How to earn from YouTube in Kenya 2023

Introduction

It is easy to earn from youtube in Kenya. YouTube is arguably the most popular video platform in Kenya right now. Since it first made an entry into the country around 2006, it has grown to not only become a source of entertainment for most Kenyans but also a source of income for several content creators who have their content in the platform.

The platform has also contributed to the rise of several content creators who earn from youtube and who have used this free platform to build a fan base.

Are you a content creator who want to earn from youtube? Or are you aspiring to be one? Do you want to earn from youtube from your content? If your answer to the above questions is yes, then I’ll advise you to continue reading this article because you will learn how to earn from youtube. If your answer is no, the you might be on the wrong blog, please consider checking again.

Read also: Online jobs in Kenya you can do without a laptop.

Creating a YouTube channel

This is the first step if you want to earn from youtube. Creating a YouTube channel is one of the easiest things you will ever do in your life, with just a single tap on your YouTube app, you will have created a YouTube channel. Click on the top right corner in your app and select create channel if you haven’t created one. Enter the name which will act as your channel name and create your profile picture then you are good to go.

The problem with most aspiring content creators is that they jump into creating a channel even before they think of the content they will post there. Content should come first before the channel or a blueprint of what your content will look like should come first. This is the correct procedure to follow when creating a channel;

• Choose a niche – Before creating a channel, you should think about the content you will feed the channel. The topic should be the same to get the best results. If your channel is about comedy, then stick to it and make your audience know that this channel is exclusively for comedy; starting with the channel name, profile picture and the content, they should all align with the topic.

• Research about your niche – Before you settle on a particular topic to build your channel around, take your time to do some research on the topic. Some of the questions you should ask yourself is if this topic has enough traffic to generate income. This is because YouTube pays according to the watch time you fetch. Your topic must be interesting and engaging. There are some interesting topics that have been flooded and making breakthrough creating content around these topics is very difficult. You can take your time and read my previous article analyzing various YouTube topics and how they perform. Online tools like Ahref can help you notice the best selling topics on YouTube.

• Create your channel – After researching about your niche, it is now time to create your channel. The channel name should match the topic and it should be short and easily memorable. Your profile picture should stand out. I would advise you to take a look at the profile pictures of YouTube channels producing similar contents and try to be different from them. This will help you stand out among the crowd.

• Upload your first video – Your first video should be the introduction video. It should be the one introducing visitors to your channel. It can be a short video (30-60 seconds) of you telling your listeners about what your blog is , the type of videos you produce and how frequently you post your content. You can customize your settings for this video to be pinned on top of your channel at a point where every visitor sees it first. After uploading your first video, you are now free to upload more videos and share the links widely to start getting views.

How to earn from YouTube

After we have learnt about how to create a YouTube channel, we will now learn about how you can earn from youtube. High number of content creators earn from youtube and there is very stiff competition over the available content consumers on the platform. Because of this, make sure that your content stands out, make sure your content has something that contents from other channels lack.

YouTube is like an open air market, how attractive your product (content) is and how strategically they are placed will determine how many customers you’ll get at the end of the day. After producing your content, upload them on your platform and install the YT studio app from Google play store. This tool will help you to track the performance of your channel.

You should have a minimum of 1000 subscribers and 4000 public watch hours before qualifying for monetization. These figures sound crazy right? Yes they do but here are the tips you can use to reach this threshold within a month and get monetized.

Tips for getting 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours on YouTube within one month

Gathering 4000 hours of public watch hours is one of the most difficult things to achieve for any content creators before they earn from youtube. Think about it this way, when you produce 4 minutes video which is the average time most YouTube creators create, then you need 80,000 people to watch your video completely for you to reach this threshold which is almost impossible for someone with less than 1,000 subscribers. To navigate this challenge and earn from youtube, apply the following tricks;

• Publish long videos– Consider uploading long videos to your channel if you want to boost your watch time. If you were publishing videos worth 5 minutes average, you should try 15 minutes average. YouTube wants viewers to stay on their platform for a long time, this is why they will suggest long videos to many viewers than they will suggest short videos. Once you have published the long video, make sure that you watch it fully and persuade around ten of your friends to watch it fully, this will raise it’s average watching time to some figures above ten minutes. When a video has a high average watch time, YouTube will automatically suggest it to many viewers.

• Publish frequently – You might consider to publish more videos if you want high watch time. Publishing many videos makes your channel active and YouTube automatically suggests active channels to many viewers.

• Use eye-catching thumbnails– Attractive thumbnails increases you Click Through Rate (CTR). This simply means that the number of viewers who will click the video if it appears on their dashboard will increase if you use a eye-catching thumbnail. After following the first and the second step above, you should now create a good thumbnail to attract more viewers to click it if they come across it. This will raise your videos performance. Try creating a unique thumbnail that will stand out. Research on how videos similar to yours have their thumbnails and try to be unique, use a format different from theirs and try to make your thumbnail brighter than those of your competitors.

• Include keywords in your title– Title is very important when publishing your video on YouTube, look at how similar videos are named and use the same format to name yours. This will help your video to be categorized together with similar videos and it can be suggested to viewers who have watched more videos from that category. Naming your video using keywords will also make it appear on top when a viewer searches the keyword. Try using the above steps and see the changes that will occur on your YouTube channel. This will help you earn from youtube fast.

After applying the above tactics to reach the threshold, you will be able to gather the required minimums to enable you move to the next step. At this stage, you will be required to apply so that you can earn from youtube. Make sure that your channel is free from copyright (Avoid using other producer’s content without their permission.

Copyright infringement may make your channel get a copyright strike and you will not earn from youtube when this happen. Avoid vulgar language in your videos and follow the YouTube guidelines.

Learn more about youtube content creation.