How I Made $2,000 on YouTube in 5 Months

Here’s exactly how I made $2,000 on YouTube. With 2 billion monthly users and growing, YouTube shows no signs of slowing anytime soon. That’s why if you’re thinking of starting a YouTube channel but feel like you’re too late to the game, you’re not! I can’t stand when I hear people complain about the market being oversaturated. Everyone has something unique about themselves that they can teach or show to the YouTube community, so don’t think that it’s too late to “make it” on YouTube. You can still start a channel and definitely still make money on YouTube. 

If you’re too excited and can’t wait to read through all this to find out how I made $2,000 on YouTube in 5 months, everything is laid out in my online course, which you can find by clicking here. 

 

My Story: The Quick Rundown

I won’t bore you with the details, but I wanted to share a bit about my YouTube journey so you could relate to my story and hopefully inspire you. In 2018, I started my YouTube channel just for fun back to document my travels while I was studying abroad in Rome. I had no intention of monetizing it or making money from my channel, I just wanted to share my life in Rome with family and friends. But I quickly fell in love with the process of shooting and editing videos for my channel. 

When I got home and finished my last semester in college, I wasn’t filming very much. Life and school got in the way and I didn’t have any ideas of what I could film. I graduated early in December of 2018 and moved back home because I couldn’t get a job. I was extremely discouraged with my unsuccessful job hunt and had nothing to do. Since I know that I’m happiest when I’m being creative, I decided to start creating YouTube videos again by sharing some self portrait tutorials. 

I was inspired by my favorite YouTuber, Sorelle Amore, who came up with the concept of the “advanced selfie.” She inspired me to try my own self portraits and I documented my process of learning how to do them. I highly recommend that you take mental note of what types of videos inspire you and try to mimic them within your own channel. Notice I said mimic, not copy! 

Find what you’re passionate about and create videos about those topics.

 

Your passion will show through in your work. Once I got a better idea of the type of videos that I like to create, I posted a video that would ultimately change my YouTube career. Let’s get into that. 

 

 

I Created Educational Videos

While I saw some success with my self portrait videos and lots of kind comments on them, they weren’t performing as great as I was hoping. However, one of those videos was performing notably better than the others. 

It was this one. This video explained “How to Take Self Portraits in 5 Easy Steps” instead of documenting my advanced selfie challenges. Viewers understood what the video would accomplish just by the title. For someone who wants to learn photography, learning how to take portraits in 5 easy steps seems doable! 

I started realizing that my top performing videos were ones like these, showing people how to do something. I soon came to realize that YouTube is essentially another search engine. People often look for videos that teach them how to do something or how to solve one of their problems. If you create a high quality video that helps answer their question, you will definitely see success. So my next takeaway tip is:

Start creating educational or “how-to” videos to attract a bigger audience.

 

After realizing the power of educational videos, I embarked on the strongest video of my YouTube career to date. I challenged myself to see how much Italian I could learn in one month. After studying abroad in Rome and watching Nathaniel Drew’s video, I wanted to try learning the language myself. I documented my process in this video and shared 10 tips to start learning a language. 

A few months later, the video took off! I woke up one morning, checked my analytics, and saw a huge spike in views. It was so exciting! Still wondering how I made $2,000 on YouTube? Let’s take a look at what happened. 

 

 

How I Started Using Pinterest

I did a bunch of research about Pinterest when I started my blog. I took courses to learn how to drive traffic to my blog and learned how to design beautiful and effective pins. One day I realized I could do the same thing for my YouTube channel. If Pinterest was so effective at driving traffic to your blog, why couldn’t you also use it for YouTube?

I decided to test this theory out and it was extremely successful for me. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons that my Italian video took off! I created pins for that video and those went viral. The pins had thousands of impressions and thousands of link clicks. It was an entirely new traffic source that I tapped into. 

Read more about using Pinterest for YouTube in my blog post here. 

Use Pinterest as a source to drive massive traffic to your YouTube videos. 

So how exactly did I use Pinterest? It’s not as simple as posting a pin and watching it take off. There’s a lot more to it. You have to understand Pinterest, learn about what makes a pin go viral, and learn about the best SEO practices. If that seems overwhelming, don’t worry! I have an entire online course that walks you through everything from creating a Pinterest account and designing beautiful pins that get clicks to driving thousands of views to your YouTube videos. 

If you’re ready to invest in yourself and learn how to monetize and grow your YouTube channel using Pinterest, check out my online course here!

 

 

I Focused on The Importance of Thumbnails and Watch Time

In addition to marketing through Pinterest, I also learned just how important your thumbnails are. Basically, here’s a quick rundown of the YouTube algorithm:

1. You post a video
2. The video appears on a small number of people’s home feeds (or with correct SEO and keywords, can be found high up in search results)
3. People click on the video if it’s appealing to them because of the title or thumbnail 
4. If more people click from their home feed, that helps boost your engagement rate
5. If they don’t click, this signals to YouTube that people aren’t interested in your video so the promotion ends there 

So, see how important thumbnails and titles are?! If people constantly overlook your video because your thumbnail is boring, your video won’t get any views! I also go more into detail about this in my online course, so you can learn more about creating effective thumbnails. 

Create clear, attention-grabbing, high-quality thumbnails to attract more viewers. 

 

However, don’t stop there. Once you get people to click on your video, you need to keep their attention. Watch time is extremely important for the success of your video. You want to keep people’s attention so they watch the majority of your video. If they click out after a few seconds, this will signal to YouTube that your video isn’t good and people aren’t watching it. That could really hurt you since YouTube will stop putting it on people’s home feeds. Instead, you want people to stay engaged so YouTube sees your video as something it should recommend to a bigger audience! 

That’s what happened to my Italian video. It had a high watch time and therefore a great engagement rate. People started leaving a ton of comments and likes, which signaled to YouTube that this was of major interest. I even got a message in my YouTube studio that YouTube started recommending my video on more home feeds, so I know this is true!

I dive deeper into creating more engaging videos in my course, so if you’re struggling to figure out how to keep viewers’ attention, check out my course for more details. 

 

Final Thoughts…

After my Italian video blew up in October, I was monetized a few weeks later after reaching the 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours threshold. I kept growing from there and made over $450 in ad revenue in my first month of monetization! If you want to see exactly how much I made for my first YouTube paycheck, check out my video about it here. 

 

 

I hope these tips were helpful and inspired you to create a YouTube channel or push to monetize yours. After I incorporated these techniques into my YouTube strategy I started seeing massive success for my channel. As of publishing this, I currently have 12,600 subscribers, 650,000 total views, and have made almost $2,000 on YouTube. Now I’m consistently seeing 1,000 new subscribers every month. Check out the stats below for proof.

 

 

Anyone can make money on YouTube, you just have to learn the best strategies and stay consistent! It’s never too late to start. Plus, if you already know the best strategies, you won’t have to waste time making mistakes. If you want to dive in and monetize your channel quickly, I highly recommend you check out my online course: “Pinterest For YouTube: Skyrocket to Success.” You’ll learn everything I discussed here more in depth, plus a ton more about how to promote your channel and develop a bigger audience. 

What will you receive from this course?

• 8 modules with downloadable chapters
• 5 full-length video tutorials
• 3 worksheets
• 1 bonus section diving into the YouTube algorithm

You will learn how to:

• Brand (or re-brand) your YouTube channel for success
• Develop an effective YouTube marketing strategy
• Find the best keywords & trending topics through various strategies to ensure viral success
• Design and create viral pins
• Drive 100s – 1000s of views to your YouTube videos using Pinterest
• Conquer the YouTube algorithm for ongoing success
• Monetize your channel and make consistent money on YouTube

Ready to start making money on YouTube? Don’t wait any longer. You definitely won’t achieve that by sitting around waiting and wishing. Take action now and invest in yourself. Click here to learn more of purchase: Pinterest For YouTube: Skyrocket to Success!