How to Make Money as a Full-Time Video Blogger

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كاتب ذكاء اصطناعي

When you think about becoming a successful full-time video blogger, you may think of popular channels that have over a million subscribers.

And if that is your definition of success, let’s not lie – there will be a long road to get there.

But if your definition of success is achieving a sustainable living for the time you spend each week on your YouTube channel, then that goal is more attainable than you think.

Especially when you consider all the options available to you to make money on the video platform that is used by over 2.4 billion users (a quarter of the world’s population).

1. Define Your Goal – For You and Your Audience

According to self-reported estimates in the Reddit community for video bloggers, video bloggers can spend anywhere from a few afternoon hours to over 20 hours a week on their YouTube channel, especially considering all it takes, from scriptwriting to recording and editing to designing thumbnails, and more.

If you are posting a new video at least weekly to keep your subscribers engaged, as many YouTube creators do, you need to ensure your goals are aligned from the beginning, or you may run out of steam.

You can set a clearly defined goal by breaking it down into three considerations. Who is your audience?

As they say: if you are for everyone, you are for no one. Choose a specific audience you want to serve, one you not only feel a connection with but also feel confident in your ability to create great content for.

Avoid the urge to go broad just to get a larger audience.

You can still grow a large audience through a more targeted niche and find it easier to promote your content and establish your unique identity.

Don’t believe me? There are YouTube channels with tens of thousands of subscribers that specifically focus on the survival game “Minecraft.”

Remember that the audience you choose will affect how easily you can monetize your YouTube channel, but there are enough options to make money on YouTube so that it doesn’t have to be the only factor in your decision.

Struggling? Write down the general interests, lifestyles, skills, hobbies, or identities that you feel connected to, then see how you can narrow it down: cooking > air fryer enthusiasts, vegetarians, bakers gaming > Nintendo Switch, Super Smash Bros, laptop builders remote professionals > digital nomads, remote office workers, freelancers university students > test-taking, biochemistry students, graduate students

What will you promise your audience?

Successful YouTube channels have one thing in common: they offer an implicit promise to the audience that encourages viewers to subscribe and current subscribers to come back for more.

This is a valuable promise to the viewer and can be educational, informative, inspirational, or entertaining. It could involve teaching them new skills, giving them honest product reviews, or just making them laugh.

Matt Benedetto from “Unnecessary Inventions” makes that promise explicit in his tagline, including his posting frequency:

“I design and build unnecessary inventions. (*New inventions every week.)”

His audience? People like him who find it amusing to go to great lengths for ridiculous ideas.

What do you want to achieve with your channel?

While every serious video blogger should provide value to their audience, you should also determine what you want from your YouTube channel.

Some may say not to think about money first, but you should at least consider potential monetization options in advance, as it will help you plan and direct your YouTube channel.

Do you

of that, consider breaking your production process into manageable steps over several days. This can help maintain quality and prevent burnout.

For example, you might spend one day brainstorming topics and scripting, another day filming, and a third day editing. This way, each task receives the attention it requires, resulting in higher quality content.

تحرير الفيديو

تحرير الفيديو هو جزء أساسي من عملية الإنتاج الخاصة بك، فهو يساعد على تحسين الجودة العامة لمحتواك. استخدم برامج تحرير الفيديو المناسبة لاحتياجاتك وميزانيتك.

هناك العديد من برامج تحرير الفيديو المتاحة، بما في ذلك:

  • iMovie: برنامج تحرير بسيط وسهل الاستخدام لمستخدمي

    Mac.

  • Adobe Premiere Pro: برنامج احترافي يتمتع بمرونة عالية ويمر بتحديثات منتظمة.
  • Final Cut Pro: برنامج متقدم لمستخدمي Mac مع ميزات تحكم دقيقة.

الترويج للقناة

بمجرد أن يصبح لديك الفيديو الأول جاهزًا للنشر، لا تنسَ العمل على خطة الترويج الخاصة بك. استخدم وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي، المدونات، أو حتى الشراكات مع مدوني فيديو آخرين لزيادة الوعي بقناتك.

يمكنك أيضًا التفكير في استخدام الإعلانات المدفوعة للوصول إلى جمهور أوسع. ولكن تذكر، المحتوى الجيد والمثير للاهتمام هو ما سيبقي الجمهور عائدًا.

تحليل الأداء

بمجرد بدء القناة ومشاركة المحتوى، تأكد من تحليل أداء مقاطع الفيديو الخاصة بك بانتظام. استخدم أدوات مثل YouTube Analytics لفهم كيفية تفاعل المشاهدين مع المحتوى الخاص بك وما الذي يعمل بشكل جيد.

تتبع الإحصاءات مثل وقت المشاهدة، الزيارات، ونسبة النقر إلى الظهور لتحسين استراتيجيات المحتوى والترويج الخاصة بك في المستقبل.


From that, what many vloggers do is dedicate one day to each stage to avoid the costs of switching between different contexts.

A typical weekly production schedule for a YouTube channel might look like this:

  • Day 1: Research and Planning
  • Day 2: Script Writing
  • Day 3: Video Recording
  • Day 4: Video Editing
  • Day 5: Refining, Uploading, and Scheduling

However, if you want to release multiple videos in one week, you can work on several scripts in one day, record multiple videos on another day, edit multiple videos the next day, and so forth, advancing your video schedule by a few weeks.

With each video you create, you will end up developing templates, discovering tools, saving time through automation or delegating tasks, and learning time-saving tricks over time.

We recommend setting up a project management tool to track your production process and maintain a backlog of video ideas. Trello and Notion are popular free options.

Shooting

Shooting is the fun part for many vloggers. Whether you’re a travel vlogger documenting your adventures around the globe, a comedian producing funny videos on YouTube, or a traditional vlogger working at your desk, the following tips will help you maintain a professional look in your videos:

  • Write a script for each video. Even if you think you’re good at speaking off the cuff, having a script will make you more efficient. You can estimate that every 550 words of your script will translate to about 3 minutes of video.
  • Place the camera at eye level and look directly at it. It’s easy to look at yourself or off to the side when speaking to the camera. But you can simulate eye contact by looking at the camera to appear more confident and engaging.
  • Keep your lighting in front of you. Whether you’re using natural light or a ring light to illuminate your videos, be sure to have the light source in front of you and avoid casting shadows.
  • Articulate your words clearly and be mindful of your speed. If you tend to speak quickly, try to slow it down and speak clearly, using strategic pauses to make editing easier. The camera isn’t going anywhere! Also, smiling can boost your on-camera appeal.
  • Film more than you need. You’re not working with film, so record multiple takes of each part of your video. You can also change angles if you think a different perspective will add some variety. “B-roll” is supplemental footage captured outside your initial production plan to give you more options during editing. This includes panning over a product, multiple angles for a review video, or even funny clips that serve as jokes in the final cut.

Editing

Editing is the unsung hero of video and it’s where a lot of time and effort is spent by vloggers.

YouTube has its own editor to help you get started, but there are many free video editing tools available with unique features worth checking out:

  • Da Vinci Resolve: Packed with the same features used by Hollywood studios to do everything from color correction to animation and post-production sound. And yes, it’s free.
  • Descript (Freemium): Easily edit video just like editing text by making changes to the script. With the ability to export and edit video directly on YouTube and other social media platforms, it’s recommended for vloggers who value an efficient workflow.
  • iMovie: Apple’s video editor is a more powerful choice for video editing today, especially if you’re shooting in cinematic mode on a recent iPhone or iPad.

The editing program you choose will depend on your needs. For example, Descript is great for video podcasts as it generates a transcript from your video that you can include in your show notes.

Editing

It takes a long time, and for many video bloggers, they delegate the first editing process to reclaim some of their time.

If editing isn’t your strong skill and you’re just filming and acting, find someone who can edit and don’t waste eight or more hours of your day just to learn how to edit, unless you truly want to learn editing. Matt Dager, Yes Theory

Tip: Make sure to edit and export your YouTube videos using a 16:9 aspect ratio to avoid black bars on both sides, or 9:16 if you’re posting Shorts on YouTube.

Branding and Thumbnails

Every video blogger has a brand, whether they carefully designed it or it came naturally.

And part of your job is to ensure that this brand is represented consistently across your channel.

Not a designer? You can use Canva to create a brand for your YouTube channel with many templates to get started.

Here’s a checklist of essential assets to consider:

  • Brand guidelines that include your fonts and colors
  • Channel header (2560 × 1440)
  • Logo or profile picture (800 × 800)
  • Video thumbnail templates (1280 × 720)
  • Write your “About Channel” section to promote your channel
  • Optional: Intro animations and music (depending on the style you’re going for)
  • Optional: A promotional video to introduce your channel to new visitors (you don’t need one right away!)

You can see how Yolanda Gampp’s branding relates to How to Cake It with the visual elements from the header to the thumbnails.

3. Publishing, Promoting, and Analyzing – Embrace the Creator Role

Being a creator of any kind requires more than just creativity. You want your content to be consumed by your audience, so immersing yourself in the steps that come afterward is just as important.

It’s an iterative process – listen to your audience and your analytics to take that feedback into account when creating your next video. But you’ll need to go vibrantly with your video and find an audience first.

Publishing

There are many fields and settings you’ll need to fill out before your video becomes visible. Some of these fields play a significant role in your video’s reach once it goes live.

Here’s a quick checklist of what to pay special attention to:

  • Write an engaging title that includes the keywords your audience might search for to find your video (70 characters maximum or the full title may not display on some screens).
  • Write a description that includes keywords viewers might search for in the first two lines (5000 characters maximum).
  • Enable chapters for long videos to help viewers skim the content easily.
  • Select the appropriate category and include one, two, or three tags (adding too many tags will hurt rather than help).
  • Upload an optimized custom thumbnail to grab attention (many thumbnails contain one to four words of text to convey at a glance).
  • Add subtitles to widen your reach. (YouTube automatically generates subtitles, but you can upload an SRT file to ensure there are no errors.)

Promotion

While you can hope for luck and leave your video’s fate to the YouTube algorithm, there are many ways you can take control of things yourself to gain more viewers and subscribers:

  • Share your video in targeted sub-communities that might be interested in it. Engage with other video bloggers in the comments section authentically and non-intrusively.
  • Share your video where you have an audience on social media.
  • Optimize your video title and description to appear in search results on YouTube and Google.
  • Build an email list you can send new YouTube videos to.
  • Include your video in your blog if you have one.

Do

By preparing a guide to publish your YouTube videos after posting so that you can quickly move on to creating the next video.

Analysis

Feedback is essential for improving anything over time, and YouTube is no exception.

Analytics are crucial for video bloggers just like applause for any performer on stage.

While gathering a large number of views is good, there are two of the most important engagement signals that help you align with YouTube’s goal of keeping people on their platform for as long as possible:

  • Watch Time: The total number of minutes and hours your audience spent watching your video.
  • Audience Retention: The percentage of the total video that people watched to determine where viewers were engaged and where they dropped off.

By knowing how to produce videos that increase these metrics, you increase the chance that YouTube’s recommendation engine will show your videos to more people.

This doesn’t mean you should forget what your current audience is saying. They are the best source of tangible feedback – like this comment on the Learn with Shopify channel that inspired some coverage in this very guide.

It’s a delicate balance between giving your audience what they want to grow and satisfying your own creative expression to avoid feeling bored.

Matt Dager says about how Yes Theory knows what to create next: “I think it’s like any business, if you have a good product and people like it, you want to make more of that product,” says Matt Dager about how Yes Theory knows what to create next. “The series on abandoned places, the series about asking things from the rich, you see it works. Of course, you don’t want to overdo it to the point your channel only relies on that, but you should give the audience what they want often enough to keep doing what you want.”

4. How to Make Money from Your YouTube Channel

Finally, we return to where we started: making money as a video blogger.

The reason we started talking about money early on when setting your goals is that your niche and personal goals will affect which of YouTube’s income sources to prioritize.

Join the YouTube Partner Program

You may have heard that you can make money from ads that YouTube displays before, during, and after your videos. But you can’t join this program right off the bat.

You’ll need to meet a few criteria first:

  • 1,000 subscribers
  • 4,000 hours of total watch time
  • 0 active community guideline strikes

Once approved, this can become a source of passive income, but undoubtedly not enough to rely on.

Fortunately, the following options can help you start generating revenue before you reach that 1,000 subscriber mark.

Start an Online Store

The creativity you apply to creating content can also be applied to creating products you can sell to your audience.

You can sell:

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