Everyone knows about YouTube. It gets millions of hits a day. So scoring some of that traffic and making money from it seems like a pretty good idea. Now before you read on be aware that this method might be considered unethical by some. So if you are easily offended by online direct marketing ideas, maybe now is a good time to stop reading…
Make Money with YouTube - The Method
The method I used was to upload popular music videos. I would then place a hyperlink in the description of the video to a page on one of my web sites (you can use a blogspot blog also if you like), which would re direct to a CPA offer that gives away complimentary ring tones. The offer I used would require people to enter their cell phone number, and subscribe to a monthly service, and only accepted US traffic, but there are plenty of different offers. If you are looking for the best paying CPA affiliate program for ring tones and other CPA offers, the site I use is Max Bounty. For the offer I am using with Max Bounty you get $14 for each person that signs up to get the complementary ring tones. So I am sure you can see the potential to make money when you see videos on Youtube with well over a millions views.
For the hyperlink from YouTube you can’t use html, so you hyperlink just by typing the full address of your re direct page starting with the http part. Another method is to watermark videos with your URL. This requires a little extra effort, and you need to own a very basic easily remembered domain name.
To make a page redirect from your page to the CPA offer you can use:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;
url=http://affiliateURL">
Where affiliateURL is the url you get from your CPA affiliate program.
Extra stuff
Personally I find uploading videos to YouTube very slow, and unreliable. I found it easier to use 3rd party software to do the uploading. This software will do the trick. If you want to try the watermark method you will need watermark software.
Results
I found that uploading videos and adding a link wasn’t enough to make money. Ideally you need content that has the potential to go viral, so a very new video that isn’t already on YouTube 200 times, controversial content, that has possibly been removed from YouTube because of copyright breeches for example. A great site to gauge what’s popular on YouTube is The Viral Video Chart. It is also very important to use as many relevant tags as you can think of when uploading the video.
I don’t won’t to quote how much I made using them method, but lets just say, with in 3 days and 5 videos I had made more money than I had from blogging in the last 4 months of last year.
The Ethics
I know some people are going to read this and think it is a little evil. I just want to put in a statement to suggest that although it may be a little unethical, the only real losers are the original copyright owners of the content you upload. YouTube is making a killing by sharing tones of copyrighted material, why can’t we get in on the action?
*this site is in no way associated to Youtube - images used in this post are copyright to their original owners.
New content about Making Money Online is now on my new Blog Make Money Online.
37 Responses to “Make Money with YouTube”
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Wow, thanks for sharing your secrets on how to make money with YouTube. Very interesting!
Thanks for the information! It’s always great to come across a posting that makes sense, that’s direct, and offers true content!
Is that a great idea or what?
Thank you for sharing this, most people would try to keep it under their hat.
I have to try this idea, (I’ve been looking for a little “extra money” to supplement my retirement check.) Tommy
It’s incredible the number of ways money can be made on the Net in recent time. And I must say, I’ve not heard about this until now, thought YouTube is all about just having fun. And what a clever way to make extra money.
Clearly video is the future of the web and YouTube is leading the way (right now). Marketers are finding that video increases conversion on web sites and that the videos don’t even have to be really good to be effective. This is but one of a bunch of opportunities that will arise as the web continues to transform. Thanks for sharing!
Great info! I hope I can use it to make some $$. In the past I tried a lot, but most things didn’t work at all. Thanks again!
Clearly video is the future of the web and YouTube is leading the way (right now).
great information, thank you very much, i learned a lot and i appreciate it. keep up the good work.
richard grimes
Good info, learned something new! Thank you very much for your job.
I have heard that some have been making a killing with Youtube. I haven’t personally tried it myself, but I think it may be worthwhile for those who like tinkering with sites like youtube.
Great tips.
Combine the CPA with u-tube..Never heard before.
If you modify a video with your watermark, you can also use something like ‘TubeMogul’ to broadcast it to YouTube and a bunch of other video sites all at once!
Thank you very much for sharing this. Will you not be afraid you will gain some competition now?
This is a dirty, but effective trick! xD I would never have thought of this!
Thanks for sharing this info!
By the way, how much have you earned using this technique?
Thanks for the link for the viral video chart. I always search for top music charts but I never thought of searching for the word viral. Silly me but thanks for the post. I don’t plan on making any money with youtube but I always like to know of new upcoming videos and popular music videos.
Interesting indeed, I also use video but in a different way. I simply make videos about new product launches or tactics that I use to drive traffic. I think post the video to video sites (over 30) and link back to my site about the same subject.
This way people that are interested in my sites niche find my blog and bookmark it, subscribe or even purchase a product.
The power of video is huge.
Nice post
I say your brilliant!
I may give this a try, I’m not sure if it’s going to work for me but I think it is well worth a shot
Thank you
Nice blog, i have added it to my favourites, greetings
Simon - Thanks for the post. I’m a big fan of watermarking videos but make sure you pick colors that are HIGHLY visible on viewer’s monitors. Nothing is worse than a fuzzy watermark with a URL that nobody can read.
Holy crap, and I thought making money with youtube was impossible! A little unethical but hey, gets me paid right?
I’ve always heard about the power of youtube for affiliate or CPA offers. Just never got around to making that first video because of other stuff occupying my marketing time…Good to hear a real case study confirming the same thing. Now I’m one more step closer to actually doing it!
Interesting article. What percent does something like you tube get for refferals. What i mean is what percent do you make money on per click or person who watches the utube videos.
I agree with the site you use they are a great program for cost per action programs.
Is thier any type of CPA ads that do better on utube. What i mean is some things do not do well on utube so what niches work best or not at all.
That is a great way to earn money on utube. I know any freebie cpa does well making money on u tube.
The most I’ve done on youtube was watermark one of my vids and get traffic back to me. I guess I havent really done all that I could
I actually had this exact same idea… still want to do it, but the ringtone offers have gone down the chutes since then
Simon - Can’t you get into serious trouble by uploading copyrighted videos? I think this is also called out in the YouTube TOS. Is it worth the risk and liability exposure? Did you need to sign up a fake account in Youtube to avoid detection?
Hi Brian…thanks for all the many comments you have added today. I am not using this method anymore…but what I found was that 1) it was really easy to make many news accounts in minutes. 2) Even when Youtube had content reported as copyright they didn’t remove it, they just offered revenue share and stats sharing to the company that owned the copyright to the video…all the large music companies seem to be taking that approach these days, which is cool.
I am suprised that the music industry lets them keep video up and just takes a cut of ads. I guess they need to find new way to earn money. I see alot of people doing this but i think it only works for ads like you said cost per action and you will have to make sure they relate to the video in some way.
mayba i should try this one even though all the attempts with youtube have failed for me…
Thanks great post. I never heard of viral video chart that is a good site. I like the video software also another good find.
Thanks some good tips. I did not know you could do a redirect with utube.
That is a interesting way to make money from utube. I think cost per action is one of the best ways you could make money from link in video. Most people from utube are not looking to buy things so free stuff works best like you said.