YouTube is selling merchandise for YouTube creators
Social media platforms have become an integrated part of business sales strategies. Retailers, brands and companies can use their social media accounts to promote their products:
- Ecommerce retailers increase their orders leveraging the power of Facebook Ads with Facebook pixel;
- Instagram offers its business users a new way to shop by turning their accounts into a visual storefront with shoppable tags;
- Snapchat increases brands’ revenues with AR campaigns;
- Pinterest invites their users to sell product with buyable pins.
[bctt tweet=”YouTube is the latest social media platform to enter the shoppable media environment.” username=”brand_minds”]
The only way for vloggers to make money on YouTube was through ads. But recently YouTube announced that it will expand the ways its users make money: merchandise selling.
YouTube will allow certain creators to sell merchandise directly through YouTube’s platform. Also these creators will be able to offer $4.99 exclusive content monthly subscriptions to their fans.
The new monetization options will work as follows:
- YouTube brokered a discount deal with Teespring;
- Teespring supports creators by printing their designs on t-shirts, mugs, phone cases etc and distributing the products to clients;
- This deal is available to YouTube users who have at least 10,000 subscribers;
- YouTube will display a merchandise “shelf” below eligible videos, turning the platform into a kind of virtual store.
According to Teespring, Lucas the Spider—a YouTube channel that has published just 10 videos featuring Lucas, the animated arachnid—earned over $1 million in less than a month.
image source: YouTube
Merchandising won’t be a perfect match or the next step for every YouTube content creators, but it can become a substantial source of revenue for some.
