Thanks to ever increasing internet speed, bandwidth size and video quality, video is taking the world by storm. It’s become the single most popular form of content on the internet, a powerful force no marketing professional can ignore.
In some ways this makes it harder to earn money with video. After all, everyone’s doing it. Your video has to be something really special to stand out. But there are also many more opportunities to make money with video than there ever have been. If you’re smart and use several different strategies to monetize your videos you can make a decent income through online video.
Here are 8 ways you can make money with video:
1. Sell your video content as stock video
iStockPhoto recently launched iStockVideo, a site where you can sell your footage. Anyone who needs a little bit of extra footage can then pick it up. And you never know what kind of footage will be valuable until you try. As long as the video has good image resolution you should be able to sell it for a small fee. Fortunately, there are plenty of video cameras that shoot in high quality and don’t cost the earth. You can also sell your photography on their original website to make a little bit more money.
2. Add affiliate links to your videos
Do you review things in your videos? Show off tools you use to create various projects? Add links to your videos/video descriptions so you can make money when your viewers go to buy these items. There are thousands of affiliate programs you can join. Just remember to keep all your links directly relevant to your videos and don’t add too many links to any one video (more than one link every 1.5 minutes is obnoxious unless you’re doing a list).
If you are not sure about making money with Amazon affiliates, read this post about making money from your Amazon affiliate website .
3. Upload your video to an ad revenue sharing site
Revver.com is a video sharing website which allows you to earn some of the money from ads placed on your video. All you have to do is upload your video and share it all over the place. You’ll get paid a percentage of the ad revenue for every person who clicks on the ad at the end. YouTube does allow regular users to monetize videos as well but the algorithm isn’t nearly as friendly to the average user.
4. Use video to advertise your own products
Whether you make and sell a lot of handmade crafts on Etsy or you run a successful store (brick and mortar OR online) you can use videos to advertise your products. You can create something that looks like a typical commercial or videos explaining how to use your product/discussing how the product was made. You can even create a short film that includes shots of your products in use. The sky is the limit when it comes to marketing your own products with videos, but if you want people to subscribe to your video channel remember that you’ll have to keep ads to a minimum.
5. Pair your videos up with Google Adsense
If you can afford your own hosting and bandwidth for all the videos you create, post them on your personal website and set up Google Adsense on various pages. You aren’t going to make a lot of money this way unless your videos receive a huge amount of traffic, but it’s a great passive income stream. Vlogging as become a vary lucrative business for hundreds of vloggers around the world. Why not you?
Making money from your video blog using adsense is also super popular now a days. Read- How to make money from your blog .
6. Find sponsors
You know how TV stations have ads that say “This ad brought to you by” and then list a specific company or product? If your videos are awesome you can probably find companies willing to sponsor you in much the same way. You may also be able to negotiate contracts with various companies to earn money by placing their products in key spots throughout your videos. Setting up these sponsorship deals will only be possible once you’ve already developed a following. How big your following needs to be depends entirely on the company you approach.
7. Syndicate your video content
Are your videos going to be highly original content? If your videos are unique enough and focused on a specialized niche (or genre if they’re fiction) other websites might be willing to pay for the right to host them. This is another option that will be much easier once you’ve already developed a following but you might be able to do it with a particularly compelling first video that is obviously the beginning of a series.
8. Create video ads for businesses
Once you’ve gotten the hang of creating videos pursuing your own interests and advertising your own products you can start making videos for business owners. If you’re shooting real-life footage you’re going to need a camera that can shoot in high quality, but even those can be purchased from $1000-$2000. Given that you can easily charge $2,000+ for a well made video when you’re working with local businesses, the initial purchase price can be returned quickly. If you’re good at this, it can easily replace your full time job. Obviously larger businesses will be able to pay more but typically these businesses already have an established relationship with a large advertising firm.
Conclusion
These strategies aren’t going to instantly make you a lot of money, but if you insist on making only the highest quality videos and use more than one of the strategies above you can make a good second income or even replace your full time income with money made from online videos.
You may also like to read – How to get paid for Blogging
