Start your own YouTube channel

If you enjoy making videos then why not make it your career? There are tons of people making a living just from YouTube usually concentrating on a certain niche such as reviewing products, how to videos, funny videos and gaming videos. My children are obsessed with cake making videos, the ones where the artist films themselves decorating cakes and then speeds the film up and adds background music. The beauty about this type of video is that you don’t just find the best video and stick to it you want to watch them all! If you are not familiar with how to monetize your YouTube channel then I’ve put a straightforward guide together to help you get started.

Find your niche.

First decide what type of videos you want to upload to your YouTube channel. Don’t just try to copy other people’s success, pick something that you enjoy and are good at.

Create your own channel.

First you will need a google account, you can use an existing one or create a new one specifically for your YouTube channel at accounts.google.com, next sign into YouTube on your computer, click on the profile picture and select “create a channel” check all your details are correct and select confirm to create your channel.

Keyword search.

The first thing I do before uploading my videos is do some key word research. If you read my guide to setting up a website you’ll understand the importance of this, whether you are aiming to be the next YouTube influencer or are advertising a brand you will want your videos to appear as close to the top of the list as possible in a YouTube search.

I use a Chrome extension called TubeBuddy which at a starting price of $7.20 (£5.21) has the keyword search and optimisation tools you will need. I use the mid version at $15.20 (£11) which has the search rank tracker so I can see where I sit against my competitors on YouTube’s rankings.

Here is an example of  how it works, lets say I made a tutorial video about how to set up a Word Press website and I now want to upload my video to YouTube. Before I do I am going to do some optimisation to get my video as many visits as possible.

You can see below that I have used TubeBuddy to search “how can I build a website?” You can see that the rating is good. There is some competition and there are plenty searches for it.

can i build

If however I changed the search to “how do I make a website” then TubeBuddy rates this search as excellent since there is limited competition but still plenty of traffic.

how do i build

So as you can see, although the search doesn’t seem as grammatically correct I’m still going to use it to optimise my video since other people search this term anyway.

I’m going to add this in my video title and within my description and my tags. I can still tag the other keywords in my video and description  however I should rank high for the search “how do I make a website”.

Upload your video.

Next you are going to upload your video to your channel.

While on YouTube click on your profile picture on the top right, next select your channel from the dropdown menu. If you click on your profile picture again you should see the option for “your Tube studio” this is where you need to be and its where you are going to manage all your existing videos going forward. Within your YouTube studio there is a red camera with a plus sign in the top right, click this to upload a new video.

Once selected a window will open with a set up wizard. The first step is “upload video”. You can search the file or drag and drop to upload.

Follow the rest of the steps including adding the title, description, any tags and a thumbnail. (if you used TubeBuddy use their recommendations). Lastly you’ll be asked how you want to promote your video, I’d select private, this way you can preview your video to make sure it looks how you want it. Once you’ve previewed your video and you’re happy with it you can go to your “video” tab and click edit. Change your promotion from private to public and away you go.

Monetise your channel.

Before you can start to make money on YouTube you’ll need to join YouTube’s “partner program”.

  1. Log onto YouTube and click on the “Creators & Partners” link.
  2. Click the “Become a partner” tab followed by the get started button.
  3. Click “Enable my account” button from the monetisation screen.
  4. Accept the terms of service.
  5. Click to enable the types of adverts you wish to display on your videos.
  6. Click “monetise” to enable it. 

Before you can be considered for YouTube’s partner program you need to be able pass the eligibility checks below.

  1. Make sure you’re following YouTube’s compliance policy.
  2. Live in a country /region where the YouTube partner program is available.
  3. Have more than 1000 subscribers.
  4. Have more than 4000 valid public watched hours in the last 12 months.
  5. Have an ad sense account linked to your channel.

You get paid from YouTube per CPM. CPM is how much money advertisers pay for 1000 ad impressions (an ad impression is every time  an ad is displayed.) You can expect to earn between $0.30 (20p) and $2.50 (£1.79) CPM (cost per thousand ads). 

Some more popular YouTubers can earn $10 (£7.20) CPM.

Not all of your videos will be eligible for ads and as you can see you will need a lot of views to make decent money.

For example if you get 1000,000 ads a month on your video views  then you will get 1000 CPM.