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.
ITrush
Wow, thanks for sharing your secrets on how to make money with YouTube. Very interesting!
Jerry
Thanks for the information! It’s always great to come across a posting that makes sense, that’s direct, and offers true content!
Anchor text spammer
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
Katir
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.
Scott
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!
Jack
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!
Anchor text spammer
Clearly video is the future of the web and YouTube is leading the way (right now).
Some guy trying to get anchor link text
great information, thank you very much, i learned a lot and i appreciate it. keep up the good work.
richard grimes
Some other guy
Good info, learned something new! Thank you very much for your job.
Some guy
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.
MyIkram
Great tips.
Combine the CPA with u-tube..Never heard before.
Make Online Money
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!
Four Tier Annihilation
Thank you very much for sharing this. Will you not be afraid you will gain some competition now?
Ikki
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?
Aaron from HR Software
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.
Brian from Google Nemesis Bonus Click Here
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
Mya
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
iphone games music
Nice blog, i have added it to my favourites, greetings
Aaron from Web Based HR Software
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.
MJ from How To Make Extra Money
Holy crap, and I thought making money with youtube was impossible! A little unethical but hey, gets me paid right?
andy from free annual credit report
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!
Kevin from Paydayloans
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.
chris from Pimco high yield bond fund nav
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.
jeff from Cheap Mp3 Players.
That is a great way to earn money on utube. I know any freebie cpa does well making money on u tube.
Joel from GBG 10 in 1
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
johan from zara clothes
I actually had this exact same idea… still want to do it, but the ringtone offers have gone down the chutes since then
Brian from honeycomb composite panels
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?
Simon
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.
tom from Cheap local phone service.
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.
zara clothing
mayba i should try this one even though all the attempts with youtube have failed for me…
andy from freeloans
Thanks great post. I never heard of viral video chart that is a good site. I like the video software also another good find.
jack from exon mobil
Thanks some good tips. I did not know you could do a redirect with utube.
jack from Uk web hosting
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.
Rich
That's a great idea. I did something similar with clickbank products and it worked well.
Hrvatska from zaraditi pare
Making money with youtube is possible but it’s hard to make viewers to convert to buyers!
Internet Business Coaching
Great Tips!
I like to find brand new videos that are about to hit youtube. Take Britney spears new song 3 for example.
It was released 2 days ago, but, before its release there was a lot of hype and users posting their own versions of the song. That was the perfect time to use this method. The views would have been crazy!
Tip: Try to avoid leaving foot prints.
Björn from MakeMoneyonYouTube
I’ve got to tell ya, this really is what I would call a good blog. I read it few times a week, and I always stumble across good content. Don’t you dare stop blogging! Haha.
I’m a bit surprised we’re the only ones knowing about making money on YouTube. There’s a lot of pople that don’t know how to make money on YouTube.
Anyway, don’t let me waste your time. All I wanted to say was keep up the good work! I’ve subscribed to your channel on YouTube AND your RSS-feed for the blog.
Big hugs all the way from Sweden!
monika from How to make money in Philadelphia
i liked this post very much very useful for the new entrepreneur.as we all know it is very tough to survive in the recession and if he wants to start his small business than he should follow your post i am damn sure he will very helpful from you information.good work.
john from make money online
I never though about making money from youtube this way. it’s very interesting. Music videos on youtube sometimes get millions of views. this can be very lucrative.
Javier from Koboland
video and youtube are best for social media, everybody loves it, I also do…
I love this technique
Ben from SMS-Ringtone
I’ve been reading along for a while now. I just wanted to drop you a comment to say keep up the good work. A Happy New Year.
Morgan Monroe
Amazing!!Is it really possible to earn money through YouTube.I had hardly any idea about it.But I surely will check it out.
andy from electronic cigarettes
Sounds like a workable plan. Now does this still work in January 2010? Also, do these music videos ever get taken off by youtube “police” or get in trouble for copyright related issues?
Just from lab coats landau
awesome post and informative in getting money in youtube…..