How to Make Money on YouTube: 9 Strategies That Work

Most advice about making money on YouTube starts at the wrong end: ad revenue. Ads are the slowest-arriving and, for most working creators, the smallest of the income lines. They also require you to clear a threshold that takes the average channel a year or more to reach.

The useful version of this list is ordered by when each one starts working — not by how much it eventually pays. Several of these need zero subscribers and can earn on the video you publish this week.

The one number that governs everything

Before the strategies, the gate. YouTube's monetization features sit behind the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), which has two entry levels:

Confirm the current numbers on YouTube's own eligibility page — they have moved more than once, and they vary by country.

Note what that gate does not cover: sponsorships, affiliate income, your own products, merch through a third-party store. Those are between you and the people paying you, and they work from your first video.

1. Affiliate links — starts at zero subscribers

You recommend a product you actually use, link it, and earn a cut when someone buys. No threshold, no application to YouTube, and it works on a video with 400 views if those 400 people came searching for exactly that product.

This is the highest-leverage first income line for most channels because it rewards intentrather than scale. A tutorial that ranks for “best microphone for podcasting” converts a fraction of a percent of a small, highly-motivated audience — and that beats a million entertainment views at a low RPM. Full mechanics, program picks and the disclosure rules are in the affiliate marketing guide.

2. Your own product or service — the highest ceiling

Courses, coaching, templates, software, freelance work. Nothing on this list pays as well per viewer, because you keep all of it and you set the price. A consultant whose channel sends four qualified enquiries a month is earning more from YouTube than most channels with a hundred times the views.

The catch is that it only works if your content and your offer are the same subject. A channel about lens choice can sell a lighting course; it cannot sell a productivity app to the same audience. If you have a business already, this should be your first line, not your last.

3. Brand sponsorships — usually the biggest cheque

A brand pays for a segment in your video. For most mid-sized channels this out-earns ad revenue several times over, and it doesn't require YPP — brands care about your audience, not your monetization status.

Rates are negotiated per deal and vary enormously by niche; a B2B software channel with 20,000 subscribers can command more than an entertainment channel with 500,000, because the viewers are worth more to the advertiser. Start by approaching brands you already use and can speak about credibly. Two rules: get paid before delivery or use a contract with a payment schedule, and always switch on the paid promotion disclosure — it is required, and burying it is the fastest way to lose both the audience and the account.

4. Ad revenue — the one everybody means

Once you're in the full tier of YPP, ads run on your videos and you keep 55% of the ad revenue they generate. That's already accounted for in RPM, the number you'll see in Studio: revenue per 1,000 views, after YouTube's share.

Typical long-form RPMs run from around a dollar per 1,000 views in entertainment and music up to well over ten in finance and business. Which means view count alone tells you very little — a niche with advertisers competing for it is worth several times the same audience elsewhere. Our free YouTube money calculator will give you a range for your own numbers, with the reasons that range is wide.

Ad revenue is worth having and a bad thing to build a plan around. It arrives late, it fluctuates with the advertising calendar, and it is the line you control least.

5. Channel memberships — recurring, and it starts at 500 subs

Monthly paid tiers with perks you define: badges, emoji, members-only posts and videos, early access. Available at the fan-funding tier, so you can be earning here long before ads switch on.

Conversion is typically a low single-digit percentage of an engaged audience, so the maths only works if your viewers feel a relationship with you rather than with the topic. Tutorial channels tend to do badly here; community-driven channels do well. Give members something genuinely additional — a members-only Q&A, the raw project files, early cuts — not a badge.

6. Super Thanks, Super Chat and Super Stickers

Direct viewer tips: on videos (Super Thanks), during live streams (Super Chat), and as paid animated stickers. Also fan-funding tier.

Unpredictable and rarely a primary line, but close to free money on content that already exists — and Super Chat can be substantial for channels that stream regularly to a committed audience. Enable it and forget about it.

7. Merch — later than you think

Print-on-demand or your own store. The honest version: merch sells when people want to signal membership of your community, not when they want a t-shirt. Channels with a catchphrase, an in-joke or a strong identity sell it; channels that teach a skill mostly don't.

Print-on-demand means no inventory risk, so there's little downside to trying — just don't plan around it until you've seen your audience ask for it unprompted.

8. Off-platform support: Patreon, newsletters, communities

The same idea as memberships, run somewhere you own. You keep a bigger cut, you keep the customer relationship, and it survives anything that happens to your channel — which is the real argument for it.

The trade-off is friction: every extra click loses people, and YouTube won't promote a link off-platform. Most creators who do this well use YouTube memberships for the casual supporters and an off-platform tier for the committed ones.

9. Licensing your footage

Niche, but real: news outlets, documentary producers and stock libraries pay for usable original footage. Relevant if you shoot anything unrepeatable — events, wildlife, drone work, unusual locations. Keep your raw files, keep them organised, and be reachable via a business email on your channel page.

What a realistic first year looks like

Roughly, in the order things actually arrive:

1. Months 1–3: affiliate links on anything you genuinely recommend. Your own service, if you have one. Income is small and real.
2. Months 3–9: cross 500 subscribers, join the fan-funding tier, switch on memberships and Super Thanks. First inbound sponsorship enquiries if your niche has advertisers in it.
3. Months 6–18: cross 1,000 subscribers and the watch-hour threshold, ads switch on. Sponsorship rates become negotiable rather than take-it-or-leave-it.

Those windows assume consistent publishing on a topic people search for. The thing that moves all three dates is the same: whether your videos get found.

The uncomfortable common factor

Every line on this list is a multiplier on views from the right people. None of them fixes a channel nobody finds. Which is why the highest-value monetization work usually isn't monetization work at all — it's choosing topics where you can realistically outrank what's already there.

That's the job VidHalodoes: point it at a search term and it reads the transcripts, chapters and comments of the videos already ranking for it, then shows you what they cover, where they're thin, and what viewers keep asking for that nobody answered. The gap is your next video, and it's the fastest route to every threshold on this page.

Next: the full YouTube Partner Program requirements, how Shorts monetization works, and affiliate marketing on YouTube in detail.