Social Media Trends for 2026: Less Noise, More Meaning
In 2026, value will lie in content that is personal and distinctive - something AI cannot produce.
How to make money on YouTube
If you’re an advertiser, you’re spending your money on YouTube, or rather, you’re investing in the reach of your audience. However, if you are a content creator, or YouTuber, you can make good money on the same platform.
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2 min to read
Written by:
Karla Sedak Benčić
There are four ways to do this:
- Ads – You can apply for monetization once you’ve hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year. The number of views you get doesn’t correlate to revenue earned. If your video gets thousands of views but no one watches or clicks the ad, you won’t make any money. This is because of YouTube’s criteria for billing advertisers: a viewer must click an ad or watch the ad in full (10, 15, or 30 seconds) for you to get paid.
- YouTube Premium – This is a paid membership program that allows fans to watch and support their favourite content creators without ads. YouTubers receive a share of the subscription based on the number of views their channel receives.
- Collaboration with brands or influencers marketing – Becoming an influencer on YouTube is reported as the highest-paid platform for brand partnerships. The key when partnering on brand-sponsored content is to be transparent about it, not endorsing anything you don’t actually like or believe in, and being upfront with your audience about why you’re doing it. Fees can be fixed or can depend on results – whether it’s increasing sales, redirecting audiences to the web shop, or increasing the number of followers for the brand.
- Selling Your Own Products – Almost every major YouTuber has their own line of clothing, fashion accessories, household items, cosmetics or other items that they can sell to their followers. It is estimated that PewDiePie, the world’s most popular YouTuber, earns over 6 million dollars a month from the sale of its own goods.
Also, building your own audience puts you in a great position to make money based on published content in a variety of ways.
When analysing your audience, pay attention to:
- The gender of your audience, to see if its skews toward one particular group.
- The age range most of your audience falls into.
- Geographical location – countries or cities – where your videos are watched.
- The overall engagement of your audience or “watch time”.
With this demographic information, you’ll better understand your own audience and be able to work better with brands.
After all we have highlighted, all you have to do is express your ideas in the most creative way to make the successful results.
