Proven Ways to Monetize YouTube Channel in 2025

YouTube started as a niche platform enthusiasts to express and share their thoughts, feelings, ideas, and hobbies. However, over time it has grown into a fully-fledged ecosystem for video content makers, relying on regular videos, YouTube Shorts, and live streams to stay in touch with the audiences.

Every day, YouTube is frequented by 122 million+ active users, who watch thousands of videos spending 1 billion hours of content. PewDiePie, Mr. Beast, and even large commercial brands like Sony rely on YouTube to monetize their channels and drive sales, increase brand awareness, or achieve any other target action.

If you are interested in making thought-provoking, engaging, high-quality video content that resonates with viewers, you can thrive as a creator on this platform due to its vast audience. This guide will take you through the steps to monetize your YouTube channel in 2025.

YouTube Policies

Monetization policies are made to ensure that your content is appropriate for advertising and meets YouTube’s standards. They cover various topics, including Terms of Use, Guidelines, Copyrights, and more specific program requirements.

Here are the main ways of YouTube monetization that we will review in this article. They are not mutually exclusive, but some of them are better suited for specific use cases.

The concept of a partner program monetization is rather simple: you make videos, they get views, and the YouTube Partner Program pays, based on the number of views. To join this program, you must:

1. Comply with YouTube channel monetization rules
2. Not have any active restrictions for your channel
3. Enable two-step verification on your Google account
4. Have access to advanced features on YouTube
5. Have one active AdSense for YouTube account tied to your YouTube channel, or be prepared to set one up in YouTube Studio if you don’t already have one

When you link your YouTube channel to an AdSense account, you are able to submit your videos in consideration of monetization through AdSense. To join the YouTube Affiliate Programme, your channel must meet the following requirements:

• Have 1,000 subscribers or more
• Have 4,000 hours or more of watch time in the past 12 months

After signing up for the partner program and getting a positive answer from YouTube, you can start uploading and making money. Remember, that you must turn on advertising on your YouTube account.

Ad networks can provide a handy set of tools that can both enhance your revenue and retain the quality of your content at the same level, preserving the relations with the audience.

Ad networks bring together businesses and content-makers, i.e., those who want to be advertised and those who can influence the opinions of the audience. The format of ads can be different: sponsored content, ads in-between your video, ad banners, and many more. The amount of money you get can be based on the number of impressions, clicks, or views, and audience performance.

What makes ad networks so reliable and easy to use is that they handle all the boring stuff such as details of ad placement, targeting, and optimization, giving you only the information about what is needed for a profitable deal. This means you can concentrate on what you love — creating engaging videos — while enjoying the financial benefits of your hard work.

Direct link is designed for people, who want to start making money but have fewer subscribers. Every time a user clicks on a Smart Direct Link, the most relevant offer from thousands of advertisers is displayed. How does it work? The secret is advanced algorithms that match the appropriate offers to traffic source specifics like devices, user preferences, and GEO.

You can place a DirectLink to your landing page or use third-party services like Linktree, which allows you to contain multiple links to all your pages in one convenient location. You make a straightforward landing page that contains the link rather than including it in the video description itself. This landing page URL will appear in your advertising, sponsored posts, and bio. The landing page will receive your traffic, and consumers won’t see the relevant advertisements until they click on the Smart Direct Link.

Influence marketing is a very popular way to monetize your YouTube channel. Brands pay influencers who have gained loyal audiences of their target GEO. More faithful and active subscribers make you more attractive to brands that want to advertise on your channel.

Connecting with a suitable partnership opens you to a vast range of possibilities, as many companies may be interested in your channel and your viewers.

Influence marketing is akin to affiliate marketing, but with a few nuances. Businesses contact you via special agencies. It is efficient and easy as influencer agencies do the negotiations for you, saving time and automating the payment.

Companies would be interested in you only if you have a big engaged audience, and your content is appropriate to the target audience of the brands. But if your subscriber count isn’t that big, you can rely on influence marketing agencies like Upfluence, Tagger, or Captiv8. We recommend you sign up on many platforms, maximizing your reach, and attracting more businesses.

Remember to label ad content as sponsored. You should also follow Google’s ad policies to avoid penalties on your account.

Sometimes your loyal subscribers want to support you not only via activity on a channel, like comments, views, and likes, but also straightforwardly donate money to you. YouTube has in-build functions for that. One of them is channel memberships, which is no different from typical membership programs on other platforms.

Viewers pay some fee to get premium content, like early access to the videos, closed premium live streams, stickers in chat, and of course a cool badge near their nickname in chat and comment sections. You can make up to 5 tiers with specific rewards and bonuses added to each level of subscription.

To create tiers, you must have 1,000+ subscribers and be over 18 years old. You also need to be a YouTube Partner Program member. From any tier you will get from $0.99 to $100, the choice is yours — you need to decide how valuable your content is.

Continuing the topic of direct support from subscribers, you can use the following YouTube functions available in live chat. Super chat and super stickers can be activated during a live stream. Your viewers can donate to you and highlight their message in chat, it will also be visible for some time above all other messages.

Viewers will also receive personalized badges and emoticons during your live sessions. In addition, they can get access to members-only benefits like live chats with you.

YouTube Shorts are brief, vertical videos primarily created on smartphones and uploaded directly to YouTube via the YouTube app, much like how Instagram Reels are shared on Instagram. The maximum duration for a YouTube Short is 60 seconds.

And just like you can monetize Reels, since May 2021, you can set up YouTube Shorts monetization. 

If you have 1,000+ subscribers, get 10M or more valid views in the last 90 days, and follow platform criteria to get profit from YouTube Shorts. The system works like ads in usual long-format videos. Users are shown ads that roll in between clips, which cover the costs of music licensing. As an author, you are eligible to get 45% of each revenue based on the number of views your Shorts score in each country.

As you may know, YouTube made a subscription service, called YouTube Premium. It allows users to play content in the background, download videos, and many more, but the killer feature is ad-free content.

What should you do as an author if every viewer buys the Premium and ads won’t be shown? Do not worry as YouTube took care of it for you. Instead of the usual Cost Per Mille (CPM) system, where bloggers earn for every 1,000 ad impressions, with YouTube Premium, bloggers receive earnings that are shared among content creators.

A user’s monthly payments are allocated to the creators whose videos they have watched most frequently throughout the month, provided they have a YouTube Premium subscription. If you are already a monetized creator, all that is necessary is for your content to be viewed by YouTube Premium members.

This method isn’t very common, but it can also gain you money. So imagine you made a viral video. Most likely different media sources will ask you for permission to use your video. You can grant it for free, but if you license your content, you may ask for a fee for the usage of your video.

To ease the contact for those interested in using your viral video, you should add an email address to the “About” section of your YouTube channel. Additionally, consider listing your videos in a marketplace to allow potential buyers to easily find and acquire your content.

As said earlier, the more views and subscribers you get, the more visible you become for companies. Growing is necessary to get consistent revenue from your YouTube channel. Here are some tips on how to boost your popularity and become a target for big businesses.

Who doesn’t like quality content made with dedication, love, and effort? Your viewers, much like you, would like to watch interesting, eye-catching, and visually appealing videos.

For improving your videos, learn to present information with charisma, it will make you more interesting to watch and listen to. Honing video editing skills also helps, making the picture look smooth and more professional. Don’t be greedy and buy yourself pro equipment to shoot content worth watching.

YouTube, while being a video hosting, also can be used as a search tool, like Google. Therefore, principles of SEO can be applied here as well. YouTube SEO is a proven way to increase views.

YouTube search engine heavily relies on keywords, written not only in the title, but in description, and tag section as well.

Custom YouTube thumbnails are a great way to highlight your channel in the mass of other videos. A unique style helps your audience recognize you. A good headline and thumbnail can work together to capture the viewer’s interest. Moreover, a well-made thumbnail should be able to capture attention at first sight. 

Research to find what is trending now and what users click the most. You can also experiment with your audience to find out what they prefer. In 2023 MrBeast started doing A/B testing to find out what thumbnails his users preferred the most. Eventually, results showed that thumbnails with his mouth closed gain more watch time and attention, therefore boosting his YouTube channel monetization.

Create playlists when you have many videos on your channel or if you have multiple series of videos. It will help your viewers navigate through your channel easily. It is important to sort them in chronological order for convenience, so your subscribers can watch all videos non-stop.

You may post relevant playlists in the feed for users to see them. Each should be unique from the others, and the order in which they are played should complement the overall flow.

Many top YouTube creators have found success by collaborating with others. Thanks to collaboration you will increase a number of your followers.

To increase views on YouTube, it’s important to approach it like any other social network. Your active interaction with the audience is crucial to keep them coming back for more content.
When viewers ask questions, take the time to provide meaningful answers – this will encourage others to comment as well.

Gaining a great number of views on YouTube requires patience. The platform has specific rules in place to ensure that viewers receive high quality content permanently.
Interesting, eye-catching and regular content ensures stable growth of your channel. The bigger your channel, the bigger your revenue and popularity.

YouTube is one of the best video platforms that gives its creators endless opportunities to earn popularity, create a community, and, most importantly, monetize their audience. Starting slow and carefully making steps towards a goal is the way. Make your videos entertaining, interesting, and relevant to your audience. Remember to be respectful and polite, people tend to be attracted to good people. Walk a mile in the shoes of your potential subscribers and make content that you will personally like.

Try different types of traffic monetization, it is more efficient and might gain you more profit. Do research, experiment, and find your own unique path on this platform.