What are you doing to mitigate decreased ad revenue?

JesusGreen

JesusGreen

Posting Mad!
So as you probably know, many big advertisers have backed out of YouTube. This unfortunately means our ad revenue per 1000 views will decrease yet again. Whether you've seen a dip already, or haven't yet, the chances are you will some time soon.

Now not everyone is really affected as much by this - but some people, like myself, are. I'm living in a country where the dollar goes around 3x further, and where my monthly expenditure on food/bills/etc is actually very very low in comparison to other countries. So as a result, since a few months ago I've been able to pay my way primarily via the ad revenue I earned from YouTube. Since I have very little in the way of marketing/sales talent, I've simply elected to focus my efforts on trying to rank videos in search to gradually increase my monthly revenue that way.

Now though, things are looking a little difference, and that ad revenue is being threatened. So I'm changing up my strategy - and if you're someone for whom ad revenue makes up a big part of your monthly income, you should too.

My plans:
  • Set up an Amazon Merch store for the channel. I actually just got approved on Amazon Merch finally several months after applying, around about the time this whole drama with advertisers leaving started. If that ain't a sign I don't know what is! ;)
  • Work on more products (e-books, courses, etc). My last product release was almost a year ago now, and I've kind of focused more on simply increasing traffic since then - but that's something that needs to change.
  • Spend more time pushing my Patreon page & products. I only have one backer currently, and so I'm going to try and talk about and mention my Patreon at the end of most/all of my videos now when I'm signing out and asking people to consider subscribing. I'll also try to do the same with products, except with more strategical placement (i.e. mentioning when a product is relevant to a subject in a video for example).
  • Work on building my email list. While I have a decent amount of subscribers now (15.9k) my email list following is very small since I only set it up recently. I have around 80-90 email list subscribers currently. I've proven in the past that I can generate sales with well worded emails, so IMO this needs to be one of my priorities. This also has the added advantage of giving me contact with my viewers outside YouTube. In the event that YouTube were ever to go south, this gives me a backup option for reaching my audience.
  • Spend a large amount of my free time reading and watching marketing/sales content. I suck when it comes to pushing products, but it's about time that changed. I need to learn how to market my content effectively, so now's the time to start learning.
What about you? Are you doing anything to deal with decreased ad revenue - if so, what are your plans? (ps feel free to borrow ideas from me if you need some!)

:)
 
Yep, as we say in internet marketing, "the money is in the list" - It allows you to build up a relationship with your audience and gives you a way of staying in contact with them if everything else goes wrong. It's a great way of getting your followers to keep coming back to your brand and your content and to promote highly targeted offers to them over and over after you have built up trust. It's also an "asset" that has real value.
 
So far I haven't felt any decrease in revenue from ad sense. In fact, the last 7 days were extremely good (and the last 30 days as well).
But anyway only less than half of the money I make through my YouTube Channel comes from AdSense so what ever happens, it won't hurt me too much.
 
I haven't felt anything yet. March, which just ended, was my highest-paying month of my channel's history so far. February was my 2nd-highest, with December 2016 being 3rd and May 2015 being 4th. Most or all of that is because of my increased daily views, so I guess I'll just offset any CPM decrease with higher views. :p
 
I had a few record view counts lately but my ad revenue has definitely not matched the view increase...pretty normal or even subpar amounts each day with no real difference from the rest of the month.
However, I've seen my affiliate pages jump in sales this month. Basically I talk in my videos about cameras/drones and their accessories, and then I supply a landing page (EdRicker.com) for the people to check out what gear I personally use as a video maker. I supply my affiliate links to buy the products, both on the website and on my YouTube video descriptions. I find that to be more lucrative than the adsense. Although Amazon lowered their commission fee rate recently, other companies and businesses have their own affiliate programs and pay more.
So if your channel revolves around a hobby, technology, etc., you could definitely look for affiliate partnerships.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top