Do you want to make money on YouTube? Millions of creators are earning a very good living from the platform by uploading content that drives huge views and engagements. Whether that income is from advertising revenue, merch sales, or brand deals, we keep you updated with best practises and ideas.

How To Make Money on YouTube

Do you know how to do keyword research so you understand what videos people are actually searching for on YouTube? Do you know how to create a custom YouTube thumbnail? Do you know how to create a Playlist on YouTube?

vidIQ has a ton of tips that will help every creator maximise their video content. We publish content every week to keep you up to date with all the best practices.

YouTube Tips & Tricks

YouTube Shorts content is set to explode! 

All the latest tips, tricks, and rock-solid advice you need for this new feature.

YouTube Shorts

Ask any YouTuber and they will tell you that generating significant views and subscribers isn't easy. But with the right strategy and tools, any video creator can build an engaged subscriber base when they understand what those subscribers want to watch.

Appealing to an audience to watch content you are passionate about making is just the first step, you need to know how to reach them and get your videos discovered. Our guides to how to guide more views on YouTube will give you the best tips to succeed on the platform.

How To Get More Views on YouTube

This post is all about how you can monetize your content on YouTube to start generating revenie. The are four golden rules to making money on YouTube, and they are:

You need to have 1,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel

Your videos have generated 4,000 Watch Time hours over the last 12 months

You comply with all YouTube's policies and guidelines

#1 The YouTube Partner Program Requirements

Commonly known as the YouTube Partner Program, or YPP for short, you'll need to hit all four requirements before your channel will be accepted.

Let's start with the 1,000 subscribers. This one is pretty straightforward, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to get to 1,000 subscribers, once you hit that milestone, you've reached that requirement.

As well as 1,000 subscribers, you also need 4,000 hours of Watch Time on your videos over the last 12 months. There is some confusion with this one, so let me try and clarify that. First of all, this is not about how much video content you, the YouTube creator watch. This is all about how much video content is watched on your channel from people all across the world. It’s all those hours of video that people have watched on your channel in the last 12 months (from any given date). You could well have well 4,000 hours of Watch Time over the lifetime of your channel, but it's only the last 12 months that count for YouTube Partner Program requirements.

Another couple of things to tell you about Watch Time. Live streams do count towards that total. Unlisted videos also count towards that total. But if you delete any videos, that Watch Time will be removed from your channel Watch Time hours. And one more final thing, if you are already in the YouTube Partner Program, and if your channel falls below 4,000 hours of Watch Time, YouTube won't automatically remove you from the partner program, but they can do it at their discretion. If you want a much more detailed video on the topic of 4,000 hours specifically, check out this video:

If you want to check the progress of above requirements, you can do so by clicking on your logo in the top right-hand corner of most YouTube pages, and then clicking on YouTube Studio Beta. You can view all of your analytics here, but to quickly check progress on monetization, hover your mouse over "Other features", and then click on "Status and Features". On this screen, you should see a monetization box, and if you click "Learn more", it will tell you exactly where you currently stand with subscribers and Watch Time hours.

But if all of that sounds like too much hard work, then we've got a free tool that will do all of this much quicker and more efficiently. If you 

 on pretty much every YouTube screen, you will see a collection of real-time stats all about your channel. It will show you your channel's views per hour, views over the last 48 hours, and your subscriber count. But the really cool thing is that it will track your progress to 4,000 hours of Watch Time too! Once you hit 4,000 hours, that number will turn green to show you you've reached that monetization requirement.

#2 Following YouTube Rules for Monetization

Next on the list is the rule book. If you want to monetize your content, you need to make sure you stick to it, as YouTube state:

When you apply for the YouTube Partner Program, you'll go through a standard review process to see whether your channel meets YouTube's policy and guidelines. Only channels that meet them will be accepted into the program.

YouTube also constantly check channels in the program to see whether they continue to meet YouTube's policies and guidelines. These policies and guidelines that are very comprehensive, given all of the growing pains YouTube have had of finding the right balance between creators, viewers, and advertisers. I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with these 

 if you want to monetize your content in the future.

However, if you are in a TLDR mood, to summarize, apply common sense. If you think a video might be inappropriate, chances are it is, and you make such content at your own risk.

#3 Copyright and Monetization Policies on YouTube

Among YouTube's policies and guidelines is the huge topic of copyrighted material. Essentially, if you use other people's work, then you could be using copyrighted material without their permission, and YouTube does not want you to do that. It will almost certainly get you demonetized or prevent you from entering the YouTube Partner Program. Let's look at this in a little more detail.

For most of you, this is the most important monetization policy. You have to make sure that you're adding value to any third party content you monetize, and that your content has significant original commentary, educational value, or editorialized statement. And let's be clear, that still might not be enough. This does not give you a license to use other people's content in your videos all the time, because if you do, YouTube may use this as an argument not to monetize your content.

YouTube confirms that if all or most of your channel is dedicated to reused content, and you're not transforming the original work by adding your own unique value, 

then your channel is not eligible for the YouTube Partner Program.

 The spirit of this policy is to make sure that YouTube are incentivizing unique and original content into the YouTube Partner Program, and that YouTube are protecting and rewarding the creators who work hard on original content.

Now, some may see YouTube's spirit of a policy as an excuse to demonetize channels they don't want in the monetization program, but let's have a look at it from this point of view. You spent days, hours creating a magnificent piece of content, and it goes viral on YouTube. And then a dozen random video creators steal that content, upload it, generate hundreds of thousands of views, and end up profiting handsomely from it. How would you feel if that happened? That's what YouTube is trying to protect - original content from video creators.

Admittedly, reused, duplicate content, and copyright content is a broad gray area on YouTube, and they don't always get it right. And you may look at some channels on YouTube and see that they're clearly flaunting these rules. Well, you don't know what their individual circumstances are, they may have permission to use that content, or they may get caught in the future, and you don't want to follow the examples of channels that are doing this. It's not a road to success.

Ultimately YouTube is the gatekeeper. They hold all of the keys. You are on rented ground, and if you flaunt these rules, and break them, then don't be surprised when YouTube comes after you.

#4 Linking a Google Adsense Account with a YouTube Channel

If you are going to earn money from your videos, YouTube needs a way to pay you, and at least to begin with, this will be done through an AdSense account. A few things you need to know about this, if you already have an AdSense account, you can use that. You can connect multiple channels to one AdSense account, and if you haven't got an AdSense account, you can set one up during the YouTube Partner Program application process.

#5 Applying to the YouTube Partner Program

Let's remind ourselves of those requirements one more time: You need:

1,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel

4,000 Watch Time hours on your videos over the last 12 months

To comply with all YouTube's policies and guidelines

When you've applied YouTube Partner Program, it may take up to a month for the platform to make a decision. That’s because actual humans will review your channel so it’s a manual process. Some channels have been approved in days, so it could be quicker. However, if it does take longer than a month, then your channel will usually be placed in further review. When this happens, unfortunately, the wait times can get very long. Three, six, possibly even 12 months. In some unfortunate cases, YouTube never seems to come to a decision, leaving the creator in monetization limbo.

We appreciate that this can be a very frustrating position to find yourself in as a video creator, as many of you have commented about this on our videos here at vidIQ. Unfortunately, we ourselves cannot help push the process forward for you, so what we recommend you do is to talk to TeamYouTube on Twitter, make sure that everybody knows that you have an issue with your monetization decision.

YouTube say that this will never speed up the process, but at least having some decision is something you should deserve as a video creator.

#6 Being Rejected from the YouTube Partner Program: Next Steps

Now let's say that you've applied for the YouTube Partner Program, but you've been rejected. What can you do?

When you are rejected from the YouTube Partner Program, YouTube will give you a general reason why. Unfortunately, they won't tell you specifically what video or content is causing the issue, so you may be left blindly adjusting your channel. However, the good news is you can reapply for the program in 30 days' time.

Again, this is where you will have to use your common sense. If you think there are videos that are walking the community guideline and policies tightrope, then they most likely are and you need to adjust them. If there are videos that have copyright content on them then those are probably causing a problem with YouTube as well, so you will need to delete them.

Creators have asked when they apply for the partner program, will having a community guideline strike or a copyright strike against my channel prevent me from getting into the program? The answer is probably no, it definitely won't prevent you, but it is going to have an impact.

There is a dedicated support page with advice on what you should do if you are rejected from the YouTube Partner Program, and 

Once you are in the Partner Program, and you want to take your monetization a step further by earning money from Super Chats, membership, and merchandise, take a look at this video on the subject:

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Want to know how to monetize your channel and start making money on YouTube? Take a look at our beginner's guide!

How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel - A Beginner's Guide

How long viewers watch your content for is one of YouTube’s golden signals. So as content creators we know we need to hook attract viewers with engaging topics. But did you know that quality production values can also help your audience retention?

In this episode of TubeTalk, we’re going to take a deep dive into audio specifically, and give you some must-know tips and tricks around sound quality. So many YouTube creators are not putting the effort into audio, and are losing viewers because of it, even when the content they create is otherwise amazing.

. He’s a recognized expert on audio production, and his 

 is packed full of advice about cleaning up audio, producing podcasts, creating music, and more. He really, really understands the quality and voice that's required to capture an audience and keep them riding along with you. In this podcast you will learn:

Why buying an expensive microphone isn't enough to ensure crystal-clear audio

How a shaggy carpet can help create the best audio

How to mix in a music track so your viewers can still hear you

Best practices for mixing in other sound clips to your video

Why recording background noise separately can boost your audio quality

Why you should build your own library of audio clips

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

TubeTalk has been informing video creators and marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

Why Great Audio is the Key to YouTube Audience Retention: Podcast Snapshot

Liron Segev: So Mike, just how important is audio?

Mike Russell: Oh, it's super important. You can have a shaky camera, you can record in 10 ATP, but when the sound goes off it doesn't matter how good your content is. It's hard for people to stay focused and pay attention if your audio is off. It also takes away a little bit of your authority because you're sitting there looking fantastic, but people can't hear you.

Also, you can have the best microphone in the world, but if you have not sound-treated your room, you are still not going to sound good. Investing in sound absorption materials on your floor, walls, and ceiling can actually make a big difference. It can cut down on echo and bounce back especially if you live in a noisy location.

It's a really bad experience if someone is listening to a podcast or watching a YouTube video and they have to constantly turn it up and down because you haven’t put the thought into audio.

Liron Segev: Regarding video editors, many creators are so focused on color grading and making sure that we have B roll and making sure that we have the rough animations that we don't give the audio a second thought. Is that a mistake?

Mike Russell:.I do think like color grading is super important. It can give you an edge providing you get it right, otherwise, you look very, very orange or very magenta. But in terms of audio, equalization of the frequencies is very similar to color grading.

You could shoot something on a mirrorless or DSLR camera and stick it straight into your NLE and then mix it, or render it out and upload it and it would be okay. But if you color grade it, it's going to pop out. It's going to look better. Same thing if you equalize your audio and compress your audio. It's kind of like the color grading of audio.

Liron Segev: If you’re doing collaborations with other people, they often send you clips ahead of time so you can mix them into your own track. How do we get the best practice to help them give us better audio?

Mike Russell: It’s all about their setup and what they're using. You don't really have that much control what the other creator is using, but if it's someone you really want to work with you can try and recommend other gear to them or try to work well with the gear that they've got.

So you might say, "Okay, what are you going to be recording with?" And they might say, "Well, I've got a shotgun microphone mounted just off the camera frame. But maybe they can use a handheld mic? You could recommend something like that.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Shockingly poor audio can severely damage your Audience Retention rate on YouTube. Learn how to keep your viewers engaged to the end in this week's episode of TubeTalk.

Why Great Audio Can Boost YouTube Audience Retention: TubeTalk 203 with Mike Russell

 which cover a multitude of sins video creators might break be it nudity, harmful, hateful, violent content, harassment and bullying, or spam. Creators can quickly find themselves in trouble if they cross the line on any of these topics.

There are many different Community Guidelines and also a number of places where creators can break them such as:

In the past, the punishment from YouTube differed depending on where the crime was committed. It might be that you lose livestream privileges or that you couldn't post videos for a certain length of time. The rules were somewhat chaotic, so YouTube have cleared up the confusion for creators and made it crystal clear what violates a Community Guideline (

 we’re covering Community Guidelines in the post and not copyright strikes which is a whole different topic and one we’ll be covering soon).

YouTube Community Guidelines February 2019

As of February 19th 2019, the new Community Guidelines are in place for all creators on the platform. YouTube are keen not to punish first time offenders who may not be up to speed with the rules, and as a result, all channels will receive a one-time warning the first time they post content that crosses the line with no penalties to their channel except for the removal of that content. The good news is that this one time warning applies to all channels so even if you do have an existing strike you still get this warning before further penalties. It doesn't matter where you break the Community Guideline whether it be on a thumbnail, video content, playlists, or via the comments - the penalty is always going to be the same.

 The second time you break Community Guidelines will be considered your first official strike. That will result in your content being removed as before. On top of this all your YouTube content posting privileges will be frozen for one week. This includes videos, live-streams, YouTube stories, and community posts. However, you’ll still be able to post comments. After a week you will get all of the posting features back but the strike remains on your account for 90 days in total.

 If you commit another Community Guideline violation within a 90 day period this is your second strike with the same penalties applied except that instead of a one week ban you get a two week ban on publishing content.

 If you fall foul of the Community Guidelines for a third time, YouTube isn’t here to play. Your channel will be terminated!

Obviously the termination of your channel is pretty drastic so YouTube have now promised to be more transparent about the guideline you violated so it doesn’t get to that stage. They will be more specific with information about that violation, communicate it to you through notifications and emails and via the Creative Studio. There will also be an appeals process in place as before.

We applaud all of the changes that YouTube are making here. I think that the first time warning is a fantastic idea because many video creators get terrified over making any strike at any point in their YouTube journey. I think a consistent penalty system makes it very clear to the user. It also eliminates the extremely harsh 90 day livestream penalty there used to be.

In effect, creators are getting an extra strike out of the new rules but you shouldn’t take advantage of that. After your first warning you shouldn't be making any further strikes on your YouTube channel.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

YouTube have just made some sweeping changes to their Community Guidelines which affect every creator. Find out how you can stay on the right side of the new rules.

New Community Guidelines From YouTube: What Creators Need to Know Right Now

If you want to really succeed on YouTube, and I mean really succeed, you need two elements: clear focus and amazing research. On today's episode of TubeTalk, we're going to show you how to do both.

Today I'm very excited to be speaking with Chris Sharpe. He is the co-creator and CEO of a channel called 

. This channel has over five million subscribers, so Chris clearly understands his focus, and knows how to get his videos seen by the right audience, and he's going to share all that information with us, including a 

How to build a YouTube channel around your passion

Why a keyword driven strategy is the key to early success

How to do keyword research for your YouTube content

How email notifications can be your best friend for building a community

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast

Don't forget to leave us a review if you love the show!

How ‘Yoga with Adriene’ Generated 5M YouTube Subscribers: Full Transcript

	Thanks for having me. I've been listening to this podcast for what seems like years, so it's an honor to be on.

	Can't be more excited to get you on here. Chris, give us like a two-second overview, Chris in a tweet, so people can kind of get an idea of where you fit in and a bit of your background, and then we'll kind of delve into what you have to share with us.

	Sure. My background is as an independent filmmaker, director and cinematographer. When I realized that I couldn't make a living doing that, I started dipping my toes in YouTube and that really took off, and my life has been pretty much YouTube only ever since, with Yoga With Adrienne being my main project. Liron:	How long ago was this? How long ago did you start this journey?

	I started the journey in 2010 with my first channel, which was Hilah Cooking, a cooking channel, back before the cooking niche was so glutted. We did a cooking channel and did really well with that. Once that channel became a success, I wanted to see if I could replicate what we'd done with that channel, and I reached out to another one of my friends, who was Adrienne Mishler, and asked if she would be interested in hosting a yoga channel. We started that channel in 2012, and so here we are, about to hit over five million subscribers.

	Wow. That is some serious journey. Tell me about that conversation that you had with Adrienne. How did that go? You said, "Hey, I've got this thing called a camera, there's this thing called YouTube, you have a yoga mat. I think we could do something"?

	Well, she knew. She was following Hilah Cooking because we were all friends from the theater community, theater and film community there in Austin, and I'd worked with Adrienne on a film project and I wanted to work with her again. She knew what we were doing with Hilah Cooking, so I just reached out and said, "Hey, I want to do another channel to see if I can replicate this, maybe even do it faster, as far as the growth goes. Would you be ... " and she was a yoga teacher. I'm like, "Would you be interested in teaching yoga on camera, and we'll build this channel around it and we'll keep it in sync and congruent with your values and your personality and your style, and we'll see what happens," and she was interested. It took us about a year from that point to actually get the cameras rolling, just figuring out what it was going to be called and what all we were going to do with it. Then once we started, we just went for it.

	Okay. It sounds like a year is a long time. I mean, when you tell people these days that it takes a while to build a brand and a while to build a channel, they kind of think a while is 48 to 72 hours. You're talking about you spent a year in the planning, a year just to get your channel focused, to know who your audience is going to be.

	Yeah. Well, that year was ... you know, it wasn't like a dedicated year spent. We would meet up every few months and talk about it, and some of it was our schedules aligning and just everything else, because Hilah Cooking was really going strong at that time and Adrienne is a working actor also, so she had projects going on. Some of it was, you know, it was like we were both thinking about it the whole time and we would occasionally have meetings, and then we just got to a point where, "Okay, we've got this, let's go."

	Right, so now you have the go, you have the green light, you start.

	We did this with Hilah Cooking too, but my background, after I couldn't make the independent filmmaker thing work out financially for myself, I was basically unemployable and had no decent job history. I didn't know what to do. I just knew that I couldn't make the money that I needed, and this was around 2008, right as the recession was hitting, and there weren't very many jobs. I just kind of hunkered down and figured out I was going to learn how to do this internet stuff, and I started learning about search engine optimization and that type of thing, which led to I really went deep into search engine optimization, and was able to get a job because of that. Once I had the job, then I started the YouTube stuff.

Because of this deep dive into search engine optimization that I'd done, when we started the Hilah Cooking channel, I did some keyword research and I identified ... I made a list, basically, of a hundred keywords that I thought we could go after, and then I shared that with Hilah and she picked the ones that she wanted to do recipes on, and that was like ... because we didn't have an advertising budget, so that was really what got that channel going.

I replicated that for Yoga With Adrienne and did keyword research in yoga and related topics in that niche, and then I shared the list with Adrienne, and we kind of picked what we thought were going to be, first of all, the good ones to go after, but also in the early days, we really wanted to focus on the foundational yoga poses. Our first year was basically getting the foundation, a series called The Foundations of Yoga, which are the core poses that you need to learn and put together into sequences. After we got those done, it was very keyword-driven, such as things like yoga for beginners, beginners' yoga, weight loss yoga, yoga for weight loss, that type of thing. We used the keywords as a base, and then build the content on top of that.

	That's a smart strategy. I mean, YouTube, at the end of the day, is a search engine, so people are going into YouTube, into Google, and they're asking those questions. If you're able to provide the exact solution for what they're looking for, boom. That's going to win. The match is made in heaven and you get all these eyeballs on your side, which is superb.

Chris:	Totally. That's our approach, and I like that people ... there seems to be a trend towards rather than calling it search engine optimization, answer engine optimization, and I really like that, because we want all of our videos to be the answer to someone's question. Because I feel like when people are typing something into the search box, for this type of thing, it's like, "How do I do this," or, "I'm looking for yoga for weight loss, I'm looking for yoga for bad wrists or yoga for a sore lower back," so that's what we begin with, the potential viewer in mind before we create the content.

	Okay, perfect. You know it's going to deliver, because somebody has asked that question. How do you go about finding those questions? Do you have a specific technique that you use? How do you do your keyword research?

	Well, my technique is somewhat haphazard. I know people who have very elaborate systems, but I do use vidIQ, primarily, as my keyword research tool for YouTube. I also use Arefs. I'm always keeping a list of ideas, of things that are in the back of my head. Then I'll take my notebook, I'll put all these keywords in and just see kind of what the volume is. A lot of times I find that what I thought the phrase was is not what the people are actually typing in.

	That's key. You say that you go in maybe to search an idea, like best poses for weight loss as an example, and then you see that the search volume for that exact phrase is maybe not as high as you thought, but if you changed it up a little bit, maybe more in line with what people are searching, then that makes all the difference?

	Absolutely. Yeah, so we definitely do that on every video.

	How do you know how to rephrase your question or your search or what people are searching for? Do you just play around with keys and hope for the best?

	Usually what I do ... and even though I consider myself good at this stuff, there's people that take it to a much higher level than I do, so I'll just look. Usually there's some very similar keywords or a keyword phrase right around that one that have higher volume, and then that's an indicator to me that someone is looking for weight loss yoga poses as opposed to best poses for weight loss. If that one's significantly higher, we'll go with that one.

	Now that you have your question, so now that we know that is the exact phrase people are searching for, you know you can easily make content around that. It falls in line with your brand and what your channel's all about. How close did you stick to that when it comes to using that as your title, or using those in the descriptions?

	I will say we stick to it about 75% of the time now. We have the luxury now of having a significant audience, so sometimes it's a little awkward. Now that we're actually serving an audience that we know ... you know, when you start out, you have no idea what your audience is going to be like, so you have to start somewhere. Now we know the things that are going to resonate with our audience, and they're not always things that have a high volume as far as keywords go, as far as search volume goes.

We try to make 75% of our videos keyword-based, on the research, and then the other are really just there to serve to the community. They use the terminology that our community uses, so they pick it up and it resonates really well with them.

	You kind of found your groove in here. Was there anything specific that really kind of triggered them? Was it just learn the poses and then it kind of developed from there, or was there a different approach to getting your channel to be the authority?

	I will say it took us a long ... we talked about how long it takes earlier, but it really took two years of consistently posting every week before we were seeing ... before it started to feel like this was worth it from a numbers standpoint, right? The thing that really triggered it was in January of 2015. We decided we were going to do a 30 Days of Yoga series, so every day in January, there was a new video. The trending thing, keyword-driven, was 30-day yoga challenge, but we didn't like the use of the word "challenge" as it related to yoga, because it seemed competitive and we wanted everyone to feel like they're a part of it, they're doing this together. That would have been the keyword thing to go for, 30-day yoga challenge, but we didn't. We went with 30 Days of Yoga.

We did a video every day the month of January, and we also did a daily email that went along with it. We got people to sign up for our email list and then we would mail every day, driving traffic to that video. On the landing pages, we had ways for people to share that with their friends. We were like, "This will be much more fun with friends, so tag your friends and share this." That is the thing that really was the tipping point for the channel, because we got people involved. We really fed the community through that, and that's what I really attribute as the thing that was kind of the tipping point for a lot of growth.

	Up until that point, before you had your 30-day challenge, could you remember offhand what your subscriber count was at that stage?

	Okay, so really a fair size. You've got the mass community, they like your content, they keep coming back. Obviously the 30 days have appeal to a much, much, much larger audience who has just got to commit to that. You speak a lot about the landing page and being able to tag your friends or share it with your friends. Was your strategy to drive people not straight to a YouTube but to a landing page, and then kind of get them to the YouTube channel?

	Correct, yeah. You know, we've experimented with driving people to our website versus driving them straight to YouTube, and we like driving them straight to YouTube so they stay in that ecosystem. We did build an external landing page, and we made a video. We made a video announcement in YouTube and drove them to a landing page that was just like a simple Wordpress page with an opt-in, very, very simple.

	Like, "Give us your email address and we'll keep you posted"?

	Yeah. Yeah. They would enter their email address, and then once that was done, it would take them to a thank-you page that said, "Awesome, you're in. Here's what you can expect, here's what's going to happen, and invite your friends," and then we included some social sharing buttons below that. Then of course we promoted that page across our social platforms as well.

	You drove them not to your YouTube page. You first drove them to a landing page, got them excited, and then everything else from that point was all about the YouTube channel as a whole, right?

	Correct, yeah. We actually didn't do any advertising or remarketing either, so it was all based on like a vlog-type video on YouTube. It kind of started on YouTube. The audience saw it there, then we bounced them to a landing page. From then, once they've signed up and shared with their friends or whatever, all the other communications will be driving them straight to the YouTube channel.

	What a pleasure that is, is being able to control your own notifications. Now you have your customers or potential customers, or at least interested people, you've got their email address. You're giving them value. You can decide when to drive people to your site or to your YouTube channel, as opposed to just hoping that the YouTube notification actually works this time.

	Definitely, yeah. Email has been a key component. Our goal with the 30 Days of Yoga series was can we just like boost this channel somehow, increase the subscribers and the watch time, but also can we grow our mailing list, because we do a weekly email that promotes that week's videos still, and we have about half a million people on our email list, so that helps us. That gives us an advantage every week, with we show up in people's inboxes with a nice letter, putting the video in some sort of context, rather than just popping up in YouTube.

	Yeah. Regardless of how many systems we've come through, no matter how many new social platforms there are with different apps that have popped up on the screen, there's one constant, and that's email. It's the one thing we check every single time, and it's the one thing you need to sign up to all these darn systems anyway.

	Yeah. You can knock it, but it is what it is, and it works great for us, so yeah. You know, I love YouTube. If YouTube would have been around when I was a kid, I would have been like all over it, and I love it. You know, everyone gets frustrated with it from time to time, but I think it's just such an amazing thing that it even exists. With that being said, I'm conscious that they can change their algorithm.

I've never set the business up to depend on AdSense revenue, because I feel like that could go away at a whim, so we've built other revenue streams. You know, I love YouTube as a distribution platform, but we've always tried to not depend on them doing the hard work for us. I'm just glad that they get our videos to an audience at this point.

	That is a perfect, perfect way to do it. It's a pleasure to be able to have a system. You don't have to invest into hardware, you don't have to invest into tech support, you don't have to invest into infrastructure. You're literally using somebody else's all technology for your benefit. The fact that they happen to throw you a couple of bucks because of AdSense should be a pleasure. It should be a welcome gift. It's not a right, which is why so many people are just going about this the wrong way round. "I demand my AdSense to be activated at 4,000 hours." Okay, cool. What are you going to do with your entire $2.48? This is not much anyway, but they're giving it to you as their way of saying, "Thank you for uploading your content." They're there to make money. They have their revenue models.

Talk to us about the revenue models that you do as well, because you're saying AdSense is a gravy, it's a pleasure, thank you very much, but it's not how you set up your business. Your business has got other revenue streams. Are you able to talk through some of those?

	Absolutely. Our core, in addition to the YouTube channel, we have a subscription video-on-demand service, which is basically like a membership site but it works on apps, and it works on your Apple TV and your Roku and all that stuff. We also produce weekly content that's exclusively for that. It contains our entire library plus the standalone courses. We used to do standalone courses and would sell those transactionally, and we still do to a certain extent, but really our focus is on our membership platform, so that's like our primary revenue driver.

Then as I mentioned, we also sell standalone courses that are like, for an example, here's a Power Yoga course that's about 10 videos, and it's all about Power Yoga. It's mixing yoga with some high-intensity interval training, and it's much more heavily produced and has this awesome music and everything like that. The idea is for it to be consumed and used as its own thing. It's not the type of content that would work for us on YouTube, so people can buy that individually or get it as part of their subscription.

Then we also have, through Shopify, we do merchandise. We've got like a bunch of t-shirts, a necklace, bags, different things like that, and then we'll do live events, which initially were a money loser because we had to figure out how live events worked. Now, thanks to some experience, that's become a revenue generator as well. Every other year, we'll do a tour. This year we're just doing a couple of big events, so the live events are another revenue stream too.

	Speaking of live, do you use any live streaming in your arsenal of tools?

	We've live streamed once, and it really just comes down to the fact that we do so much traveling, whether it's for shooting or live events or different things like that. It's become difficult to do live streaming in the way that we really want to implement it, but it's definitely there and something that we have a good plan for, once our real-world schedule allows for it.

	Right, okay. World domination is going to come in the term of live streaming? Okay. That makes sense.

	We could give it more as bringing the world together even more. We're not trying to dominate.

	I like that approach. It's not a challenge, it's inclusive. I get you.

	Totally. Totally. I will take a little detour and say when we started this channel, we intentionally designed it for people that would probably never go to a live yoga class, whether that's because of cost or whether that's because of body image issues or schedule or whatever. There was a whole segment of people out there that never felt comfortable going to a yoga class, so we wanted to reach those people and give them these tools, so they could put together a home yoga practice without having to go to a yoga class. Now a lot of those people have gone through our videos and come to our live events, and now they do go to yoga classes in real life. We definitely kind of went after a market that I felt wasn't being served.

	I love that, because there's so many people who are simply afraid, embarrassed, whatever the anxiety issue is, but it's an issue and we have to acknowledge it. This way, if I can know what the positions are called and kind of do them to a certain degree before I walk in, I'm going to be much more comfortable walking into a class at a certain point.

	Totally. That's who our core audience was, starting out, and that's still who we look at as our people we're going out there to reach. We do some more advanced stuff so that we can take them on this journey, but yeah, I think that's what sets us apart from a lot of the other yoga channels out there.

	It seems like focus was a big focus for you, so the more targeted and pinpoint accuracy that you had in your search, in your SEO, in your content, well, therefore it drove a very specific niche audience which is clearly big enough around the world to get an entire business going out of this.

	At which point did you kind of decide that it's time to do some paid-for classes, paid-for merchandise, paid-for courses, over the free stuff that people are getting online?

	Well, we started that in the second year, because our YouTube channel was making no money. I mean, we had less than ... it was really looking like it wasn't going to take off after we'd done it for about a year, as strange as that seems now, looking back. It really seemed like it wasn't going to take off, and I felt bad. Neither one of us was in a great financial place at the time, so my idea was let's do a course that we sell and just see what happens. If it makes money, then we'll take that as a sign that we're moving in the right direction.

In 2014, we put out a course. We put together a course called Reboot, that was four videos with a calendar and a little e-book that went with it, that wasn't available on the YouTube channel. I think it made like $10,000 or something like that, which at the time we absolutely couldn't believe. That was more than we'd made for doing this thing for over a year, so that was kind of an indicator. Then also, we set up a private Facebook group to go along with that, and that was kind of the beginning of cultivating this community.

Then that community became ... it was just such a great experience, interacting with the people in that group that were doing these videos every day together. They were like, "Okay, we're going to do more of these courses, and we're going to continue to cultivate this community and make it bigger and better and healthier." As we did more courses, I didn't even know how to deliver a digital course at that time. It wasn't quite as easy back then, even though is wasn't that long ago.

The opportunities started coming up to do a subscription service, so we thought, "Okay, let's just bundle all our stuff together and put it together like a Netflix-style thing for yoga." Then as that began to grow, we really liked it. We liked what was happening there, and so last year we started doing new, exclusive content for that every week.

	Wow. Okay. I mean, it's understanding the audience, understanding what they want from you, why they're there in the first place. Listening to them, providing them more, to a point where they're willing to give you money. In fact, they want to give you money. They want to support you. They're part of this now. Let me ask you this, Chris. What has got you super excited now as far as the platform is concerned, YouTube, the business is concerned? What's the big thing?

	I'm really personally excited about YouTube TV and how YouTube starts working into that, just to see. It's interesting you bring up the community thing, because I watch almost all of the YouTube videos that I watch via my Apple TV, so I don't see the community components, but I think that they actually really nailed what they did with YouTube TV, and I'm interested to see how the YouTube component of that can start becoming a bigger part of YouTube TV rather than the network.

	That has me really excited. I think the potential there is huge, and I think that Google and YouTube are particularly positioned to continue to make that great. That's the latest thing that I've been excited about, just seeing how YouTube competes in this new landscape that's coming up once we have all these streaming video-on-demand channels. That's what's got me kind of excited.

	Of course, technology is becoming less and less of a barrier. Internet connectivity is becoming more proliferant everywhere around the world. Not everybody has 4G and 5G, obviously, but it's definitely kind of coming. Do you have a specific mobile strategy for those countries? South Africa and Africa, is very much mobile-first. India as well, maybe mobile-only in fact. Do you have a different approach to mobile versus desktop?

	Not currently, but we are currently working with some partners on getting more efficiently into those countries that you mentioned, including a few others. We're just in the very early days. We're interested in localizing our videos for non-English-speaking countries, so we're working through that process right now. That's about as much as I can firmly say right now.

	I fully get it. The point is you're thinking bigger than today. You've clearly got your eyes on short, medium and long-term goals.

	Yeah. Actually, the way that we've structured this business, we look at YouTube more as a marketing channel. It's great, it's our top marketing channel, and it's also like a great ... it's not like strip marketing, because we're reaching the people that we want to reach with our message, but if YouTube went away, from a financial perspective we would still be okay, because we've built all the other things around it.

	Obviously you're making revenue from AdSense, but the point you're making is, "We're okay, we have clearance"?

	Just based on my experience, for me, if I could turn off ads and be confident that my ranking would still be the same, we would consider doing that, actually, to make the experience better for people. Based on my tests, when I turn ads off, it doesn't ... I lose my rankings, so the ads are even there for kind of a ... and I'm not trying to play down the money side of it. Liron:	Of course.

	We just really look at it as like this is where people are going to find us, so I'm going to do whatever I can on YouTube so that people can find our stuff.

	It's a holistic approach. It's a business. Did you go into this with a business in mind, or did you go into this with, "Let's make some channels, maybe we'll make some money eventually"?

	Actually, we just wanted to quit our day jobs and get back to making movies on the side. We thought these would just be ... we didn't think that either one of the channels would get as big or as time-consuming as they have become. The interesting thing with Yoga With Adrienne is that I've seen with my own eyes what a positive impact it's had on the world. My idea first of all was like, "Let's make this small channel. We'll quit our day jobs and make movies in our spare time, right?" Then it was a matter of like, "Okay, I need to make this thing sustainable as a business."

	Then once I realized that it was sustainable as a business, and seemed to be solid and just big enough, and just efficient enough to really run on its own ... you know, now it runs like a machine almost ... that was when I was able to focus on, okay, really the important thing to me is I do believe that what we're doing is incredibly important and having a massively positive impact on people, probably more so than anything else I'll ever do. Now, our decisions are driven by how do we impact more people with what we're doing.

	You've got to love it. It's such a great story, where you were doing what you wanted, and you were as a matter of fact enough to make a right turn when you needed. You zigged where you needed to, you zagged where you needed to, just to get it to a certain point where you could kind of take a step back and go, "Wow, this is actually a thing. It's scalable. We have a distribution platform. People love it. We're going to give them more of it, and by the way, make a living doing it." There is no better way to live, I suppose.

	I agree. I'm very happy. I feel very blessed, or lucky, or whatever term you choose to use.

	I hear you. Before we wrap up, just kind of a question I had for you, especially the space that you're in and the conversation we've had. If you could put one thing on a big billboard in Times Square or a tweet that everybody would see, or a Facebook post that everybody would see, the entire world will see it, what message will it say?

	It would say, "Do yogawithadrienne.com."

	Love it. Marketing is marketing, right? Spoken like a true businessperson.

Huge thanks to Chris for joining us on the show. You can contact him via 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

'Yoga with Adriene' has not only generated over 5M subscribers on YouTube, it has become a phenomenally successful off-platform business too. Find out how on this week's episode of TubeTalk.

How ‘Yoga with Adriene’ Grew to 5M Subscribers on YouTube: TubeTalk 173 Chris Sharpe

If you’re a YouTube creator, you may have noticed that when you go to check your analytics, they look a little different to what they used to be. YouTube are encouraging video creators to try the new Studio Beta, because it has new analytics and it has a layout that YouTube wants you to use in the future. The problem is for many video creators is that they've been forced onto this new studio without being asked.

If you want to return to the Creator Studio Classic, as it's now called, in the bottom left hand corner, you should be able to click a button which will take you back there. However, this is only a temporary fix, because when you go back to your analytics on your next YouTube session, you'll be taken to the new Beta Studio once again.

How to Make YouTube Classic Studio Your Default (But Should You?)

To make the Classic Studio once again your default studio, click on Settings in the new Beta Studio and you should have an option in the General Settings to set the default creator experience. Set it to Creator Studio Classic and you should now go to your normal analytics, which you're all used to.

So now you know how to switch back to the old Classic Studio analytics. The question is should you? Well the most important thing to know right now is that the Studio Beta is the future, the Classic Studio is going to go away at some point in 2019. YouTube is still very coy on when this is going to happen, but at some point that Creator Studio is not going to be accessible. So you should at least familiarize yourself with the new Studio Beta. Another thing to note is that the Classic Studio is now in what you might call a maintenance-only mode, so that it's not gonna get any new upgraded features.

For example, there is an option to check Impressions and Click Through, but that's only available through the new Studio Beta. And this is another reason to start using the new studio for Impressions, Click Through rates, and so on. These are vital pieces of information which will really help grow your channel.

For all you vidIQ users out there, we will be concentrating more and more on the Studio Beta throughout 2019. You can already see we've got some features in the edit pages, such as the best time to publish your videos, the legendary SEO Scorecard and Checklist, as well as the Boost feature.

Personally, I love the new features in the Studio Beta, the dashboard in particular, with that little snapshot of your latest video, and Impressions to Click Through Rate is an absolute gold mine of information to really improve your thumbnails.

However, in the Classic Studio, there is still one page I absolutely love. Yep, still can't get enough of this page showing my views in real time for all of my latest videos, and it does help when one of those videos is going viral. Nice!

YouTube wants you to try Studio Beta to access new analytics data. We show you how to switch back to the old Creator Studio Layout.

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