So you’ve seen YouTube videos where the creator says “this video was brought you by ….” and you’re wondering how much they get paid for that? We’ll dive into that topic in this article and find out just how much do sponsors pay YouTubers.
But there are multiple ways to make money on YouTube – referral links (also known as affiliate marketing), selling your products, google’s partner program – and we’ll touch on them throughout the article as well.
Let’s get started.
Creators in every niche can land a YouTube sponsorship or brand deals.
Many creators make the mistake of starting too early.
You can’t create 3 videos and then expect a company to want to pay you money.
Makes sense, right?
A company needs to see a track record.
Potential YouTube sponsors need to see that you have a clearly defined niche and understand your target audience.
Does your audience clearly match theirs?
Do you have enough of an audience where the outlet makes sense for the company and they will get a great return on their investment?
The answer to this is different for every creator and niche – whether it’s 1,000 subscribers or 10,000 subscribers.
Spend a few hours doing research on channels in your niche.
YouTube is amazing because you can see years of your competitors’ content right there in the public.
You can see exactly what they’re doing.
This will help you analyze and better understand the competition and help you get paid by a YouTube sponsor.
Ok, so how much do sponsors pay YouTubers?
Sponsorships come in different shapes and sizes and can range from free products, to $100 per video, up to many thousands per video.
I have done a few paid sponsorships on my YouTube channel, but I would pay you $20 if you could figure out which ones.
I prefer to only do paid sponsorships where I’m already a fan of the product and would have made a video about the product or service anyway.
Affiliate marketing is actually a form of sponsorship.
So if you reach out to a brand and they tell you to sign up for their program, don’t discount this.
Put yourself in their shoes.
They don’t really know you or what you’re about.
So why would they be comfortable in sending you their cash in exchange for content they won’t be sure will increase sales for them or not?
With affiliate marketing, they’re willing to pay you on the back-end, and typically pretty well.
It’s very similar to hiring a salesperson on a commission-only basis but paying a high commission.
If you do a great job, you’ll make tons of cash.
It’s one of our recurring themes in our article How to Make an Extra $1,000 a Month.
Network – Network – Network.
Connect with other YouTubers in your niche.
Reach out to brand managers.
Stay in touch with companies that you want to work with.
Engage with these people on social media and interact with them and their content.
When reaching out to companies directly, don’t just think of the larger companies.
Look for smaller companies that aren’t even on the map yet.
They’ll appreciate you thinking of them and reaching out.
You can simply say, “I like what you’re doing over at X. Do you ever work with YouTube channels.”
Send them a link to your channel and let that be where the conversation starts.
You can connect with sponsorship marketplaces like GrapeVine Village, Izea, or ChannelPages.
FameBit, another famous marketplace, was purchased by YouTube in 2016 and is now being rebranded and brought into the YouTube ecosystem.
Other Ways to Make Money on YouTube
You can easily begin making money on YouTube well before you ever get your first brand deal or even get your channel monetized under the Google Partner Program.
And I believe that you should look at YouTube as its own business and look at the different ways that you can use to monetize that business.
I’ll provide a few of the ways here.
Consulting
If you are in a specific niche and are creating content around that, your target audience might actually pay you for one on one consulting services.
This strategy is niche-specific, but I believe it to be true. I talk about this in my post on how to start a blog.
YouTube Partner Program
This may or may not come before you get brand deals. You’ll need at least 1,000 channel subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time on your channel within the last year.
Once you meet this requirement you can then have ads placed on your videos and begin to share in the ad revenue that YouTube (Google) makes from these videos.
We created a podcast and video where we featured a few of our YouTuber friends (one of them with 700,000 subscribers!) to give a bit of thought on Starting a YouTube Channel.
Sell Your Course or Product
Just How Much do Sponsors Pay YouTubers?
Become your own sponsor!
As you grow an audience that begins to trust you, it’s the perfect opportunity or you to offer them your own products and services, not just those of other companies! If you’re interested in launching your own course, I’d recommend a company like Thinkific or Teachable.
Selling your own physical products is a great idea as well.
You can use a company like Shopify and Sellfy to set up your store – see our experience here.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is my favorite because it has the opportunity to be passive.
You’re able to build a great piece of content explaining how a product or service works and then refer traffic to that company that they pay you for when people buy.
It’s incredible. If you’re unfamiliar with it, watch this video on what affiliate marketing is and how it works.
If you already have a solid understanding of what affiliate marketing is, check out the best affiliate programs for beginners as well as good credit card affiliate programs.
Conclusion
So How Much do Sponsors Pay YouTubers?
Getting paid sponsors is actually just one of the many ways that you can actually profit from your YouTube content. Don’t forget to look closely at all of the ways and put them all into play.
But for your specific sponsored videos, you can get paid in different ways.
At a minimum, you will get a product to use for free in exchange for the content.
And make sure that you understand how Google and YouTube view paid product placements and how to go about them.
But you may also get paid hundreds or thousands of dollars depending on your audience size, type, and engagement.
To understand fair rates, you’ll need to put yourself in the shoes if the company that’s spending their marketing dollars.
Would you do the deal?
Do you think you would make the money back and also get a return on that investment?
If so, then it’s probably a great deal for both of you.
Good luck!
