Joe Soap... Yes You! Make Money From Your YouTube Content

Before now, making money from YouTube was reserved for a select few. You had to be approved by Google, and your content had to be popular. Well, Google has now announced that anyone on YouTube with a single piece of content can now monetize their uploaded videos.

As of 12 April 2012, YouTube updated their partner eligibility across 20 countries. The countries eligible are as follows: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States.

If you live in one of these countries, you can enable your account and start monetizing your content. To recieve payments, you need to have an AdSense account, and you will need to associate your YouTube account with your AdSense account. See this FAQ for more info. To start the process, follow this link to review some terms and conditions and enable your account.

There are; however, the usual provisos. The content you monetize must be your own. You obviously can’t make money off copyrighted content. If you are unsure of what content you can monetize, have a look at these guidelines for answers. This now leaves a whole bunch of us left with the question of what content to create? Well, it doesn’t really matter though. As long as you are having fun, right?

If you want to make some money, you need to create good content. Don’t go creating silly videos of babies biting other kids’ fingers. Okay, so looking at that last link, you will notice that the video in question of Charlie biting his brothers finger, racked up an astounding 400 millions views. The truth is, anything goes (as long as it is legal of course). If you have an idea for a funny or informative video, the chances are that there is an audience out there wanting to view your creation.

Just as a side note, that video netted the Davies-Carr family a cool $158,000, and I’m sure Charlie’s dad is really pleased. So what are you waiting for? Go out and get filming.