How To Make Money With Creative Commons Videos

how to make money on youtube Did you know that you can make money on YouTube without ever uploading a video? YouTube allows it's users access to a library of videos that fall under the Creative Commons license. This License allows you to use other people's YouTube videos (and make money from them) as if they were your own.

You can make money on YouTube without ever uploading a video

In this step-by-step tutorial I am going to show you how to re-publish other people's YouTube videos, how to optimize them to get more traffic, and how to convert your video traffic into money.

There are 4 steps to this tutorial:

1. Choose a Target Keyword
2. Re-Publish YouTube videos
3. Optimize video for traffic
4. Monetize video traffic

In order to find videos that are going to get traffic and generate the most money from advertising, you first need to do some keyword research. Keyword research is the process of finding and selecting keywords/topics that people are searching for that aren't too competitive.

Google Trends Snapshot — Use Google Trends to pickup on topics that are trending. A search for the term "gardening" reveals that searches for that topic hit their lowest point in December, and their highest point in early May. This data reveals that late winter/ early spring is the best time to focus on posting gardening related content.

snapshot from KW Finder — Perform a keyword search on KW Finder or SEM Rush to find a target keyword. Keywords with the highest search and CPC values have the potential to generate the highest financial return, but are usually the most difficult to rank for (as shown under the DIFF tab). From this example, I chose "Vegetable garden planner" as my keyword because it's a long tail keyword with a relatively high search volume and a medium difficulty, and therefore YouTube competition for the video is likely to be low.

snapshot of tube buddy's tag explorer — The final step is to cross-check your keyword with the TubeBuddy tag explorer to get an idea of how difficult it will be for your video to rank high on YouTube for your given keyword. A score of over 70 is usually a good indicator.

After following these three steps, I was able to determine that "Vegetable garden planner" is a good keyword to target for my YouTube video. In the next step I am going to show you how to find and republish a YouTube video that relates to your chosen keyword.

In this section you will learn how to re-publish Creative Commons-licensed YouTube videos that relate to your keyword, optimize them to get lots of traffic, and then re-publishing them as your own.

visit youtube.com — Go to www.youtube.com

Click on the creator studio tab — At the upper right-hand corner of the screen, click on your user icon, then Creator Studio.

Click on the video editor link in the left-hand column — Once inside Creator Studio, click on the Video Editor link in the left-hand column.

Click on the Creative Commons Tab — Click on the CC (Creative Commons) tab inside of the video editor.

Add a youtube video to your library — Select a video from the library, then click the + icon to add the video to your account.

change the video title — Change the video title.

click create video to publish the video — Click the Create Video button to publish the video.

In this section you will learn how to use clickbait and captions to optimize your videos in order to increase your total views.

Use Clickbait

In case you haven't heard, clickbait "describes web content that is aimed at generating online advertising earnings, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy". If used responsibly, it can be a legitimate marketing strategy. Clickbait is used frequently by large media companies such as BuzzFeed and UpWorthy to increase website traffic.

Although using clickbait is frowned upon, it's use is so widespread simply because clickbait is an effective way to increase traffic.If you don't have the Photoshop skills to make effective clickbait, at least design an attractive thumbnail for your video.

example of a youtube clickbait video — Example of a YouTube clickbait video. 1-Video title promises to reveal "breakthrough" content. 2-Claim made by the video title is supported through the use of an "unbelievable" image.

The key to using clickbait successfully is to capture your audience's attention with a "shocking" video thumbnail and video title. However, you must also a deliver a quality video in order to ensure that your user engagement rate and video ratings remain high.

Add Captions

Adding captions is one of the easiest ways to boost your video traffic because captions are indexed by YouTube, meaning a huge opportunity to increases your video's keyword diversity and density.

Keyword diversity and density are two factors which influence the order in which your video appears in YouTube video search results.

Also keep in mind that YouTube's automatic (CC) captions do not get indexed, which is why it is important to add your own.

YouTube CC added value statistics showing the YouTube keywords that were indexed as a result of adding captions to my YouTube videos — Adding captions to my YouTube video added an additional 1,046 words and 393 indexable search terms. Best of all, my target keyword density increased by 68 terms (Green), and my keyword diversity increased by 12 terms (orange).

The second reason why you should add captions to your videos is because adding captions increases user engagement rates, which affects your video SEO. For an explanation why, view the full article.

YouTube CC affects video engagement ratio — Engagement ratio is a key ranking component for YouTube videos.

The third reason why you should add captions to your videos is because "by increasing your total video views, you are also increasing your total earnings".

Consider for a moment a YouTube video with over 10,000,000 views. If the publisher is taking full advantage of AdSense, then a video with 10,000,000 views should be capable of easily generating over $5,000 in earnings.

A YouTube video with around 8 million views with estimated AdSense revenues of around $12,171.29 — A YouTube video with around 8 million views showing estimated AdSense earnings of around $12,171.29. Based on the example above, adding captions could lead to a 7.32% increase in views, which translates into an estimated increase in earnings of $890.93, from $12.171.29 to $13,062.22. Keep in mind this is only a rough estimate because there are many factors besides total views that influence a video's total earnings.

Before you can start to make money from your YouTube videos, you need to enable monetization and set up a Google AdSense account.

Once inside Creator Studio, click on the Video Editor link in the left-hand column — Once inside Creator Studio, click on the Status and features link in the left-hand column.

In the body of the page, click the enable monetization button. — In the body of the page, click the Enable button in the monetization box.

After you've completed step 4, YouTube will ask you to agree to their terms and conditions and you will be asked to submit additional information in order to create a Google AdSense account.

Note that your application for monetization can take a few days to get approved.

The key to being successful on YouTube is creating quality content consistently. Not all of your videos are going to be wildly successful, but the more often you post, the more growth you can expect from your channel.

Watch the growth of your channel in the form of a chart at YouTube Anayltics. Use the charts as a motivator if you ever feel like giving up.

One last thing to mention is that if you want to have lasting success on YouTube, you should consider publishing your own videos in which you connect with your audience 'face-to-face'.

It is no coincidence that the most successful YouTube channels belong to individuals who use their own quirky/unique personalities as their most valuable brand asset. So start broadcasting yourself!

Thanks for following along with this tutorial! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below!