know how to set up a Youtube account and an idea of how videos come across on Youtube.
Then it’s really simple:
Just offer to make videos for local companies, hotels, restaurants etc.
That’s it. It’s really simple!
How it works…
The key is that most business owners are far too busy to even know what Youtube does, let along know how to set up a channel and upload videos. If you have that knowledge it can be invaluable for them. And anything that makes them money they will be happy to pay for! Customers love video and really seeing a product or service before they buy. Plus Youtube is now the second biggest search engine in the world. All this makes it something that every business needs, but not everyone knows how to do. Until you come along that is!
How I started…
Although “local internet marketing” has become a bit of a boom, I only started this by accident. Last year I was staying at a friend’s resort in Thailand. And I wanted to put up a video on my Youtube channel to show my blog readers where I was staying. Here it is: Samui Accommodation.
But it had an unintended side effect. When I went back this year they were saying how many more customers they’d had because people had seen the video on Youtube when deciding where to stay. It brought them trust and showed the customers exactly what they were getting. They were very happy. So was I.
Hmmm… so I had another go with another friend’s hotel (as you can tell I pretty much live in hotels), this time setting up a whole new channel for them: New Zealand Accommodation.
And I’ve also set up channels and made videos for lots of other places.
Youtube is still young, so this probably won’t work in a few years time, so get your skates on now!
Things to be careful of…..
These are some of the hints and tips I’ve learnt (usually the hard way!)
1. Brevity: Keep the videos short. People switch off after a minute or so.
2. Honesty: Do it in one cut. It makes editing easier and shows the real thing, you didn’t just cut out any bad things as you can see everything!
3. Be authentic: If it’s a commercial channel for a business, that’s cool. But don’t put ads on a personal channel. I found this out the hard, and ironic, way as one of the videos I wasn’t paid to do was for New Zealand Wine. As we weren’t doing it as a commercial project I thought it would be a cool video just to put on my personal channel (New Zealand wine is great!), but everyone thought it was an ad and hated it! Don’t mix business and pleasure I guess!
3. Fun: Smile and have fun with it!
There are also plenty of other tips and “secret sauces” to making this work well, but I think I’ll keep those to myself for the moment! ; )
But if you have a camera, can get people to smile and talk well then have a go, it’s a great way to get paid and you also end up with lots of fringe benefits, we got given free T-shirts, Bungy Jumps, Jet Boat rides and all sorts of other things if we filmed them and let them use the clips on Youtube!