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Sara Nguyen

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How to make money on YouTube with a small channel // YouTube monetization strategies for beginners

Learn how to make money on YouTube with a small channel without YouTube Adsense monetization. I cover my top 5 doable ways to generate YouTube income for new channels and beginners.

👀Check out my YouTube training playlist👀
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiqAD0OPX91YKVobcNRl_YXSMCT3gX3gc

➡️ ➡️ ➡️  Grab these Swipeable YouTube Scripts: https://saranguyenonline.com/special/youtube-swipeable-scripts

🕒Timestamps🕒
00:00 Start
1:20 YouTube Partner Program requirement
2:31 Different YouTube monetization strategies
3:34 Top 5 digital offerings
3:55 1:1 Coaching
6:01 Pre-purchased services
7:09 Online programs
9:00 Done with you
10:15 Group Mastermind
11:26 Warning about YouTube Adsense

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🎙️ Thriving Creator Podcast🎙️
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How to make money on YouTube with a small channel – Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to the live stream, whether you are joining live with me now, or if you’re catching us on the replay. What are the best ways to make money on YouTube, particularly if you’re just starting out or you’re a beginner on YouTube?

Now, in today’s live stream, I’m going to talk about the top five ways that you can monetise YouTube. And this is covering the strategies that I think work best, particularly for beginners, where you’re not struggling with the YouTube partner programme and meeting that eligibility and meeting that requirement.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help you build your business using video on YouTube and social media with ease. Make sure that you check out the links in the description, because that’s where I put all the timestamps as well as links to any resources that I’ve mentioned in this video.

I’m so pumped to talk about today’s topic because it’s a question I get all the time. A lot of new creators, when they start their journey on YouTube, have a focus to get monetised and to qualify for the YouTube partner programme, because with that concept in mind, they think that you can make money from YouTube, from your videos, and then it will solve all of your money problems.

But the problem that comes with the YouTube partner programme is that there is an eligibility requirement where you need 4000 hours of watched time in 12 months, which is like almost a quarter of a million minutes of watch time, as well as a thousand subscribers.

And this just takes time for people to accumulate. And it takes time, particularly if you’re brand new to video, you’re brand new to creating content, for you to kind of get the feel of what content will you create, what resonates with your audience, and then for you to start generating enough videos that generate enough views that give you the watch time.

So in the meanwhile, while you’re trying to get monetised and make a living from YouTube, what are the different ways that you can actually make it work for you? Because there are lots of different ways to monetise on YouTube.

And I’m going to talk about them today, particularly if you’re new. Right. Particularly if you’re new to YouTube and particularly if you don’t have a large following, these are monetisation strategies that I think work best that I’ve seen creators of all sizes be able to implement themselves and to make a liveable income from YouTube.

With that said, let’s go over to my handy dandy little presentation now and I’ll go into the top ways to make money on YouTube. Now, as I said, there are lots of different ways to make money on YouTube. You’ve got the YouTube partner programme or YouTube AdSense.

You’ve got affiliate programmes where you sign up for programmes such as the Amazon Associates programme and you get a percentage or a commission-based off the sales when people buy from your links, you’ve got sponsorships where brands pay you to create videos.

But I think that these are kind of nice to haves, right? In terms of making a real income, in terms of creating income that you can rely on and that you can live off, these are kind of nice to have because they’re kind of income streams that are not as easy for you to control versus having income streams from programs, digital offerings and digital services that you create yourself.

Ideally, this is where I want you to focus. I want you to focus on digital offers and services, which I’ll be talking about in today’s episode. The five programmes, services, income streams that I highly recommend my students, my clients set up are what you see on the screen, are what you see now.

It’s one on one coaching, pre-purchased services, online programmes, done with you and mastermind. Let’s go into these one by one. All right. The first one that we’ve got here, is one on one coaching.

And the concept behind one on one coaching is that you spend one on one time with a client. Right. And this really works best when you have a curriculum that you take people through. The problem that I see people make or the mistake that I see people make with one on one coaching is that they think they could just walk up and talk to a client for an hour, give them some advice and call it a day.

But in order for you to be successful with coaching and in order for your client to see results, ideally you want to have a curriculum that you take them through. The aim is for you to help your client work through the pain points that they have so that they can get a result, so that they can see transformation.

And you can sell coaching packages as, you know, a set number of sessions for a set price. And then you continue to evolve that. Right. This is a really easy one to set up, because in terms of the mechanics of it, you can do it really easily with Zoom calls, you can do it on Skype, you can do it on Google Hangout.

The technical setup is not hard. The effort is on your side where you are delivering the coaching and taking people through an actual programme. This is one of the really easy ways to get started and that you can offer this and you don’t need to qualify.

Unlike the YouTube partner programme, it’s easy to set up and you can give value really easily in exchange for some money. The thing that you want to be cautious of when it comes to coaching is that you really want to set the boundaries up front in terms of, okay, if a client has purchased a coaching package off you, what does that include and what doesn’t that include?

That they are very clear on the boundaries and they’re not calling you at 1 AM in the morning because they’ve had a light bulb moment and they don’t expect you to answer at one o’clock in the morning. They know when the contact hours are, what’s within the remit, whether it’s emails, whether it’s calls, whatever it is.

But you set that up front so that you don’t end up like resenting the client and resenting the packages. The second, I guess, offering that I highly recommend is pre purchased services. This is where you offer a service that people buy in advance and you deliver it, deliver it to them afterwards.

And I did a lot of this in my early days as well. I did a lot of social media packages where I would do social media set up and website set up and people would buy the package in advance and then I would deliver it to them, you know, in an agreed time frame. Right.

This works really well if you’ve got a service that you can package. Whether it’s a design package or whether it is a consultant, consultancy packages, accountants work really well for this. Legal services work really well for this.

The problem with this is that in order for you to scale as you get more clients, you do need to add more resources. Right? You do need to add more help in order for you to deliver but it’s one of those things where it’s like it’s a great problem to have and you can address it when you kind of get there.

It’s really important that you’re super clear on what your package and package includes so that you don’t get any scope creep. Now, the third income stream or offering that I really love and one that I use as well is online programmes.

And this is a really time leveraged offering that you can have. And it’s where you create a programme online and people can watch it in their own time. The beauty of an online programme is that you don’t have to be there one on one with the student or the client.

And it works really well where you can take people through a curriculum, deliver it on video, and they can work through it in their own time because everyone has time of things. Everyone has things that they, you know, need to commit to with their time. And it’s much easier for them to be able to work around it on my programme, they’re for you to have set hours where they have to attend. I love online programmes.

I think they are a great way, particularly if you’re new to YouTube, for you to start generating some income, have that exchange where you deliver your expertise and then make some money. It works really well. The problem that I see people come across with online programmes is that when they first get started, they kind of throw everything in the kitchen sink into it. Right.

They try to give so much value because they’re afraid that people won’t get value out of it. So then they put so much into it. But I really think that the course needs to focus on having one outcome that the student gets through.

And then you can add more courses for the next part of the journey where where they can purchase the next part later as they progress through. Online programmes are definitely a great source for you to kind of think about if you’re on your YouTube journey.

Once again, you don’t need to qualify for the YouTube partner programme. You can create it and then you can have mechanisms to kind of get people through it and buying it. Now, the next one is something that I like to call, Done with you.

And this is where you take your online course, where people kind of work through it on their own, but you add some support to it, add some coaching to it, some scheduled coaching to it. And this allows the students as, you know, in the programme to get feedback for them to get, you know, ask questions and for you to help them.

And with done for you programmes, they’re usually priced a little bit higher than online courses alone because you’ve got that extra time that you need to provide for the students where they can come to you. And it’s about, for them, it’s about paying to access you at said kind of times.

Done for you is definitely one that I love and leverage as well. And I think that this is particularly good when you have programmes that can be delivered or completed over a slightly longer period of time, periods of time, whether it will take six months or 12 months, because people like that time to implement and they like the ability to get access to you, to review their work, to give them feedback on what they’ve done and to help them kind of tweak and refine.

Done with you is definitely one that I absolutely love as an offering, particularly if you’re new and particularly if you’re packaging your knowledge and selling it. The last one is a Group Mastermind.

Group mastermind is a concept where it’s less structured, whereas with an online course and a coaching programme, you have a curriculum that you want to take people through. With a group mastermind, it’s more about meeting regularly with a group group of people.

Typically, I say masterminds run for 6 months to 12 months and people join because they want to have, be part of your community and they join because they want that support from you and they want the accountability with like minded people.

With group masterminds, I think this is definitely a great offering to consider, but you really need to be selective about who you let in so it can’t just be every man and his dog because the dynamic of that group reflects on you and you want to have an environment where you’ve got nice people, you know, you like working with them and the people like interacting with each other and they like helping each other in addition to, you know, just being there for you.

I think it group masterminds are definitely a great way of creating products that really work for you and, you know, making money from, making money from YouTube. Here’s the reality. I talked about, you know, my top five programmes and services that you can start and you can create as a Youtuber, particularly if you’re early in your YouTube journey.

And if you are really serious about making money on YouTube, you can’t rely on YouTube AdSense alone because it’s so fickle. It is really inconsistent. And I talk about this analogy a lot where it really is like having a psychotic boss, where they’ll pay you one amount one month and then the next month it may drop or it may rise, it might drop or it may rise.

But you don’t really know what’s coming because it’s so, it fluctuates so much and it’s really kind of unpredictable for the most part. With that said, you know, if you haven’t kind of caught your head around YouTube AdSense, the way that it works is that YouTube has this metric called cost per thousand, CPM, and it’s the amount that advertisers pay per thousand views.

And you get a cut of that amount when advertisers put ads on your YouTube videos. You can’t control that cut. You can’t control what they pay. And the amount that they pay really varies. This is like just a bit of a table that I put together of some of the CPMs across different categories.

And you can see on the right-hand side, there are like some categories and some niches that just pay lower in general, like the beauty niche, the vloggers niche, lifestyle niche, entertainment niche, where they can be as low as two dollars per thousand views. Right.

That’s not a lot of money. And then you’ve got high paying niches, such as the Finance niche, the tech niche, the business niche and you’re like, oh, great, I’ll just go for that.

But you don’t control that. You don’t have control over whether you’ll have a higher CPM necessarily or a lower CPM. You can have content in that category, but you don’t get to choose how much they pay you. Right. You’re kind of at the mercy of how this whole system works.

That’s probably why I’m constantly saying the YouTube AdSense and the YouTube partner programme is a nice to have. If you really want to make a liveable income off YouTube, you need to be looking at creating your own products and your own services and offering them, adding value and creating income that way.

That basically wraps up my little tips for the top programmes to create when monetising YouTube. And I really want you to take home one thing, if anything, from today’s live stream, and that is that YouTube really works better when you use it as a tool versus when you rely on it completely.

When you leverage it as a tool and you go, okay, this is how I’m going to create content that gets me visibility, that helps create that expert status so that people will feel validated that I know what I’m talking about in this category, and then I can start nurturing a relationship with them so they can buy from me that way.

And when you do this, this is a non sleazy way of doing it. Right. As opposed to thinking of YouTube as a platform where I’m just going to pick money and pick clients and make money that way. The mistake I see a lot of creators make is that they create a video and at the end of the video they’ll be like, all right, that was my top tips for how to plant a home garden.

Now, buy my course! And when I see that, I’m like, no, you don’t understand YouTube. Like, the relationship is not quite there. They’ve just met you and you’re asking them to take out their wallet, swipe the credit card and buy from you.

There needs to be touch points in between that in order for them to convert. And when you do that, that’s that’s kind of a little bit like, you know, asking someone to marry you on the first date or not even, like that’s asking someone to marry you when you’ve just kind of literally just met them.

It’s too soon. It’s way too soon. No matter what you feel like, no matter how adamant you are, you need to kind of step back, take a breath and make sure that you nurture an actual relationship before you ask for them to give you something.

That’s something to consider there. That basically wraps up the content side. Just going to go and check on the comments. Hello, Pete Johns. Always glad to see you on the live streams. Coffee Talk and Tech, “Watching from the USA.

Always enjoy the information you bring to your subscribers”. Thank you. Thank you. So that, I think, basically wraps us up and hopefully you found it very useful today. Now, let me just bring myself back to this.

If you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already where I do lots of YouTube tutorials, social media training and live streaming tips. And if you haven’t got it already, which you may not have because it’s brand spanking new, I’ll put a link in the description to my YouTube scripts.

I’ve got some amazing YouTube templates and they’re YouTube scripts so that you can kind of plug and play and never have to stare at a blank Google doc when you’re trying to figure out what you’re going to put in your YouTube video.

It’s a free download that I offer. Check it out. The link is in the description. I will see you in the next livestream and Bye for now.

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Sara Nguyen
Sara Nguyen
AI Educator and Content Creator | Wine Lover | Matcha Addict |:D Helping small businesses grow using AI design and tech with ease
Sara Nguyen
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About Sara
I'm an over caffeinated matcha lover, coffee addict, introvert and bookworm who loves learning technology.

If you’re a thoughtful creator or small business owner who wants to use AI to share your message, build trust, and invite the right clients in, I’m here to help you do it with ease, honesty and heart.

Learn more about me

Follow me on Instagram

Professional on the outside (mostly)….Dance party Professional on the outside (mostly)….Dance party on the inside 💃🏻💃🏻💃🏻
😂
All the things that happen off camera 🤣.
She's faster than she looks. 🐉 Sound on. Take it She's faster than she looks. 🐉
Sound on. Take it all in.
Comment DRAGON RIDER if you want the prompts I used to make this.
#dragonpovs 
Made in Adobe Firefly
#adobefireflyambassadors
How to make a YouTube thumbnail using the AI assis How to make a YouTube thumbnail using the AI assistant in Adobe Express: 
🖼️ Open the AI Assistant from the Adobe Express homepage and ask for a YouTube thumbnail
📸 Give it three things: a photo of you, a few words for the text, and what the video is actually about 
💬 The context is what stops you getting a generic design 
✨ Pick one of the starting options, or keep prompting until one is close 
✏️ Tweak the text right there, remove anything you don't want, and download it 
🎨 Or open it in the editor and describe the change: a different outfit colour, an extra element, and it styles them to match the design 
🧩 Everything is on layers, so it stays easy to edit 
🔍 If you'd rather search for elements yourself, turn the AI Assistant off and use the regular Adobe Express tools
Thanks to Adobe Express for sponsoring this video. 
#ad #adobeexpressambassadors #HowToAdobeExpress
🔗 Try Adobe Express AI Assistant: adobe.ly/ExpressSeptember26
Want better audio on your phone videos without buy Want better audio on your phone videos without buying a fancy microphone? 
I show you how to get crispy audio in Adobe Premiere Mobile, on iPhone and now on Android, with one switch called Enhance Audio.
This video is sponsored by Adobe. @adobelive
#Ad 
#AdobePremiereAmbassadors 
#MadeWithPremiereMobile
Here's what happens: I upload my video into the Adobe Premiere Mobile app, tap the clip, open Audio, select Enhance Audio and turn on Enhance. Then you hear the before and after, so you can decide for yourself.
📱 Download Adobe Premiere mobile: adobe.ly/PrM
✅ How to open the audio tools in Adobe Premiere mobile 
✅ Where to find Enhance Audio and turn it on 
✅ What your audio sounds like before and after
This is for anyone filming on their phone who wants to sound clear without extra gear: coaches, small business owners and creators who would rather talk to camera than learn audio software.
Comment. "Download" and I'll send you the links to download
How to make a dragon POV video with AI in Adobe Fi How to make a dragon POV video with AI in Adobe Firefly: one dragon image, Generate video with Kling 3.0 Omni, multi-shot on. 
Comment "dragon rider" for the full prompts
Thanks to @AdobeFirefly for sponsoring this video. 
#AdobeFireflyAmbassadors #Ad #HowToAdobeFirefly
Here's how I do it: 
🐉 I uploaded a dragon I liked and asked Firefly for an image seen through the rider's eyes 
🎬 In Generate video, that picture became the first frame 
⚙️ I chose Kling 3.0 Omni, turned on multi-shot and set it to 15 seconds 
✍️ I wrote what happens in each shot and hit generate 
🔁 For a longer flight I ran it a second time, starting from the last frame of the first, with new shots (that is why there are six shots below)
▶️ Try Adobe Firefly at https://firefly.adobe.com
Stop searching stock libraries for royalty-free mu Stop searching stock libraries for royalty-free music and sound effects. In Adobe Firefly I drop in my video, and it writes a custom soundtrack that matches the story, plus any sound effect I can describe. Everything it makes is safe for commercial use.
Thanks to Adobe Firefly for sponsoring this video. #AdobeFireflyAmbassadors #Ad #FireflyAIStudio
Finding music for a video is the job most of us leave until last, when we are tired and just want it done. So we scroll a library for twenty minutes, settle for something close enough, and hope the licence covers us. Here the track gets written to fit the video instead, and the licence question is already answered.
What happens in this one: 
🎬 I drop my dragon video straight into Adobe Firefly 
✍️ Adobe Firefly writes the music prompt for me, and I pick the vibe, style and details 
🎵 It watches the video and gives me four tracks matched to the story to choose from
 🐉 Sound effects come from the same place: I typed "gentle dragon huff" and hit generate 
✅ Everything is custom made and safe for commercial use
▶️ Try Adobe Firefly now at firefly.adobe.com
@adobelive
How to add captions to a video in Adobe Express, a How to add captions to a video in Adobe Express, and then actually style them: your font, your size, your colours, so the captions look like your video instead of a default. Auto captions in about a minute, no second app.
Thanks to Adobe Express for sponsoring this video. #ad #adobeexpressambassadors #HowToAdobeExpress
Most caption tools give you one look and that is the end of the conversation. You get whatever the app hands you, and every video you post ends up wearing someone else's font. The generated style is a great starting point, it gets you most of the way in one tap, but it is a starting point and not the finish. Changing the font, the size and the colours takes seconds, and it is the difference between captions that sit on your video and captions that belong to it.
How to add captions to your video:
🎬 Upload your video, then hit the CC icon at the top of the timeline 
🌐 Pick your language and tap Generate, and it transcribes the whole thing 
✨ Grab a caption style, one tap gets you most of the way there 
🎨 Then make it yours: swap the font, size it how you want, colours to match your brand 
✏️ If a word came out wrong, fix the text and it updates on the video straight away
No second app, no extra subscription, and it is free to try.
▶️ Try Adobe Express for your video captions here: 
https://adobe.ly/ExpressAugust26
The Adobe Digital Academy is an online learning pl The Adobe Digital Academy is an online learning platform for AI, design and marketing skills, and you can start with zero experience. Here is what is inside it, where to find the courses, and what you actually walk away with.
Thanks to Adobe for sponsoring this video. #ad #AdobeAmbassadors #AdobeDigitalAcademy
Most people I talk to want to learn this stuff and have no idea where to begin. The courses are hands-on, they are built for people starting from nothing, and they sit on platforms you already have an account on. You pick one, you go at your own pace, and at the end there is something you can show for it.
What is in this one: 
🎓 What the Adobe Digital Academy is, and where the courses live: Coursera, LinkedIn Learning and YouTube 
🧠 The Create and Enhance Visuals With AI series, six courses start to finish 
✏️ It opens with AI foundations, so no experience genuinely is fine 
🔥 Prompting for generative AI, then AI-Powered Exploration With Adobe Firefly Boards 
📄 You finish with a shareable certificate that goes onto your LinkedIn profile
▶️ Start here to learn with the Adobe Digital Academy: https://adobe.ly/DABTS
Every messy idea I have for my business now goes o Every messy idea I have for my business now goes onto one Adobe Firefly board: random notes, dragon images, colour palettes. 
Here is how that pile turns into a logo, a banner, a storyboard and a finished video, without ever leaving the board.
Thanks to Adobe Firefly for sponsoring this video. #AdobeFireflyAmbassadors #Ad #FireflyBoards
Most advice about starting a brand assumes you are staring at a blank page. Running a business is the opposite problem. You have far too many ideas, all of them half formed, scattered across your notes app and your camera roll, and none of them finished. A board is where they all land in one place and start turning into something.
What happens in this one: 
🐉 Everything goes on the board, notes, reference images, colour palettes 
🎨 Presets shape the mess, and the dragon images become logo options
🖼️ The logo becomes a banner, finished off in Adobe Express 
🎬 The shots get generated as images and laid out into a storyboard 
▶️ Those same images become actual video clips, right there on the board
🩷 Try Adobe Firefly Boards now at firefly.adobe.com/boards
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