How to make money from YouTube in Uganda

YouTube gives you a chance of making money online in Uganda, with your smartphone. You can pull in up to UGX 100 million per month working from the comfort of your home. What makes YouTube unique is that it’s a free platform, where you create a channel to post your created content.

If you are planning to make money through YouTube, below are the easiest ways to make it possible:

• AdSense

AdSense is owned by Google and is the number one way of making money through YouTube. After creating your channel and having posted several videos, you’ll need a way to generate income from it.But AdSense requires your channel to meet specific requirements for it to be approved for monetization.

YouTube minimum approval requirements

1. Your channel should be 12 months old.
2. Your channel should have at least 1,000 subscribers
3. The videos should have at least 4,000 watch time hours
4. The videos should original, high quality with zero copyright issues
5. No adult content

Any channel meeting those minimum requirements will be approved.

AdSense pays per 1000 views, something called CPM (Cost per 1000 views). For every 1,000 views generated, your channel will earn UGX 2000 to UGX 5,000.A channel getting 10k views earns UGX 90,000 to UGX 150,000

With 1 million views, earnings will be upwards of UGX 5,000,000.

For your channel to make more money than other local YouTubers, it should create content targeting USA and Europe traffic.USA traffic alone will boost your income by more than 100%.With 1 million views, you will see income growing from UGX 5 million to UGX 10 million. The robust increase is due to USA advertisers who bid more than local advertisers.

You should also focus on high paying niches like mobile loans, banking, credit cards, making money online, health, personal finance and insurance products. Entertainment, gossip and news content has low CPM.

Your subscribers play a key role in determining the traffic numbers your channel will get, hence the final income. Work hard towards getting more and more subscribers. Your ultimate target should be more than 100k subscribers.

• Sponsored content

You cannot attract sponsored content if your channel is not popular enough, create an authority channel with captivating content. In Uganda, channels attracting 500k visitors and above are at the pole position to be approached by advertisers for advertisements. Advertisers know that they’ll get value for their money from the channels.

Sponsored content generally generate more income than AdSense. Here you are able to negotiate with the advertiser based on your traffic numbers and geographical reach. With 1 million visitors monthly, the asking price should be above UGX 5 million.

The good thing about YouTube is that it will still allow you to post sponsored videos as you earn from them.

• Affiliate marketing

Another realistic way of earning money through YouTube in Uganda is through affiliate marketing. Promote products like web hosting, SEO tools, Sports betting sites, e-commerce sites and earn commissions. Some programs pay up to 50% commissions per sale.Jumia,22Bet ,Jubilee Web Hosting and 1XBET are some of the companies with best affiliate programs in Uganda.

Affiliate marketing is the best way to make money through YouTube because it assures you of regular passive income. Some affiliate programs pay recurring income, meaning that you will be earning forever even when asleep.

For you to earn decent income from YouTube through affiliate marketing, you have to specialize on a specific niche, focusing on certain keywords. If you pick web hosting, make sure over 90% of the content is about web hosting. You will then insert the affiliate links into your videos for the viewers to purchase products through them. Earning through affiliate marketing is only guaranteed when a sale is made.

• Donations

If you don’t monetize with AdSense, use your channel to ask for donations from subscribers and viewers. But you should have useful or entertaining content for you to get donations. Display your phone number /bank account details on your channel, which your subscribers and viewers will channel donations through.

We have individuals in Uganda making over UGX 1 million monthly through donations and financial support via YouTube.

• Sell products

Sell your own products through the channel. There is a wide range of products to sell, like smartphones, shoes, dresses, land, houses and online courses.

Smartphones are the best items to sell through a YouTube channel. With high number of subscribers, you don’t have to monetize with AdSense.

• Creating and selling YouTube channels

Specialize in creating channels, develop them and sell to other YouTubers.It will take you 1 year to grow a channel from scratch but after getting AdSense account for it, sell the same for UGX 500k and above. Create as many channels as possible and have a website to display them for sale.

If by chance your channel gets 100k subscribers with 1 million views monthly, you will sell it for more than UGX 200 million.