How Many YouTube Videos To Make Money?
One of the best ways to make money on the internet is with YouTube ads.
The way it works is that YouTube (Google) will place ads on your channel’s videos and you will get a share of the advertising revenue that the advertiser pays Google (which owns YouTube)…
It’s a great way to make money because it’s 100% passive…
Once you’ve created and uploaded the video, you’re done…
The ads are placed and you cash checks ☺️
But…
In order to qualify for the YouTube Partner Program you must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the last twelve months.
Ouch…
4,000 watch hours is 240,000 minutes 😟
That’s a lot of minutes…
But, there are ways to short cut this requirement and get those 4,000 hours fast
How To Get 4000 Watch Hours On YouTube Fast
Here are nine tips plus a “Big Bonus” tip that are guaranteed to get you to your goal in record time:
1. Keep your niche content consistent
It is particularly important when you’re just starting out that you keep your content consistent and narrowly focused.
If your channel is about health tips for women over 40, keep all your content focused only on that topic. Far too often video creators will wander off topic and confuse their audience.
You can’t produce videos about health tips for women over 40 and videos about life insurance and woodworking plans and hope to retain your audience. They came to you initially for the health tips, so make sure to give them only what they want.
2. Do proper keyword research
You need to know what people in your niche are searching for so you can give it to them. You do that by keyword research.
Keyword research involves knowing the terms your prospective audience types into the YouTube search bar when looking for information. The closer your content can match those terms, the more likely your video will rank in the YouTube and Google search engines and the more likely you’ll be to get views.
There are two free products, TubeBuddy and Vid IQ, which you can use to find those golden nugget keywords. They’re both simple to use and the free version of each is all you need o get the job done.
3. Upload consistently
Set yourself a schedule of how frequently you will upload videos and make sure to stick to that schedule.
Your audience will then start to anticipate when your next video will be available and will watch it as soon as you publish it.
It is a misconception to believe that you have to produce a video every day to get many views. You only need to set a regular pattern and stick to it.
I know of one video creator who set a schedule of only one video per week because of her time constraints and after a year and a half she had in excess of 600,000 subscribers. Another seven figure affiliate marketer publishes a video every Monday, Wednesday and Friday without fail and gets tens of thousands of view on each video.
4. Use cards, end screens and playlists
Cards are interactive texts that appear during videos and direct viewers to other videos on the creator’s channel. You can add up to five cards on any video.
End screens appear in the last 5–20 seconds of a video and they also lead viewers to other videos or playlists on the channel. End screens are clickable and viewers are taken directly to the content. Here is an example of end screens:
Playlists are a collection of videos from the creator’s channel. They are usually closely based on the same topic or they can be a series o videos that should be viewed in a particular order.
When one video finishes, the next one in the queue comes on screen without the user taking action.
The idea behind cards, end screens and playlists is to keep the viewer watching your videos and thereby increasing your watch time. An additional benefit is that your viewer will stay on the YouTube platform longer and YouTube loves that and will help promote your videos for you.
5. Initially go for quantity over quality
As a caveat, I don’t mean that you should try to get away with producing inferior content. That’s never a good idea. You always want to go with the best content you can produce.
What I mean is that you shouldn’t go overboard trying to create the perfect video. You may stumble over a word or overuse terms like “er” and ”’ah” and shouldn’t reshoot your videos to eliminate that in the beginning of your journey. You’re human and folks will understand that humans sometimes stumble over words.
Initially you need to produce content and get yourself and you channel “out there”. The only way to do that is to produce plenty of videos.
After your channel has gained some traction and watch time you can focus more the esoteric factors in your videos. But, quality content is always your main goal.
6. Use comments to increase engagement
YouTube values viewer engagement. When it sees people are engaging with your videos, it shows that viewers are interested in what you have to say and YouTube will reward you by putting your videos in the search results and the suggested videos.
One of the most important signs of viewer engagement is when they comment on your content. To increase this engagement make sure to respond to every viewer comment, even the negative ones. Negative comments still count as engagement in YouTube’s eyes.
The other thing you should always do to encourage engagement is to ask your viewers open ended questions and ask for responses in the comments.
Ask if they agree or disagree with your ideas, ask if they have any suggestions or ask for them to share their experiences.
7. Share on all your social media platforms.
Always be promoting yourself because no one else will.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest get millions of visitors every single day and it’s imperative that you get in front of them. There’s too much traffic and potential to be seen for you to ignore them.
Whenever you post a new video on YouTube it should be automatic for you to post it on these platforms as well.
8. Create custom thumbnails
Eye catching thumbnails are a must for YouTube creators. When a visitor searches any topic on the platform he is given loads of choices to choose from as he scrolls through the videos.
What will cause him to pick your video to watch instead of any others?
The answer lies in creating an outstanding custom thumbnail that will “stop the scroll”. You must catch his attention as he scrolls and get him to watch your video.
The best thumbnails have plenty of color, use a human face and only use a limited amount of text, no more than five words. It’s also a good idea to create some curiosity with your thumbnail as well as in your title.
9. Model meta tags of popular videos in your niche
Meta tags include titles, descriptions and keywords.
To determine what types of videos are working well in your niche you can search out the currently most popular videos by their number of views.
Check their titles and descriptions to see what keywords they are focusing on for ranking purposes. These are probably the keywords you also be using in your videos. But, don’t copy their titles and descriptions; this is a practice that is frowned on. You simply want to model them, but always create your own original titles and descriptions.
You can use the free version of either TubeBuddy or VidIQ to see the popular video’s tags. They also allow to see the ranking of each individual tag.
The benefit of modeling popular videos’ meta tags is that you may then be included in the “suggested” videos list when any of these videos is viewed because YouTube will expect viewers of those videos to be interested in yours also since it’s about a similar topic.
If any of your videos goes viral, be sure to use the same meta tags in any of your future videos so they will be included in the suggested list of that viral video.
10. Big Bonus Tip: Translate your videos into foreign languages
Do you know that 75% of the world’s population does not speak English? As a video creator that means that you are missing three quarters of the world who will never get to savor your content.
You can immediately increase your watch time by translating your videos into foreign languages.
Now you can translate your videos into 100 languages and explode your views, click here to see how
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