Now what's all this talk about earning lots of money in a very short space of time from a very small number of people on YouTube? Well it all comes down to this. We recently published a video all about how to earn more money on YouTube, besides AdSense. Take a look:
One of the tools we talked about during that video was Super Chats, which are small financial contributions from viewers to live streams which will highlight their message in the live stream chat. Now Super Chats are not new, it's been a feature that's been on YouTube for a number of years, but what is new is just how profitable they are for video creators. YouTube has confirmed that there are now over 90,000 channels who have received Super Chats - with some streams earning more than $400 per minute!
Now we ourselves occasionally get Super Chats on our live streams and we're very appreciative of it, thank you very much. But to say that it's a number one revenue source for channels and that you can earn over $400 per minute seems fanciful, until I saw this livestream from Travis McPherson (tune into the video above to watch).
Travis is part of the vidIQ family. You may have seen him on our channel, or at live streams and he does lots of work with customer service in the background. But Travis is also a video creator in his own right with the channel Travis MCP.
And he does all sorts of things on technology including live streams. At the time of recording, Travis's tech channel is just shy of 40,000 subscribers and I have no idea what he's doing right here. But this is one such live stream he did recently on the Samsung Galaxy Note which ran for about 48 minutes and got around 1,000 views. Just some of the Super Chats Travis received during that live stream including a single donation of $100 Canadian dollars. So first of all Travis, that's some savage work my friend. But second of all, and most importantly, how on earth did you do this? We decided to ask him.
Travis McPherson: Actually the ability for me to get all of these Super Chats really had nothing to do with me chasing different ways to get the money, it was actually more about me chasing ways to make my live streams better. Let me explain.
I would go to other live streams and I would try to figure out why people were so excited to be there and why they were so much fun. I would go to other creators live streams and I would enjoy them myself. And one thing I noticed was in one of my favorite creators live streams he would do sound effects periodically and people loved it! And then I noticed that the more sound effects were being used, the more people would send Super Chats which I thought was interesting.
So what I wanted to do first was put sound effects in my videos. There's multiple ways of doing this including free ways where you can do a soundboard on your computer. But I bought the
Elgato Stream Deck and it's already paid for itself.
Basically it has a bunch of different buttons that I can completely modify and put different sound effects and different, cool little visual effects in my live streams. It makes it more fun.
Secondly, I made sure that I'm full of energy every single live stream. People want that, people love that. They come to my live stream because they enjoy themselves. And of course the most important thing, the thing you're wondering about how do I get them to spend money, well I don't. I just enjoy myself. I play sound effects when cool things are happening and when someone sends a Super Chat it's a big celebration.
I have a specific song I play, I do a little dance, and you know what, it works. People love it when you can take a minute to just appreciate that someone has sent you money just for being live, they really appreciate it as well. And because I go to other streamers live streams I go to other creators live streams, they actually come to mine as well and a lot of those Super Chats were from other creators. I really believe that going to people's live streams, being apart of the community and then making your live stream as fun as absolutely possible, is all you need to do. Focus on the people in your live stream make it awesome for them, and the rest just kinda works its way out.
Making Live Streams Work for Your YouTube Subscribers
YouTube subscribers are a fickle bunch. You only need to look at your analytics to see how many views you get from actual subscribers and it's usually less than 50% on most channels.
Beyond your standard subscribers are actual fans of your channel, the ones who post comments in all of your videos, who turn into every single live stream, they volunteer to moderate, and in the most generous way they start to offer you Super Chats and become members of your channel.
Those are your super fans, and if you continue to give those super fans enough value and make them part of the fabric of your channel you will never need to ask for anything from them they will give it to you because they are so invested in your success.
Oh and one final thing, I said that Travis earned these $200 from about 150 viewers although the live stream said it got a 1,000 views this is because you have concurrent viewers watching the live stream there and then, they drop in and out, and in reality Travis probably earned that money from maybe 10 at max 15 Super Chat contributors. So in theory you can make far more money than you would ever make on AdSense with just a handful of diehard fans.
Want To Get More Views on YouTube?
If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and get more views on YouTube then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps click here to install now!
