Diversify your revenue, that is. When you’re just starting out building your YouTube channel and audience, relying on a single stream or source of income is fine — joining YouTube’s Partner Program to earn ad revenue, for example. But you’ll soon learn it won’t hold up in the long term. Ad rates fluctuate, and you can’t guarantee that even if your number of views stays steady or even increases that your ad revenue alone will stay steady.
Forming a partnership with a brand can be extremely lucrative too. But again, you can’t guarantee those brands will be around forever either, and it can require a lot of work to set up the partnership and create the content.
What if there were a way you supplement your income from your YouTube channel without actually doing much of anything?
As part of its efforts to add more monetization opportunities for YouTube creators, YouTube launched YouTube Merch, a platform for easily selling merchandise for your brand directly through your channel.
Your loyal fans have proven time and again that they love you and your content. YouTube Merch lets you give them the chance to prove their enthusiasm to the entire world and support you by letting them buy cool merch with your channel’s unique designs.
Learn more about this opportunity, how to get started with YouTube Merch, and best practices to make it work for you, below!
YouTube’s Merch feature allows you to choose, link, and connect an eligible merchandise platform or retailer directly to your YouTube channel. You’ll be able to display your merchandise on YouTube’s virtual Merch shelf. This means your audience can easily purchase t-shirts, hats, stickers, and more straight from your channel.
The Merch shelf can appear on your video pages directly below your video’s description. There’s also the option to add a Store tab to your channel homepage where your fans can browse your items.
One of the perks of YouTube Merch is that you don’t have to do all the work yourself of selling, printing, and shipping out merchandise. Gone are the days when creators would have to keep a big box of t-shirts in their closet and send them out individually each time someone ordered something. The merchandise platforms and retailers take care of all of that for you, freeing up your time to work on your videos and other components of your business.
Yes, the retailers will take a cut of your profit from your merchandise — they’re all businesses too, after all — but most YouTube creators find that the profit they get with minimal effort makes it more than worth it.
The main qualification for YouTube Merch is that your channel has been approved for monetization and that you live in a country eligible for the YouTube Partner Program. Other than that, your videos just have to meet YouTube’s standard content guidelines for monetization and community guidelines — and your channel can’t be marked as Made for Kids.
As of 2021, viewers located in 24 different countries can view purchase content through your YouTube Merch shelf. This includes the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Japan, Australia, Germany, and many more. Your viewers in other countries won’t have access. If your audience is primarily based in a country not included among those 24, it might be prudent to look for an outside merchandise print-on-demand site in the meantime.
There’s no right or wrong answer to this question — once you’re eligible for YouTube Merch (see above), you can sell. But the best time to start is when you start seeing a demand for it. Signs it might be time to start selling merch include:
Remember: your fans will buy your merch because they know it’s a way to support you so you can keep creating the content they love. They’ll also buy merch related to your brand for the same reason they buy other branded things: to identify themselves with it.
Wearing or owning merch with your channel’s brand is a way for your audience to show that they’re “in the know” about how awesome you are, and to promote your channel to others.
You’ve got a range of options when it comes to merch — everything from t-shirts to pint glasses to posters, fitness apparel, and beyond. But you should only list items that your audience might actually buy. In other words, the type of merch you add is going to depend largely on your brand and audience.
How will you know what your fans want? Well, that’s easy enough — use YouTube’s cards feature to add a poll to your video and ask them yourself!
You should put something that’s distinctive and representative of your brand on your merch. This could be your logo, your channel name, an inside joke, a cool graphic that represents some of your popular content, or your catchphrases.
If you’re not a designer yourself, no worries. Try reaching out to your network or asking which designer other creators you follow use. Or look for a freelance designer you can hire on a freelance marketplace site like Fiverr or 99Designs.
Working with a designer means you’ll need to put some initial investment into your merchandise (i.e., you need to pay the designer, duh!). If you need to work with a professional graphic designer, that’s one reason why it might make sense to hold off on starting your merch store until you’re sure there’s enough demand for your merch so you’ll get a decent return-on-investment.
Look at what other creators in your niche charge for their merch. Think about what you yourself would pay. Make sure you’re making enough of a profit to make this whole endeavor worthwhile (especially if you’re paying a graphic designer), but don’t make prices so high that no one will actually want to buy it!
Luckily, most merchandise retailers and platforms allow you to adjust your pricing so you can always lower them if needed (or raise them — slowly! — if your demand is high.)
Once you’ve created your store and set up your YouTube merch shelf, your next step, of course, is to promote it! Here are a few ideas to help raise awareness and increase your merch sales:
Get creative and don’t forget to remind your audience periodically that your merch exists after you launch it for the first time, too!
When you’re ready and you’re eligible, you can get started with exploring your YouTube Merch options through YouTube Studio:
This will guide you through some next steps and options, including choosing/linking a retailer or platform and more.
Happy selling!
YouTube Merch is pretty much the easiest way possible to earn some extra revenue with very minimal effort by selling merch for your channel directly through YouTube. You can display your merch in a Store tab, toggle a Merch shelf on to display below the descriptions of your videos, and more. Use your audience as a guide when deciding when to start selling merch and what to sell. And don’t forget to get creative when promoting your merch, too!
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