#Studentlife: Here is how to make some money on YouTube

Did you know YouTube can pay you? Yes, you can earn a living by creating content for the video-sharing giant.

YouTube is willing to pay for good content and quite a few YouTube channel owners are able to live off what their YouTube channel makes. Here’s a guide on the different options the YouTube partner programme offers.

The first step is to enable monetisation. To do this, you go to YouTube Studio – “Your channel” – “Monetisation”. The requirements you need to meet to start are a minimum of 1 000 subscribers and 4 000 public watch hours over the last year.

Under the monetisation tab you are able to see how many more subscribers you need and how many more public watch hours you need to make up.

Advertising

You can make money from advertising by making videos using a youtube ad creator that attracts viewers the advertiser wants to reach.

Your views do not determine how much you make, but how much of your Ad is watched does. Non-skippable adverts do not count as a view, therefore a YouTube user needs to watch 10, 15 or 30 seconds of the advert, after the “Skip Ad” pop up is shown, in order for you to get paid.

Channel membership

For channel membership you need more than 30 000 subscribers. Your members will pay you monthly for benefits you offer them, this makes them members of your channel and that is how you generate income.

Merchandising

For merchandising, you need more than 10 000 subscribers. You can sell your own branded merchandise to your fans or followers. This turns your channel into a virtual store.

YouTube has an agreement with Teespring where the platform also receives an incentive from this. Channel owners sell their merchandise over Teespring, this includes T-shirts, mugs, bags and the like.

Super Chat

Super Chat is a feature that allows viewers to pin a comment on live streams. This feature is selectively available depending on your country. Thankfully South Africa is one of the listed countries. Viewers pay for this feature.

YouTube Premium

You will have seen YouTube Premium pop up when listening to music on YouTube. YouTube Premium is basically Ad-free YouTube, created for viewers to enjoy uninterrupted watching for a monthly subscription.

If you ever feel like you cannot do any of the above, just remember there are actually children who get paid to review toys on YouTube. Child’s play…