Sell products or merchandise

 You’ll have to agree to follow all of YouTube’s monetization policies and live in a country or region where the YPP is available. Then, you can apply for monetization once you hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year, or 1,000 subscribers with 10 million valid public Shorts views within the past 90 days.

Here’s how to enable monetization on YouTube:

• Sign in to the YouTube account you want to monetize.
• Click the icon for your account in the top right corner.
• Click YouTube Studio.
• In the left menu, select Other Features > Monetization.
• Read and agree to the YouTuber Partner Program terms and eligibility requirements.
• Create a new Google AdSense account or connect an existing one to your channel. (You need an AdSense account to get paid.)
• Set your monetization preferences.

Once that’s done, head back to the dashboard and click the Analytics tab on the left side. From there, you’ll need to choose Revenue from the tabs at the top, then scroll down to the chart Monthly Estimated Revenue to get an idea of your predicted YouTube revenue.

What is YouTube Premium?

YouTube Premium is a paid membership program that lets fans watch and support their favorite content creators without ads. For creators, not much changes, as they’ll get paid for content consumed by non-members on YouTube, along with content on YouTube Premium.

Creators are paid for YouTube Premium based on how much members watch their content. Consider revenue earned from YouTube Premium subscribers as a secondary revenue stream in addition to what you’re already earning through ads.

While it’s easy to set up, earning money through advertising as a YouTube Partner is far from the most lucrative revenue stream you can create for yourself.

Why you should look beyond ads for revenue

YouTube received a lot of backlash around its transparency regarding advertising on the platform and what qualifies as “advertiser friendly” content.
At the time, many YouTube creators feared they would lose out on advertising revenue due to the nature of their content.

Your content may get excluded from ad revenue if Youtube deems it:

• Sexually suggestive, including partial nudity and sexual humor
• Violent, including displays of serious injury and events related to violent extremism
• Inappropriate in language, including harassment, profanity, and vulgar language
• Promotional of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use, and abuse of such items
• Controversial or sensitive, including events and subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters, and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown

This is nothing new. YouTube has been demonetizing content it doesn’t deem advertiser friendly since 2012 via an automated process. It was originally done without warning and without the content creator’s knowledge.

Now, creators are notified when their content is flagged and can contest any time they feel a video was mistakenly excluded from YouTube’s advertising network.

Advertising might be a common means of generating passive income for creators, but the trade-off is that YouTube’s parent company, Google, gets to keep around a 45% share of ad revenue.

In short, YouTubers should explore other revenue streams to sustain their creative hobby. Below, we’ll share how to earn money from YouTube without AdSense.

2. Sell products or merchandise

You can sell plenty of different products to make money through your YouTube channel. Selling merch—t-shirts, coffee mugs, tote bags, snapbacks, you name it—has a benefit beyond revenue.

Merchandise increases your exposure by putting your online brand and personality out into the offline world, and deepens the relationship between you and your fans as they literally “buy” into what you’re doing. Creator Roman Atwood sells a variety of merchandise in his store under the Smile More brand.

Selling branded swag is easier than it might seem at first. You can order affordable designs tailored for specific products, like t-shirts, using freelance sites such as Fiverr.

And when it comes to handling orders, you can integrate your store with services like DSers or one of the many print-on-demand providers that take care of shipping, fulfillment, and customer support, letting you reap all of the benefits of a print-on-demand business that requires less effort on your part.

💡 TIP: Use Shopify’s YouTube sales channel to promote and sell your products on YouTube. Sync your product catalog, tag or pin products in live streams, and manage all your sales from Shopify.App Download