Lessons
Lesson Info
Monetize Your Vlog
Let's talk about money. That's always fun. Now that you have an audience. Okay, so some ways that you can make money off of your vlog. Ad money. So this is YouTube. You can't really do that off Instagram. Facebook is starting to do it, but you have to have a lot of followers to do that so. YouTube, you can make money off of ad money. I did, for my last three years, it's been like super slow, like making, a couple dollars here and there a day, and now, I'm making anywhere between $70 to $150 a day off ad money. And that's just off of all my content being viewed. Once you start building a library, and people start viewing it, all of a sudden now the money, the amount of views per day goes up and that's where your ad money starts taking off. It's not huge amounts of money, that's not where the money is in vlogging, but it's definitely helpful. Affiliate marketing, that's what I was saying with kit.com but just affiliate marketing anyway. If you are ever gonna talk about a product, or you'...
re talking about something that you would use, find an affiliate link for it where you can make money off of that sale. So, if somebody decides to buy a camera because they watched your video, you might need to have an affiliate link in your description, so that you get money off of each of that sale. So, if you look on any of my YouTube videos, you go down in the description and if I'm ever showing a product, I guarantee almost always that there's gonna be an affiliate link because if somebody's gonna watch their video and make a decision based on my video, I might as well get a kick back. It doesn't charge the person any more. It's a way to support creators, by using those links and actually, if you're gonna purchase the product, it helps support a creator and it gives them a little kick back. Sponsored posts. This is obviously as you grow and you get bigger, you can get companies to pay to post a video, pay to be in your video. You could have a 20 second sponsorship, where you're just talking about a company. Or, you could do a whole video. So, I did a whole video on this camera, and I got paid to do it. So, you'll start getting these sponsored posts, and these will change as time goes on and they get bigger and bigger. I'm working on some big deals right now. One that wants to take me to Costa Rica for a week and shoot with a camera. They kind of come out of no where, and there's a lot of opportunity to get sponsored posts because vlogging, YouTube, social media in general is kind of like a new way for people to market. It's kind of crazy. Exchange. So a lot of product exchanges. So, if you're photographers, if you like products, there is a lot of opportunities to basically just get free products. So, if you like products, if you like a specific brand or you like specific styles of products, there are a lot of companies out there that will just send it to you. You just have to do a review for them. And if it fits your brand, it fits your channel, then do it. I do product reviews all the time because they fit what I'm doing. I'm not gonna do a makeup video though, that talks about makeup, because it doesn't fit my brand. Maybe it will, I don't know. I'll change it someday. Create a product. So this is huge, and this is something that I've been doing for a while. Create a product around what it is that you do. If you're a wedding photographer, and you have a specific style to what you're doing, I guarantee there is someone out there that wants to buy a course on how to do wedding photography with you. So, think of ways that you could build a course around what it is that you're doing. So, for me, I have a course on how to self stock footage and make money doing it. I have a course on how to set up your YouTube studio. And then I'm starting creator film school, which is gonna be nuts to bolts, everything that you need to know if you want to start a production company and get into making money as a creator. So, you could create these different courses around different things that you do, and you put them in your description, you talk about them and people will buy your products. Also, for a lot of photographers, if you have pre-sets, pre-sets are easy to sell. For me, I sell LUTs for videos, so look up tables, for if I sell a different look. If I make a video with a specific look that I create, I'll sell that look. So, there's different ways that you can create products out of what you're doing. And new clients. So, a lot of times, you will, like new clients will come out of nowhere, and all of a sudden you, like I was saying, we've worked with Royal Caribbean. There's other clients that have come through the doors that just, they found us off of our vlog, and it just opened the world to what it is that you're doing. So, for example, one of these opportunities came from one of my followers, he was like check out BlackBox. So, BlackBox is a way that you can upload your footage to their platform and they submit it to stock agencies for you. I knew nothing about this. It was kind of in it's infancy. And he told me about it, I checked it out, and now I submit all of my footage that could be used as stock footage on there. And so now I'm making money off of the B role that I'm shooting for my vlog. So, if I'm shooting drone shots, I'm shooting gimbal shots, I now upload that as stock footage through this website, and I now make money off of that, and it's just passive income, it just comes in randomly. So I'll make $20 here, $30 here, just from footage that I shot in my vlogs. So, there's just a lot of different ways that you could start finding to monetize the videos that you're producing already. But, trust is the most important. And you don't want to be a sell out. So, you don't want to push a product that you don't actually care, or that you wouldn't actually use yourself. So, if I was sent a gimbal and it sucks, I'm gonna tell my viewers that this gimbal sucks. You've got to be careful that you're not gonna accept products and sign a contract, and say that you're gonna promote something and talk about it and make it this amazing thing, when it's a terrible product. So, a lot of times, I am battling that, where clients or people will send me a product and they'll be like well I need you to produce a high quality video, that is amazing, and that says how good this gimbal is, and tell them that their gimbal sucks and they're like, well no, you need to produce a high quality video that says it's good. And I'm like, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna tell my viewers that this gimbal sucks. So, either you can take your product back, or I'm gonna put this video out. You have to trust what it is that you're... You have to produce the content that you believe in. Because trust is important. So, yeah that's why I'm talking about only things that make sense for your brand. Honest opinions. You need to communicate with your audience, and you don't want to be pushy and always sale-sy And content comes before ads. You don't want to always be pushing products. You still want to produce the content that you want to produce that's fun, the vlogs, the videos, all that good stuff.
Ratings and Reviews
Susan Wiebe
Thanks Jeven for an informative look into vlogging. I am a pastry chef & am embarking on this journey, so there was some very good tips on where to start. Looking forward to your next course. Sue Wiebe