Pros and Cons of Being a YouTuber Business Model

[Diana]

Not too sure you want a website?

There are many different ways to make money online, as we discuss here. Most of the common approaches involve creating and managing a website. There’s a good reason for that – you need a platform on which to display the products you sell or share the knowledge you have. Websites are incredibly versatile, you own and control them, and it is easier than ever to build one.

However, they can still be a hassle to build and maintain, and there’s a learning curve. What if you’d rather not have a website at all?

Another appealing and potentially profitable option is starting a YouTube Channel. People LOVE to watch videos. In fact, YouTube is the second-most-popular website in the WORLD (owned by the MOST popular website, Google). It is the most popular video sharing platform by far.

You can capitalize on that traffic by creating your own YouTube channel. There are multiple ways to earn money from it – you can promote your own products, send people to your website, promote affiliate products, and even share in YouTube’s advertising revenue.

It’s free to use and you need no special equipment to get started – sounds too good to be true, right?

That’s because it is.

While the opportunities are real on such a large, popular platform, this business model is not without its drawbacks. Let’s look at both.

What are the advantages of building a YouTube channel to generate income?

It’s free to start:

All you need is a free Google account, and you can build a YouTube channel associated with it. You can even use more than one Google account and build more than one channel, if you’d like. (It’s smarter to focus on one at a time, though!)

You don’t need special equipment:

The software to create the channel and upload/manage videos is already built. And otherwise, the only equipment you need is a camera and an internet connection. You may want video creation software (in addition to or instead of the camera) but that is not essential.

YouTube has the traffic you’ll need:

According to Statista 2022, over 2.6 billion people worldwide use YouTube once a month. With all those visitors, there’s room for you to carve out a little piece of that paradise.

There are multiple ways to make money from a YouTube Business Model:

As we mentioned, you have several ways to earn money. You can build product review videos and earn commissions as an affiliate for those products. (You may even get paid sponsorships – people who pay you to promote their products on your channel!)

You can create videos that help sell your own products and services – direct viewers to your website or online store. 

You can sell YouTube channel memberships in exchange for exclusive perks like product discounts or exclusive trainings.

And if you get enough subscribers (1000+) and watch hours (4,000 watch hours over the last 12 months), YouTube may put ads before or after your videos and share the revenue with you.

What are the disadvantages of building a YouTube channel to generate income?

Despite the pros to creating a YouTube channel for income, there are definite cons as well. It’s not for everybody and though you may not spend much money, you may spend a lot of time. 

Lots of competition

As of 2022, there are 51 million YouTube channels on nearly every conceivable subject. Make Use Of recently posted a list of 10 unique YouTube channels you should watch – https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-unique-youtube-channels-you-should-watch/. Try to restrain yourself from spending too much time on any of these, we just watch you to see some of the variety!

So you can create a channel on just about any subject (as long as YouTube approves – they ban content like porn, hate, graphic violence, etc. See YouTube’s Community Guidelines: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9288567?hl=en)

It’s important to do keyword research in YouTube, just as you would in Google, before finalizing your channel plans. Say you’re interested in creating a camping channel – do some searches! See what channels come up, what they talk about, and how active they are. (Good tools for YouTube keyword research are Semrush and TubeBuddy.)

It’s also important to understand your audience. What do people who are interested in camping talk about and watch?

Learning curve – getting videos found (SEO)

No matter how good your video is, if you don’t optimize it properly, YouTube won’t know it exists and won’t show it to viewers. There are a couple of components here – one is what you do with the video itself. You need to use keywords in the titles and descriptions.

And once people find your videos, they need to watch them. YouTube rewards videos that get watched with more prominence in search. (They have a vested interest in keeping viewers engaged!)

Read this article: Getting Videos Found and Watched: YouTube SEO Basics

Learning curve – create effective videos

You can’t put up a crappy video and expect anyone to watch it, much less click on any links. Some of this is technical skill – learning teh software, learning about lighting and audio quality.  Some of this is just being interesting, and understanding the viewer well enough to keep their attention.

YouTube has many restrictions

Unfortunately, YouTube has a lot of restrictions on what can be uploaded, and they’re not always clear. And it often happens that they disable or delete your channel, for reasons they don’t make clear to you. This can be a huge blow, when you spend a lot of time and effort to build your channel and it is gone overnight.

Takes time and perhaps money to build a following

Learning the craft and growing a following (subscriber list) takes time and effort. You can’t just put up a couple of videos and expect the world to beat a path to your door. You need to consistently upload great content. It helps if you do your part to spread the word by sharing videos on social media channels.

Final thoughts and advice about earning money through video Sharing (YouTube etc.)

We offer some great products to assist with your video sharing business model. YIVE Video includes a video creation tool, and a service called Stacker Views, which helps get new channels established. You can also take advantage of automatic video uploads to several other video sharing platforms, such as DailyMotion, Rumble, and our own StreamMachine, to get more mileage from your videos.

Check out some other business models and income streams.

 

Case Studies Expert | Google News Expert | Domain Expert | I Make Websites Work Harder

Simple 1 Page Case Studies

[Author]

Posts