How To Make A Living on Youtube: Sponsors, Affiliate Marketing, Taxes, Collabs | Boss Babe Ep #5

Today’s article is going to be a boss, babe, I’m so excited to put this up. This has probably been my most requested article for the past few months. If you’re new to my blog, I have an entire boss, fave series about saving money, bettering your credit moving out on your own, pretty much just anything to where you can be financially free and stable on your own without the help of a man or a relationship Or your parents, if you’re new to my blog, I have been a single mom to my little guys for four and a half years, and I have definitely learned so much and found my way through making a living on social media and being able to provide for Myself and getting through some pretty shitty financial times when I was very irresponsible with money, so I wanted to create the boss babe series to share with you guys everything I’ve learned the past few years about getting my finances in check and yeah budgeting bettering.

My credit really anything in that realm to where what I’ve learned I want to share with other people, so I’m so happy you’re here. Thank you so much for reading. If you are new I’ll link that entire bus babe playlist down below and you can click on whichever article and whichever like area of your life that you need help with, I hope I can be a resource for you. So, for today the number one question I’ve been getting lately is to make an in-depth article on how I make a living on social media.

I have been on YouTube, I think, for like three and a half years now, but I’ve really only been able to pay all my bills and everything through YouTube and affiliate marketing and stuff like that for probably the past two years, when I first started, I was Totally just making articles for fun I’ve been into reading YouTube for probably like eight or nine years. I used to be obsessed back in the day when YouTube was not this big at all.

It was really just a few like Beauty, girls who I readed and I readed like makeup collections and stuff like that, and I started recording on my phone and then I got a really small and Nikon camera, which was like super cheap. It didn’t have a flip screen. I was recording before I had my son and then I had a Christian and we had like a very traumatic birth and nikkyo experience with that. So I took a break and then I started filming again and throughout all that time.

I wasn’t making any money, something you guys, don’t know which I’ve kind of mentioned a little bit. I want to go more in depth into a draw my life article, but I had 11 jobs before YouTube. Nothing in my like growing up period, money-wise was ever given to me. I started working immediately whenever I very first could get a job when I was 15, I started working at Target and I’ve had multiple jobs.

Even when I went to Cal State San Marcos, I think that’s another thing. Some of you don’t know, like I see random comments and it’s like did you even go to school and yes, I actually went to college as well again I’ll go into like all this later, but I was actually working, two different jobs at Radio, Shack and American Eagle and taking a full-time course load at Cal State San Marcos, all at the same time, so I have definitely paid my dues.

You know in retail I worked at a yogurt shop in like shitty jobs and have had very shitty bosses and stuff, and I realized that’s not the way I want to live. I think it’d be absolutely incredible. If I was able to work for myself, you know work whatever hours. I want to work and now with YouTube being able to put out articles that I’m passionate about and sit on camera and talk to you guys about things that I love and it’s my job is the coolest thing in the world, but at the same time, obviously It didn’t come out of nowhere.

I feel, like I’ve worked very hard for the past four years to get here, so I’m going to, let you guys know how I make money through social media and hopefully that can be helpful for you. I also screenshotted tons of questions on my phone from snapchat very specific questions that you guys had so hopefully I will cover everything. I’ve seen tons of other people on YouTube, make these kinds of articles, but they don’t really go into depth about money and stuff, and I know you guys want to know how much you’re going to be making.

So please give this article a thumbs up. If you appreciate the honesty and the transparency, I will try to be as transparent with you as possible, like money making wise so yeah. I know that it is possible to make a living off Instagram and snapchat and stuff like that. If you have a big enough following and you can do sponsorships over there, I do have those social media outlets, but that’s not my full-time income, so my income is basically YouTube, which is Adsense.

That’s the way you get paid when you do making youtube articles. You are not actually paid from YouTube you’re paid through Google, so you need to make sure once you create your YouTube account that you go in under your YouTube settings and you fill out all the tax information and you monetize all of your articles. When you run an ad on your article, that is how you get paid. However, the ad program has recently switched.

A lot of my articles are not monetized anymore. I think it was like 50 to 70 percent of the ad partners through YouTube have pulled out, and also you can’t put anything title that um has anything to do with being gay, bi lesbian trans. You can’t have any customers in there, like they’re, very strict now on what articles can be monetized, so you used to make a lot more money with Adsense to give you guys a kind of like a money comparison.

I had a article last year that I hit 1 million views and I was promoting that article everywhere for months and it is very hard to get a million views like for my blog. My article average is like thirty to fifty thousand, like a million is very hard to reach, so I was so happy to have reached that and I believe that month through Adsense, I made around six grand. So then, this year, once the ad, like monetization everything, switched a lot of the partners pulled out.

Everyone’s ad revenue completely dropped because all our articles couldn’t be monetized anymore. If that makes sense, but I had another meal prep article this year, which hit a million views – and I only made around two grand that month in Adsense. So that’s almost a five thousand dollar difference right there, just because there’s not as many partners putting ads on the articles, if that makes sense.

But anyhow, in my opinion, if you want to do no sponsorships, no affiliate linking you just want to make money off your YouTube articles. I would say you need to have about a hundred thousand views on every single article that you post consistently, because even with me, I don’t make that much off Adsense. Obviously I don’t have millions of subscribers. My Adsense pretty much just covers, like my rent and my phone payment and my gas and stuff like that, I am NOT ballin off Adsense.

I can be very upfront and tell you guys that, because I know you guys want to know how much you’re going to make as well and if it will cover your bills. So that’s just very honest. I also have one sponsor: if you will, with first forum all the products I shout out from them, you guys know I think they’re an amazing, incredible company and I love working with them. I’r not a sponsored athlete so where I don’t get like a set pay through them, but I do have links for certain products.

So if you guys purchase something I’ll get a very small percentage each time my link is used and when you add all those up, it really does help me out every month. So that’s another way to make money on social media. Tons of people will work with like tea companies, phone case companies, workout clothing, whenever a social-media influencer is telling you to use their link they’re, making a very small percentage per sale off of that.

So if it’s someone that you support and you want to support them like if you guys ever use my links – I try to say in every article I am so so so grateful. So just thank you so much, but that is another way that I make money and then also through affiliate linking so anytime. I link something in my articles, whether it’s my lashes or makeup or clothing, there’s different ways to do it. So there’s one way called SHOP style where he can go there.

If you’re an influencer, you can sign up and it’ll, give you like little shortened. Links for every product that you put in so you’ll go to like Nordstrom’s and you’ll find the bluffs that you’re wearing today. You’ll get the link you’ll, take it back to SHOP style and it will shorten that link for you. Then you can put that in the description box of your article and any time one of your followers clicks that link and purchases, something again you’ll get a small percentage of that.

So when they all add up, if you have a big following, it really does help out, there’s also a website called bit lean that will short in any link for you and it’s just a tracking site. So you know when your followers are using your link. I also use the Amazon affiliate program because I love Amazon. I’ve been a prime member for ever anything through Amazon that I’ve purchased, that I truly love the quality, and I tell you guys about.

I leave an Amazon like a shortened Amazon link in the description box. That’s another way to slowly like add up income whenever one of my followers purchased something from one of my links and, of course, with YouTube, you can do sponsorships so actually used to do a lot more when I very first started to make it my full-time income, Because I wasn’t making as much but now I probably only do maybe one or two a month and they’re, usually repetitive, like I’ve, worked with thrive market a few times mixed nature cosmetics, because it’s a product you’ve seen me use multiple times.

You guys know. I love the company. Everything is usually set at the right price point and from there you can negotiate a price with the company that they will pay you to shout out their products in a article and to me I know some people get really like. I don’t know but her about sponsorships to me. It’s literally an honor. If you’ve worked so hard like to me, I’m almost having my fourth year in youtube.

I am up late at night, editing articles for you guys, like I do everything myself. I still don’t have someone to help me film or edit with every like every time I post a article, I go put it on every single social media site. I still respond to thousands of comments. I know lots of youtubers will get to a certain point where you have a certain number of subscribers and you don’t even go respond to the comments, I’m very diligent about going through every single one.

So for all the hard work I’ve put for almost four years. I feel like I have totally earned. You know if I’ve earned that companies respect and they reach out to me, and they want to work with me and it’s a brand first of all that I’ve already loved and been using the product or I try a new product from them and I genuinely love It and the price point is right, because I do revolve my blog around being on a budget and it’s something I can recommend that I know you guys will like and I know, will benefit you or your family or you’ll go buy it then I negotiate a Rate with the brand so sponsorships ad revenue, having your articles monetized and having affiliate marketing are the ways that I personally make money also too for sponsorships.

There’s multiple websites such as famebit, grapevine and brand snob. Those are the top three that I personally use um. I don’t use them very much anymore, because I only maybe do a sponsorship or two a month, but those are where I go and those word brands will post every month what type of influencer they’re looking for what their budget is, what they want you to shout Out in the article or if they just want like an Instagram shout-out or a snap shout-out and those websites already have your following, how many followers you have on each platform listed on there.

So the brand can like view your profile and see if they want to work with you, so those websites are also an absolutely amazing resource when you’re first starting out, I’m going to leave all of those down below. Also, a major question I got on snapchat was what filming equipment I use. So I’m going to have my ring light, my two box lights, my camera, my SD card and my tripod all listed in the description box.

If you guys want to purchase any of it again, I’m very grateful if you do use those links, because they do help me out. I’ve went through and price matched everything for you, so they’re not going to find this specific camera or, like a specific ring, light for any cheaper anywhere else. Alright, I know this article is getting very long, but there’s tons of questions. You guys asked me on snapchat, which I really think will help you out if you’re trying to make youtube or social media your full-time income – and I would love to answer a few.

So I knew this was going to be a long article. But hopefully you guys will continue to read I’m just going through snap. I scream shouted some of the questions that I got the most, so one of them said: hey girl, absolutely love your blog and just started. Mine was wondering how long it took before you begin. Making money, and was there any specific article that really got your blog to grow, also do subscribers matter or does it just depend on views? Thank you so much.

I look up to you so much. Thank you so much for your support. Okay, so I think my YouTube, like Adsense earnings and everything like that, could cover my bills and I could quit my last retail job when I had like a hundred and seventy five thousand subscribers ish. But that’s another question she asked does subscribers matter and to be very honest, no, I have worked with so many brands and I’ve told them like I have over three hundred thousand subscribers and they’ve said.

Well, we don’t really look at that. We look at the average article views they. Basically you want someone to come to your blog and your average article views to be so high as high as possible and to be consistent. You don’t want to have a article at 100k and then a article at 10k. A article at 15k: you want them to be as consistent as possible. That’s definitely still something I’m working on. If you come to my blog, my meal preps are like I had a million.

Some of my other articles are out like twenty thousand just because that’s just me and I like to talk about different things, and luckily I’ve been able to make that work. But you do want your article views to be as consistent as possible. If a brand wants to work with you to be honest, all they care about is sales. They want your followers to go and buy their product, so they want someone who has an engaged audience if you have 300 thousand subscribers, but only a hundred or 200 people read your articles or comment or even going to purchase anything.

That’s not going to benefit like if say the brand pays, you $ 1,000 for a sponsorship, but they don’t even get a thousand dollars in sales. It’s not worth it. You need to have as much of an engaged audience as possible. So, for me, what I have noticed is best is being so close and genuine and having such a tight connection with you guys over the years and responding to comments, I feel like has gotten me an audience that I’m very thankful and grateful for that.

Does support me on sponsorships and stuff and you guys use my links that way, I’m able to get more sponsorships and able to work with other brands and stuff. So you definitely, in my opinion, needs to be tight knit with your subscribers and it’s definitely not just a number that matters their popular question from Liv summers said: do you think you need to have manage it to really make it on YouTube? I want to start, but I have no idea how to deal with the money side of things.

Love. You love you too. No, I do not think you need management at all. I have done everything by myself with YouTube with responding to all my emails. My comments negotiating with brands sending over rate packages all of my life graphic design. For all my social me. I have done all of that myself. With all the resources on YouTube. You can literally type into the search bar what you’re trying to do like to make your blog art and, like you can do it all yourself.

It’s totally up to you. If you want management, the lower amount of subscribers, you have the less engaged your management is. That’s just like sad to say I am with studio 71 right now, which I signed with probably like eight months ago, but the first like three and a half years. I did every single thing myself. Even now. It’s being very honest, my manager is so so sweet and she’s a really genuine person, and I love her, but to be super honest, they haven’t done like much.

For me, I’ve done maybe one or two sponsorships through them, but I’ve negotiated all the other ones. On my own, I don’t really get to go to like too many events that they have, because I do have my son full-time and I’m kind of far away from LA right now, and you know they they want to put their time and their money into youtubers. Who have millions of subscribers so I’d hate to see some of you sign with management very early and them take 20 to 40 percent of your earnings or something crazy that they start out at when you’re barely making any money on Adsense as it is, and them To not really do much for you, so I would encourage you to just hustle and put in the hard work to learn how to do things yourself and just be very professional in your emails when you’re negotiating with brands and just really try to do it yourself.

Next question is from Allegra, which I thought was such a cool like unique question. I’r not sure if a lot of people really put time and thinking about this, but you definitely should especially with having a child. She said: what would you do if you YouTube shut down today and never started back up? I’r guessing. If you want to become a youtuber, you have to have some sort of back-up plan. I love you and Christian.

So so much love you too, and that is an amazing question. Luckily, I feel like, through my boss, babe series – you guys have seen this as well, but I’ve done a pretty good job, saving up to where say YouTube shut down today or my entire account got hacked. I would still have money for rent and the things I needed in the months coming up, but of course you do still need to have some type of backup job plan, as it is I’ve personally always loved public.

Speaking with everything that I share in the boss bag series and just what I’ve gone through with Christian being a single mom for so long and having some really hard struggles with him like throughout his birth, I would love to kind of share my story on some Kind of public speaking platform – you guys know, I’m also writing my guide right now about going more into depth about the attraction and just how I became successful at this age and have been able to support myself and change my mindset.

I would love to do more. Writing not just ebooks may be like real actual books that could like be in Barnes & Noble or something. I would definitely continue on with my creative side. I’ve also always wanted to be a personal trainer. You guys don’t have been on my own. You know fitness journey for so long, but I’m constantly learning more and more about exercise personal training, food nutrition – stuff like that, so I may want to take something that route one day I feel like.

I have so many other passions. That YouTube has honestly helped me, learn and grow so much and learn so so much about social media. I would definitely be able to take that knowledge and have another job that would be able to support me. I don’t feel like everything would just be over. I feel like I’ve learned so much doing what I’m currently doing, and I can definitely take that into the next phase of my life, another cushion, which I kind of touched on a little bit.

But it’s. How do you get sponsors once you start getting a following? Do they contact you or do you contact them, so I have never reached out to a company in an email or something and said: hey I’d like you guys to pay me this amount to shout out your products. I really love your products. I don’t know. I would never do that. Usually companies will contact you and they’ll say hey. Are you are differently with our brand we’d love to work with you? Can you please send us like a rate package or send us some other sponsored articles that you’ve done? We want to see how well those have done.

We’d love to work with you. I always click on the company’s website go to the website check out whatever product. It is that they’re wanting to promote and see if it’s even something in my budget, like my price range, if I wasn’t a youtuber, would this be something that I could be able to afford, because I’m always recommending affordable products to you guys, then I make sure That the quality of the products is good, usually anything people email me I’ll.

Let them go ahead and send it over, but I won’t promise a review or a sponsorship unless I’ve tested out the product, probably for a good like a few weeks depending on what it is make sure it works. Well for me, and then you can kind of negotiate back and forth a rate with a company or you can use those websites. I talked about like famebit, grapevine and brands table. Those are also really great.

So another really good question is: how do you get to the point of PR and I feel like it’s so different now to how it was when I started YouTube so like four years ago? Basically, I was more of a beauty blog. I did tons of hauls and makeup tutorials and I didn’t really do the vlogs with my son or the bus, babe or anything. I was just doing makeup. So, for example, makeup geek had started and they had got really popular and I have been following my Marlena for so long and I wanted to support her.

So I bought like a bunch of makeup geek shadows and I did multiple tutorials on their products and I tagged them and they ended up. Emailing me saying, like we love that you’re spreading the awareness of our brand and you genuinely love our products. We’d love to send you some stuff, and I was just like so grateful. I had never got like a PR package before I was like that would be so cool. Thank you so much so they sent over some stuff and then I think, as long as you are engaged with the brand and not every review you have, you do has to be positive if the product doesn’t work for you, that’s fine, like.

I definitely encourage you to speak your honest thoughts and speak your mind, but I had just always loved makeup geek, so I think over time they just kind of kept me on the PR list, and now I get stuff from them also being with management. I know they have links to lots of companies on the backend and they can just like throw you on PR lists. Now I see lots of my friends who have like millions subscribers getting like 50 boxes of PR like a week from every single company out there.

It definitely did not used to be like that. So yes, if you have management, it’s a little bit easier to get PR on the backend, but you can still do it. Without management, companies will email you if they see that you’re super super active and you have a following and you’re using their products. It basically the promotion for the cost of what I’m trying to say here: the cost of exposure and promotion for the company for them to give you free product it pretty much cost them nothing.

All they have to pay is like the warehouse cost per item. So for them to just give you a PR package, it’s really low, it’s a very low cost like promotion for them. So all they want you to do is use their products and then intern. If you’re able to get them one hundred five hundred a thousand sales then giving you that little PR was really nothing and it made their brand grow even that much more. So companies want to work with influencers where their following is like very, very active, so yeah.

I know this article is getting super super long. Those are just my personal tips and exactly what I do too for the past few years and have been able to support myself on social media. I’r going to leave tons of information in the description box of this article. If there’s any article that you look in the description box, look in this one, I’m going to have all my filming equipment. All of the websites I mentioned, so you guys can partner up with brands literally everything you down there.

I would love a thumbs up on this article if you enjoyed it and this type of content, and just you know how like transparent, I really try to share with you guys as many details as possible without getting into like down to each cent of like what My paycheck is: I try to really let you guys know what you can expect when you are trying to make this your full-time thing, because I know that’s super helpful again.

I’r going to leave my whole box babe series down below if you’re going through any financial struggles, or you want to get your credit better. I have some awesome articles that I really think will help you out and be sure to also follow me on my social media. Also, if you didn’t see my last article, it’s a room tour. I went into detail about where every single thing in my room is from and give you guys a fold like 360s, so I’ll also link that down there be sure to check that out.

I love you guys. I hope you have an incredible weekend and I will see you in my next article

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