How YouTubers Can Make Money by Creating and Selling an eBook

Although we’ve published this eBook guide for YouTubers and vloggers, anyone interested in the process can use this helpful guide to earn money selling an eBook.
Creating an ebook is a great way to increase your exposure, build your brand, and monetize your YouTube channel, all at once. However, it can be very intimidating, as well. After all, how many people do you know who’ve written an entire book? Fortunately, writing and creating an eBook is not nearly as difficult as you might imagine – you just have to break it down into manageable steps and work on one thing at a time.
In this guide, we will take you through the step-by-step process of planning, writing, designing, publishing, selling, and promoting your eBook.
There may be a lot to it, but it’s not as immense a project as you might think, especially if you’re a dedicated vlogger who’s used to consistent work on creating, shooting, and editing YouTube videos. So let’s get started!

Planning Your EBook

You might think that the first thing you need to do is to sit down and start writing your eBook, but that’s not the case at all. In fact, there are actually a few steps you need to take before you start on your first chapter, or even on your outline. First, you have to plan your eBook, much like planning your YouTube channel.
With a plan, you’ll have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with your book, who your audience is, and everything else you need to know to write a successful eBook.

What Will You Be Writing About?

Are you writing an autobiography of your YouTube vlogging career and/or personal life? Is this a book of tips and techniques to help new travel vloggers get started? Or is it a book of tutorials related to your YouTube channel’s niche? Any of these subjects would make a great eBook, but you really need to pick just one. This will give you focus and direction as you get started.

Who Is Your EBook For?

Once you know what your book is about, you need to determine who it’s for. Presumably, you’re writing your eBook for your YouTube channel’s audience, but who are they? When you initially started your YouTube channel, you may have researched your target audience. If so, find that research again and give yourself a refresher on who you’re going to be writing for in your book.
If you didn’t do any target market research when you started your YouTube channel, there’s no time like the present. Sit down with a pen and paper and write down all of the qualities and traits you can think of that apply to your audience. How old is your typical reader? Are your readers predominantly male or female? What are their hobbies? Do they respond better to more formal, professional speech and writing, or are they more relaxed?
The more specific you can be, the better. When you sit down to write your book, you’ll want to write as if you’re speaking to your audience, so you’ll want to know who you’re “speaking” to and what kind of tone and language is best.

How Will Your EBook Provide Value?

Now, it’s important to answer these two questions:

• Why would your viewers/readers want to buy your eBook?
• How does it provide value to them?

An autobiography may be both entertaining and informative. Tips and techniques based on your YouTube channel’s niche and video topics can be very valuable to people that are interested. Are you a fitness vlogger that wants to share experience, tips and advice? Are you beauty vlogger that wants to go more in-depth with your make-up tutorials and tips.
Think about the problem(s) that your eBook will solve for your audience. This will help you a great deal when you get to the sales, promotion, and marketing part of this process. For now, it will help you build an idea of what kind of book you’re writing for your audience.

How Long Will Your EBook Be?

Unlike novels and textbooks, eBooks can be as short as 10-20 pages. People will pay for these guides and pamphlets because they’re helpful and densely packed with information. Longer eBooks can be between 30 and 100 pages, and you may be able to charge a bit more for a book with more information.
However, content length isn’t everything, and you don’t want to pad your book with a lot of fluff material that doesn’t do anything for your audience.
Take a look through Amazon’s inventory of eBooks and find a few that are similar to what you want to write. How long are they? As you read through samples of similar books to your own, think about how much content you have to share and how much your audience really wants to read on the subject.

What Will You Title Your EBook?

Finally, at the end of the eBook planning phase, you’ll come up with a title for your book. Just like titling your YouTube videos, you want to make sure that you come up with a title for your eBook that’s relevant to your topic(s), contains appropriate keywords, and is unique and catchy, too.
Brainstorm a few different eBook titles, and as you do, don’t be afraid to play with the language to come up with something clever and memorable. Get your friends and family in on it, as well, and see if you can come up with a title together that really feels like a winner. Once you’ve settled on a working title, you can move on to making your eBook.

Creating An EBook

As you begin the process of creating your eBook, you’ll note that we didn’t say, “You’re ready to write your eBook.” That’s because writing is only part of the eBook creation process. While writing your eBook is, of course, essential, you’re also about to embark on the process of proofreading and editing, formatting, cover design, and publication.
In other words, you really do have to create an ebook. And, of course, that creation process does begin with writing, so let’s get started…

Start With An Outline For Your EBook

Writing an entire book – even one that’s just 20-30 pages long – can seem like a huge task. Even writing an entire chapter can seem intimidating. How do you fill up all that space? And how do you make it all coherent and cohesive?
You start with an eBook outline.
Start by taking out a piece of paper and drawing a vertical line down the left-hand margin. Then draw three short horizontal lines at the top, middle, and bottom of that vertical line. These will be the beginning, middle, and end of your book.
Write down how your book starts, what happens in the middle, and how it ends. Then, in between your beginning, middle, and end, outline the steps (or chapters) that get you from one point to another.
Start with the broad events or points that you want to cover, and then hit the smaller details in between. Before you know it, you’ll have a full outline, from beginning to end, of your eBook. This will give you your road map for writing the book.

Establish Your EBook Structure

Using your outline, look at your larger points and subjects. These will become your eBook chapters. Then you’ll be able to start picking out subheadings and sections for your chapters, based on the information in your outline.
You’re now ready to sit down at your computer and start typing, but it’s not time to actually write your book just yet.
At this point, you want to open up your word processor and create a file for your eBook. We recommend using Microsoft Word or Google Docs, as these both allow you to save your content in a variety of formats, which will be highly helpful when you actually put your eBook together and format it for reading.
Write your book title on the first page, and then create a table of contents on the second. In Word, you can insert your table of contents, and it will generate automatically based on the headings you use for your chapters and subsections.
After your table of contents, go ahead and type in the structure of your book, including all of the chapters, subheadings, and notes that you have in your outline. With this in place, you’ll be ready to start writing your rough draft.
Thanks to this structure, you’ll have a roadmap to guide you, and you won’t have to worry about feeling lost or wandering off topic as you write.

Start Writing Your EBook Content

Now, most writers like to start at the beginning, and that’s a great place to start. However, you don’t actually have to write your eBook from beginning to end. In fact, we actually recommend saving the introduction for last, as you’ll have everything written and you’ll know exactly what you’re introducing your audience to.
Also, if you’re having trouble or you get stuck on one chapter or section, it can help a great deal to skip it for the moment, move on to a section that comes easier to you, and then come back later with a fresh perspective.

Complete Your Rough Draft

At this point, the most important thing is to get a full draft of your eBook completed. This is a rough draft, and that means that it most definitely does not have to be perfect. Just get all of your points written and in order.
Also, you shouldn’t feel that you have to finish the whole thing in a single day, but it’s a good idea to set a deadline for yourself and to keep a consistent writing schedule between the day you begin writing and the day of your self-imposed deadline.
For example, you could write for about an hour a day, either in the morning or in the evening, whenever you feel the most productive and engaged. Before you know it, you’ll have your first rough draft finished, and you’ll be ready to move on to proofreading and editing.

Proofread And Edit Your Draft

Proofreading and editing your own work can be challenging, so be sure to give yourself a break after you finish writing. You may actually want to just print your draft and then leave it for a few hours or even a whole day. Then, when you’ve had a little bit of time to focus on other things, you can start proofreading and editing with fresh eyes.
Printing your rough draft is a good idea because sitting down with it and reading a physical copy of it can help you see mistakes and places where your wording might have been awkward. It also allows you to physically rearrange the pages to see if ordering the chapters differently might make the whole eBook flow better.
After you’ve made corrections and adjustments to the physical copy of your rough draft, head back to your computer to correct and revise your draft’s file. Then you’ll be ready to create a final copy.

Create A Final EBook Copy

After you’ve finished all of your revisions and edits on your rough draft, and after you’ve reorganized and adjusted the book to flow and read naturally and fluidly, you’ll be ready to create your final copy. Read over your updated draft and make any final revisions that you think are necessary.
Then print this copy out, and you’ll be ready to do your last round of proofreading and editing.

Proofread And Edit Your Final Copy

At this point, you’re making the final edits on a book that you’re going to publish for the whole world to see. That means you need to make sure that there are no typos, spelling mistakes, or grammatical errors in your work. Poor proofreading and editing ruins a lot of eBooks – don’t let it ruin yours.
So, once you have your final copy written, print it out and go over it yourself again. You may actually want to read it aloud, as this is a good way to tell if any of your sentence structures are awkward, if you have jumps in your content, or if anything just doesn’t sound quite right.
We also recommend getting someone else to take a look at this to ensure that you’re not missing anything. A lot of good eBook writers will actually hire a professional proofreader or editor to go over their final copies to ensure that they’re ready to publish.

Create An EBook Cover

Many people really like this step because it lets them play with graphics and get visually creative. If you have experience with graphic design and/or you’re willing to take some time to learn how to set up a pleasing cover design, you’ll enjoy this step a great deal. If not, you can always hire a graphic designer to do it for you.
If you’re interested in creating your own cover design and you don’t already have a preferred image editor, you can try Canva, which is a free tool that allows you to buy one-time-use rights for a number of stock photos and images to create all kinds of professional grade graphics.

Format Your EBook

Earlier we briefly mentioned using headings. These are vastly useful when formatting your eBook. If you’re using Microsoft Word to create your content, you’ll notice a styles window at the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
In it, you’ll see a list of styles, including headings, list paragraphs, etc. Use “Heading 1” for your book title and chapter titles, “Heading 2” for your chapters’ subsections, “Heading 3” for subcategories of those sections, and so on.
Be aware that every heading you use will be listed in your table of contents. This will help readers navigate your book, and it will set up the structure of your book to be easily formatted into a file type that’s compatible with eBook readers.
You don’t have to worry about actually converting your file to an eBook reader file. That will be done automatically for you when you upload your eBook to Amazon, iTunes, or your prefered ecommerce site.

Creating An EBook That’s Awesome

Finally, make sure that you’re really happy with all aspects of your book before you publish it. Do you like the colors and the layout of the cover? Does the structure of the eBook work for you?
Take a day or more to step away from the project if you need to, and then look at your book and determine if there’s anything you think needs improving. Doing this will ensure that you’re happy with the finished product and that you’ll be proud to sell it online.

Selling Your EBook Online

Now that you’ve created your eBook, it’s time to earn some money! But how? It seems like there are millions of eBooks for sale out there, and so many of them are just collecting metaphorical dust on the digital shelves of e-commerce sites. How can you make sure that doesn’t happen to yours?

How To Make Money Selling An EBook

Selling your eBook is an active process. You could just put it up for sale and walk away, assuming that it will sell itself, but that’s rarely the case. In the next few sections, we’ll go over selling and promoting your eBook to get more sales and earn money.

Set A Price For Your EBook

The first step in selling your eBook is to set its price. If you agree to sell exclusively through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Program (KDP), you can price your ebook as low as $0.99, and you can even offer to give it away for free for a limited time, too.
However, selling exclusively through Amazon isn’t the right choice for everyone, and you can still sell your eBook at a low price of $1.99 on Amazon if you don’t agree to exclusively use their service.
At $9 per unit, you may make money with eBooks faster on fewer sales, but at $1.99 per unit, you’ll be more likely to make more sales. More sales mean more people reading your eBook and getting familiar with your brand, which will be great for your YouTube channel, too.
Do some research on eBooks similar to yours and see what prices they’re selling for. Take a look through Amazon and other sites to see which books sell the best at which price points. Then decide what will work best for you.

Selling Directly On Your Own Website

One of the reasons you may not want to go exclusively with Amazon is the chance to sell your products directly on your website. With the help of Shopify or another ecommerce service, you can actually set up an online store on your own website or blog with ease and sell your eBook directly there.
After all, if your YouTube viewers are already visiting your website/blog, you can get a lot of sales right on your site. That said, this is only one avenue for sales, and with an unlimited commodity like an eBook, you can’t go wrong with multiple sales outlets.
Amazon is a really popular platform for a reason. It’s because it works great for eBook sellers, and trusted buyers are always browsing the site for products that interest them.

How To Sell Your EBook On Amazon

The Kindle Direct Program allows you to upload your Word file or .pdf and have it automatically formatted for a Kindle reader (or for the Kindle app on an iPad or other tablet).
Through the KDP site, you can follow simple directions and have your book online and ready to sell within hours. The whole process on your end usually only takes a few minutes, but it does take Amazon a few hours to ensure that you’re uploading appropriate content that isn’t plagiarized.
The only downside to selling through Amazon can be the delay in payment, whereas if you use Shopify or another e-commerce service, you won’t have to wait for payment. However, if you use these e-commerce services, you’ll have to find one that allows you to convert your eBook document to the proper format. So, if you’re not willing to wait for payment, you’ll have to do a little bit more work on the front end.
Check out the KDP FAQ page for answers to lots of questions.

Create A Great EBook Description

When you upload your book to sell it on Amazon, iTunes, or wherever you decide, be sure to include a great description that’s rich in the kinds of keywords and information that your readers will be searching for. You want this description to help your book get higher rankings when customers look for books similar to it, but that’s not all.
You also want it to get your readers’ attention when they click on the link for your book and read about it. When you read your book’s description, does it make you want to pick it up immediately? If so, then you’re on the right track. If not, keep working on that description until it really stands out.

Getting Ready To Sell Your EBook

Finally, before we move on to promoting your eBook, you can help your sales by ensuring that you’ve created an original, eye-catching cover, that your book is formatted correctly, and that you have chosen a good venue to sell it.
Check out other eBook authors like yourself and look at where they’re selling their books. You can even reach out to them and ask them if they have any advice for you for selling more copies.

Promoting Your EBook

The real key to selling more eBooks, though, lies in promotion and marketing. If you put the right efforts into promoting your eBook, then more people will hear about it, and you’ll get more eBook sales.
Let’s talk about how you can get the most out of social media, your YouTube channel, and your other online presences to sell more copies of your eBook.

Build Buzz Before You Publish Your EBook

Don’t surprise the world with your eBook. Tell your viewers and fans that you’re writing it. Talk in your YouTube videos and on social media about your upcoming eBook and why people should be interested.
Give hints about some of the tips and tricks you’ll reveal in the book. Post a picture of the cover design on Facebook or Instagram. In short, build hype and buzz around your book before you publish, and you’ll have people waiting excitedly to buy it before you’re even done writing.

Mention Your EBook In Your YouTube Vlogs

As you build buzz, don’t forget that your YouTube vlogs are a powerful promotional tool. Mention your book in your vlogs or whenever the topic is relevant. Include your book in your call to action at the end of your YouTube videos.
Remember, your viewers are your target audience, so they should be interested in your book, but they won’t know about it if you don’t tell them.

Link To Your EBook In Your YouTube Descriptions

You already know how important your video description is to getting more people to visit your social media sites, right? You can boost hits just by including a link in the first line of your YouTube video descriptions. Why not do the same for your eBook? Include a link to it in that first line, and you’re very likely to start seeing more traffic and sales.

Start Your Own Blog

Starting a blog is a great way to get more exposure by creating compelling content about your YouTube channel and your eBook. Write blog posts about topics that you mention in your eBook, and link to your book in your posts and in the sidebar of your blog, as well. Every time someone makes a search on Google about information that can be found in your blog posts, you could get a new visitor, which can become a new sale!

Link To Your EBook In Your YouTube Videos

Of course, you can also link directly to your eBook while you’re talking about it in your vlogs, too. With YouTube’s annotations, you can create an in-video link to your eBook that appears briefly while you’re talking about it. You can even place an image of your book’s cover in the video and put the annotation over that image so that people see what they’re clicking on.

Promote Your EBook On Social Media

While you’re promoting your eBook on YouTube, we cannot stress enough how important and effective social media is to eBook sales. Post interesting tidbits from your eBook or fun facts about the writing process, and link to the site(s) where your followers can buy it.
You don’t want to overload your viewers with advertisements for your eBook, but don’t neglect to use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to sell more copies.
In the weeks leading up to your publication date, you can mention your eBook once or twice a week on Facebook and Instagram (and whenever you like on Twitter). In the last few days, you can create a lot of hype by starting a countdown to your eBook’s release.
Be sure to post at least once a day for your countdown, and you should much more exposure and excitement for your eBook.

Guest Contribute To Popular Sites

You can also spread the word about your eBook by writing a guest column for a site or blog that’s popular with your book’s niche. You might be surprised how many popular sites will be glad to publish a column or blog that you’ve pre-written for them.
Everyone’s open to good content, especially good, free content. Just be sure to include an author bio with a link to your eBook, and people who don’t even know about your YouTube channel (yet) will start taking notice.

Additional Tips For Marketing Your EBook

As you’re putting effort into marketing your eBook on your social media pages, YouTube, and other online presences, don’t forget that you’re part of a vlogging community. Reach out to other vloggers whom you’ve collaborated and partnered with in the past. Ask them if they’ll read your eBook and give it a review or shout-out.
You can also ask your viewers to give you reviews on Amazon and other review sites and to let you know what they thought of your eBook in the comments on your YouTube channel or on Facebook. Good feedback is essential for selling more eBooks and earning money.
Use this guide to help you make money by creating and selling an eBook as a YouTuber. Have fun!

Best Vlogging Tips For Beginners

It’s a funny sounding word that’s short for “video blogging” and a great option for blogs that cover teachable or demonstrable topics.

Some might argue that vlogging isn’t as effective as it used to be, since “everyone” is doing it.

But the truth of the matter is a lot of the videos floating around out there are poorly made, so if you’re putting out high quality, useful content you’ll still stick out from the crowd.

Here are some simple tips to help you get started:

1. Get A Good Camera

Crisp video and clean sound is one of the easiest ways to make sure your vlog is better than 90% of what’s out there. I’m a big fan of the Canon EOS Rebel T3i since it’s affordable, easy to use even if you’re a beginner, and it shoots fantastic still photos in addition to really high-quality HD video.

2. Use A Tripod

Make it easy on yourself. A tripod keeps you from having to worry about shaky hands or whether you’re still in the shot. Handheld is a pain if you’re shooting by yourself. If you’re filming in your office or a small space, consider using a sturdy desktop tripod.

3. Find A Quiet Location

It’s best to use a clean, quiet room without a distracting background. Avoid filming outdoors since the background noise can be distracting. Avoid wearing stripes or bold patterns.

4. Make Sure We Can See You

Low light results in grainy videos and grainy is good for bread, but not so much for video. Make sure you shoot during the day with plenty of natural light. If you don’t have a quiet room with lots of natural light, you can fake it with a simple kit like this one to brighten things up a little.

5. Get Rid Of Extra Head Room

You should frame up a medium shot, from the chest up. Also make sure that you’re close enough to the camera for your viewers to see your facial expressions hear you clearly.

6. Use A Script

The best video blogs out there may loook unscripted, but they’re not. Writing out what you’re going to say before you say it will save you a lot of time. You don’t have to follow your script verbatim, but use it as a blueprint to make sure you’re not forgetting any important points.

7. Relax

Be yourself and speak to your viewers as if you’re talking to a good friend. Just don’t talk too fast. Most viewers won’t bother rewinding if you’ve sped through some important information. Remember that you can edit to make your video shorter, but not longer.

8. Edit On The Cheap

You don’t have to spend a lot (or any) money to edit a good video. iMovie and Windows Movie maker are beginner-friendly and come with your computer. YouTube even has a decent video editor now, so if your videos are under 15 minutes (which they should be), you can edit them directly on Youtube after uploading them.

9. Keep It Short

Edit your video so that it gets right to the point. Numerous marketing studies have shown that most people will stop watching a video after 30 seconds if it hasn’t grabbed their attention by then. Open with a call to action or summary of what you’re going to talk about, then hit each point clearly and concisely. Under 2 minutes is ideal.

10. Save 1000 Words

If your video is mainly you talking (as opposed to teaching or walking through a physical tutorial), it’s a good idea to add some visual variety by inter-cutting images, captions, charts, or graphs.

11. Video SEO

Before you upload your video, use keyword research to give it the best possible title. After uploading it to Youtube or Vimeo, tag your video with your keywords. This will help your video get discovered through relevant search engine results.

12. Keep Your Files Safe

Since even small videos can take up a lot of space, it’s a smart idea to invest in an a good external hard drive. For one thing, it’ll keep you from using all the storage space on your laptop or desktop. Secondly, it’s a good way to safely backup all of your files and data in case anything ever happens to your computer.

13. Consider Transcription

Transcribing your video is always a good idea, since there will be occasions when someone isn’t in a place where they can watch your video but they still want the information you have to offer.

Vlogging can give you a break from regular posts, or you can use it as your sole method of blogging if you have the type of personality that people would be happy to watch and listen to on a regular basis.

How to Earn Money with Branded Clothing for Your YouTube Channel

If you really want your YouTube channel and your videos to be successful, you’re going to need to create, build, and maintain a brand. But you already know that. You know that you need cohesive, attractive brand colors, a logo that pops, and a consistent brand voice and tone.
Did you know, though, that you can make money and promote your YouTube channel by selling branded clothing online?

Whether you choose to sell directly or through a third-party service, you have tons of options for creating fun designs and selling quality branded clothing that will help get the word out about your YouTube channel and help you earn money at the same time.
In fact, a lot of these options don’t even require you to put in any front-end investment money. You can start selling products without even purchasing inventory because we live in the age of print-on-demand clothing and merchandise. So how can YouTubers start making money by selling branded clothing?

What Is Branded Clothing?

First of all, let’s define the term “branded clothing”. Branded clothing isn’t the same as brand-name clothing. We’re talking about t-shirts, hoodies, hats, and other clothing that prominently shows off your YouTube channel in some way.
Selling branded clothing is a great way to get your YouTube channel out there and increase awareness of your awesome content. How? Well, companies across many different industries have been using branded clothing to gain brand recognition for more than a few decades.
What do you think of when you see someone wearing a T-shirt that shows a stylized white apple with a bite taken out of it? You think of Apple, right? Of course, you do, because the marketing team at Apple has worked hard to link that image in your mind with their company.
Clothes with brands, logos, catchphrases, and signature artwork on them all work the same way to increase brand recognition and build a sense of style for the brands they represent.
When you make and wear a piece of branded clothing for your YouTube channel, people will inevitably ask you about it (especially if it’s a cool design on a quality shirt). That’s why t-shirts, hoodies, and jackets can be some of the most powerful marketing tools around for getting the word out about your channel and your entertaining YouTube videos.

Designing And Creating Your Branded Clothing

While buying and wearing graphic T-shirts and other clothes branded for your YouTube channel is a really great low-budget, offline marketing strategy, there’s no reason that you can’t actually make money while you’re doing it.
If you do your homework, you can create clothing designs that people want. Then, when they purchase your branded clothing and wear it out, they’ll help you earn revenue and be a part of your biggest offline marketing campaign! Pretty cool, right?
To do this, you really have to have good designs and quality clothing, though. You can’t just slap your channel name on a low quality T-shirt and expect anyone to want to pay for it. However, the sky is the limit for cool designs, and when you choose a quality clothing manufacturer with a good reputation to use for your products, your viewers will be more willing to pay a little bit extra for their T-shirts, hoodies, etc.
So, what kinds of designs really work for branded clothing for your YouTube channel? Take a moment to look at the YouTube videos you’ve posted. You want the clothes that you sell to reflect the same style as your YouTube channel.
You want the clothing design to instantly bring your channel and your brand name to mind. So, how can you base your clothing choices and designs on your YouTube channel?
First of all, of course you’ll want to feature your channel’s logo, but that’s not all you can do. Do you have a particular catchphrase or tagline that you use a lot in your videos? Does your community of fans and viewers go by a specific name?
Watch a few of your videos. Read the comments on your YouTube channel, your social media fan pages, and other places where your fans interact with you. Take note of things that your fans enjoy and the content they like.
With so many options for print-on-demand branded clothing, you can throw a bunch of different design ideas up on your online store or you can poll your viewers and find out what kinds of t-shirt designs they’d like you to create.

Promoting Your Clothing Designs

Once you have a couple of clothing designs that you like and that you think will sell, it’s time to start promoting your clothing on your YouTube channel, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and everywhere you have a presence online (and offline, too).
Don’t be afraid to wear the cool shirt you’ve designed and created for your YouTube channel when you’re filming your videos. If it looks good on you, your YouTube viewers and subscribers will know it’s going to look good on them, too, and they’ll be more interested.
Even if you don’t always wear your shirts, hoodies, hats, or other branded clothing, you can still display them in your YouTube videos by showcasing them in the background. This will help cement your video brand and logo, getting you more brand recognition and promoting T-shirt sales, too.
You can promote your clothing designs on social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest by posting pictures of your designs and letting your audience know that they’re coming out soon or that they’re already available for sale at your online store.
You can also use these promotions for audience engagement and building interest in your designs. If one design or piece of clothing gets a lot more attention and love than another, go with it and drop the one that’s not sparking any interest.
As you’re building interest in and awareness of your online store, you can promote sales by building up hype around your YouTube channel and your branded clothing.
For example, you can hold a giveaway on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Ask your audience to like and share your posts and/or comment why they would like a free [Your Brand] t-shirt. It won’t cost you much, and it will help build interest for your products.
While you’re at it, through the YouTube Partner Program, which you should already be signed up for to monetize your channel, you can include annotation links to outside sites on your videos. These will pop up as semi-transparent links over your videos at designated points and places that you decide on.
So, at some point in your video, you can have an annotation appear pointing to your shirt that says something like, “Like the shirt? Buy it here!” The link will open a new tab and take your viewers to your online store, where they can check out all of your branded clothing and awesome merchandise!
And, of course, don’t forget that you can talk about your new line of branded clothing in your videos, as well. Incorporate a little promotional bump in your video intro and/or outro, and be sure to link to your store in your video descriptions and on your YouTube channel’s about page!

Selling Your Branded Clothing Designs

Now, we’ve been talking a lot about your online store, but you’re probably wondering, “What online store? I don’t have an online store…” Well, you’re going to need one. Fortunately, though, setup and inventory won’t be a problem.
Most print-on-demand sites have easy-to-use codes that you can embed in your site for a professional look and feel that lets you sell your branded clothing. You can also setup a clothing store without a website, by creating one on a print-on-demand site that you prefer.
Here are a few sites you can use to create and sell clothing designs online:

• CafePress
• District-Lines
• Spreadshirt
• Zazzle
• TeeSpring

You don’t have to do anything special or have advanced experience with coding, web design, or development. You just need some cool designs and a little bit of time to follow user-friendly directions on your favorite print-on-demand site.
Before you officially start selling your clothing designs, be sure to order and test out the branded clothing from your preferred print-on-demand site or supplier to ensure the final product is what you envisioned. You need to make sure that your awesome fans and viewers are getting a high quality product!
Take some time and choose a print-on-demand site that gives you the best services and online store, and you’ll be on your way to selling branded clothing for your YouTube channel!

How to Find Sponsors for Your YouTube Channel

When you see YouTubers who have lucrative sponsorships from big brands, do you ever wonder, “How did they do that?” Well, with very few exceptions, brands partner with vloggers just like you. They didn’t “get discovered” by accident, and they weren’t “just lucky.”
The big secret to getting a sponsorship really is to, “Just ask.” That said, just like anything else, there’s a right way and a wrong way to ask for sponsorship. So, let’s talk about how you can find sponsors and approach them for your YouTube channel.

Start By Identifying Your YouTube Audience

Before you go searching for sponsors, you have to first take a look at your audience. How old are they? What fashion trends do they follow? Where do they shop? Which brands do they love? What products are they interested in purchasing? Answer these questions, and you’ll have a good starting point for which types of brands to start approaching for a sponsorship.
Understand that sponsorship is a two-way street. You get paid in cash and/or products, and your sponsor gets exposure, good reviews, etc. with an audience that’s likely to buy their products.

Determine What You Can Offer To Brands

Any brand you approach is going to want to know what you’re going to do for them in return for a sponsorship. Will you give in-video shout-outs or mentions? Will you do product reviews of different products that they make? How will you be marketing their brand?
During this process, you may want to set up several tiers of sponsorship. For example, you may be willing to review products in exchange for getting them for free from the brand, but you will not guarantee a positive review if the product doesn’t work the way it’s advertised.
You may be willing to give exposure in your videos, and on your social media pages for a certain amount of money, and for a higher payment, you might sign a contract to use their products exclusively, for example.
The potential is unlimited. It’s best to create different sponsorship plans at different price points that provide value. Each sponsorship plan or level for your YouTube channel can include different or additional methods of promotion for the brand.

Do Some Research

Once you’ve determined the types of brands and businesses that your audience finds relevant and you have a good idea of what you can offer them, do some research on a few of those brands. And don’t just look for the big-name brands, either. Look for smaller, startup brands that make quality products that your fans and viewers would be interested in.
As you do your brand research, look specifically for brands that you think could really benefit from sponsoring your YouTube channel and videos. Are they new and looking to widen their reach? Are they an established brand with one demographic but looking to expand into another (specifically, one made up of your audience)? You’ll use this information when you make your proposal for a sponsorship.

Create Quality YouTube Sponsorship Proposals

First of all, do not under any circumstances write a single form letter and do nothing more than change the name of the company. They receive proposals for sponsorships all the time, and they are well trained in spotting form letters quickly.
If you write a personalized sponsorship proposal letter for each of the companies you approach, they will notice and take you more seriously. In this letter, be sure to properly introduce yourself and give a good description of your content and how a sponsorship can benefit them, as well. Be as specific as possible, and show them that you have a plan to make their sponsorship a successful endeavor for both you and them.

Start Reaching Out To Brands

Once you’ve chosen the companies you want to approach for sponsorship and you’ve written at least the first draft(s) of your proposal(s), it’s time to start reaching out to them. Go to their websites and check out their “Contact Us” pages. Take a look through their links, as well, to see if they have an established process for approaching them for sponsorship. If not, just write to the most relevant email address on the contact page and go from there.
In addition to researching and approaching individual brands, you can also check out one of several sponsorship platforms, as well. For example, if you have 5,000 subscribers or more, FameBit will help connect you with brands interested in working with YouTubers through their sponsorship platform.

4 Important YouTube Sponsorship Tips For Vloggers

As you reach out and try to find sponsors for your YouTube channel, keep these tips in mind, as well:
Make it about them – They already know that a YouTube sponsorship can help you. Tell them how sponsoring you can help their brand.
Don’t sell yourself short – You have a following. You create quality content. You can help a brand by giving them more exposure to your audience. Don’t minimize any of that.
Keep trying – You may not get a sponsorship with your first proposal or even with your fifth. Keep trying, and keep growing your YouTube channel. The bigger your following, the easier it will be to find sponsorships.
Do you believe in this brand? – Don’t reach out to a brand you don’t believe in or don’t like. Remember, if they agree to sponsor you, you have to agree to help them, and you do not want to agree to help a brand that makes inferior products or uses bad business practices.
With these tips in mind, you should be on your way to getting a sponsorship to help monetize your YouTube channel. When you do get sponsorship, remember to be open and honest about it. Your viewers will appreciate it, and you’ll be able to do product reviews and feature your sponsor’s brand without any guilt or ethical questions.