We are bringing you a case study from Parker Walbeck, a Youtuber, filmmaker, and content creator who was able to generate $178 602 in 2021 from his Youtube channel by monetizing it with AdSense.
He has been able to grow his channel’s income exponentially from $500 in 2016 to $32 000 in 2019, and finally to $178 602 in 2021. He has also been able to grow his subscribers from 0 to 1 600 000 subscribers in just 5 years.
This AdSense revenue was just a part of the $4 700 000 revenue he generated from his online business that mainly depends on this Youtube channel to generate traffic.
In this article, we are focusing mainly on the AdSense revenue and sharing the key steps that Parker took to grow his Youtube channel which can be replicated by anyone who is looking to start his/ her own Youtube channel in 2022.
If you are interested how to make money on YouTube with Google Adsense, let's dive into those 6 key factors.
1. Don't Use Copyrighted Content
Parker says, "This seems like a no-brainer but it’s something that I didn't do for the first 20 videos or so and has ended up costing me $10 000s worth of potential AdSense revenue."
Using copyrighted content is one of the biggest beginner mistakes that most beginner YouTubers make — especially using copyrighted music. Even though Youtube often allows you to keep your video up even if it has copyrighted material, you can't monetize it. This may not seem like a big deal while starting up because people focus on increasing the number of views but eventually when the views grow over the years, you won't earn anything from them.
"Going back to 2016, the year I intentionally started trying to build my channel. My first viral video “The iPhone 7+ Camera versus Red Weapon Camera", which now has 1 100 000 views, has a copyrighted song in it. So I couldn't monetize it."
"A similar video on the channel "The iPhone 12 vs Canon R5 vs Red" with a similar amount of views, has made us $4 460 so far. That's the amount that I missed out on by not using copyright-free music and there are dozens of my early videos like. That’s one of the biggest reasons why in 2016, I only made $581 from Adsense even though I had some big videos.", Parker explains.
The way to go around this is by making sure that you use your own visual material and making sure that you're using licensed music. This single mistake may be worth $10 000s over the long run.
2. The Total Number of Video Uploads
Parker has uploaded well above 170 videos on his youtube channel so far. Having many videos enables him to more money because each video has its own earnings. The more videos he uploads, the more streams of revenue he gets — assuming each of those videos continue to get views over time.
Some videos obviously receive higher amounts of daily views than others and over time the daily views of most videos will slowly decline.
"Even one of my worst performing tutorials that was uploaded over 4 years ago still brings in 20 000 views a year and about $200 a year. So even if all of my 170 videos slowed down to as low as my worst one, 170 x $200 is about $34 000 a year.
However, there are definitely better performing videos that are getting up to 2 000 views per day and making $3 500 even after of full year of being released.", Parker explains.
So if all of Parker’s 170 videos would average that kind of views every year, then he’d be making over about $595 000 per year in AdSense revenue. This shows that there is power in the compounding effect of just having more content out there on the internet, especially on Youtube.
3. Frequency
One of the biggest questions asked surrounding growth on Youtube is, "How often should you post Youtube videos?". Some suggest that you should post once a week, some say every day is the best thing to do, and some only post once a month.
For Parker’s case, he only uploaded 9 videos in 2016 which was less than once per month, 2016, then he increased that number to 16 in 2017 and 2018. That was like only once or twice per month but his channel was still growing at a rate of 500 subscribers per day.
After realizing that the increase in frequency helped him gain more traction on Youtube, he then further increased it exponentially to 20 in 2019, 37 in 2020, and 43 in 2021.
This was one of the main reasons that helped Parker upscale his earnings from $500 to $178 000 per year.
The current frequency that he is on is almost once per week. However, making more videos won't be good if you opt for quantity over quality.
So Parker's answer to the question is:
"You should post as frequently as you can create quality content.
This is not only just about creating high production value with nice cameras and good audio but also creating highly engaging shareable content topics that are actually relevant to a wide audience."
4. Mid-roll Ad Breaks
Adding mid-roll or in-video ad breaks is one of the key factors that helped parker grow his AdSense earnings. These in-video ads are a bit annoying to the viewers but the reality is that they make a huge difference in how much money Youtube content creators can make from their efforts in creating and giving out free content.
"These were the single biggest reasons why my ad revenue jumped from $32 000 in 2019 to $147 000 the next year in 2020 — making a 5x increase. It was mainly because back in 2019, the only monetization I was doing on my videos was the ad that popped up before my video started. Youtube then started allowing any video over 8 minutes long to have mid-roll ads."
The yellow dots represent the midroll ads
"So we went through all of our videos that were over eight minutes long and added in 2 or 3 mid-roll ads and instantly our ad revenue tripled. From that point on we made sure to make sure all of our videos were at least 8 minutes long so that we could add mid-roll ads.
However, in a similar way to the frequency tip, you can't just make your videos longer for no reason. If you can't keep the video engaging for a full 8 minutes then people will click out sooner and they won't even get to the ads.", Parker explains.
So as long as you can keep your audience engaged for the entire 8 minutes, you can add ad breaks. As Parkers revenue statistics show, you definitely see that it was one of the biggest things he did to increase his AdSense revenue.
5. Content Is King
Having great content will enable you to have viral videos. Currently, Parkers highest-ranking video is currently sitting at 12 000 000 views and it has generated over $35 000 alone. That is the power of a viral video!
Ideally, videos only go viral if the content falls into these three categories:
- Relatable
- Relevant
- Shareable
This particular video hit all three of those which made people click on the thumbnail, then once they clicked, they stuck around and watched the whole video. Click-through rates and watch time are 2 of the most important metrics Youtube looks for to determine if they should show this video into other people's feeds. That perpetual cycle of clicking, watching, and sharing triggers the Youtube algorithm and it’s what causes a Youtube video to go viral.
Obviously, you can't predict the virality of some videos beforehand because some will flop and some will take off. There's always an element of luck to those big hitters, but the more videos you put out that follow that relatable, relevant, and shareable rule, the higher the likelihood is of one of those videos taking off.
6. Consistent Hard Work
There's no way around consistent hard work when you aim for success. Parker admits that he had to work really hard for about 5 years consistently by creating high-quality videos every month, and sometimes every week.
That's an amount of work that most people aren't willing to put in. But if you want to be successful at anything — not just Youtubing, you have to be willing to work a lot harder, and a lot more consistently over a long period of time than most other people.
"It’s about how bad do you want to succeed. Your work ethic, your consistency at that work ethic, and your longevity at that pace will be your answer to yourself as to how bad you really want it.
When people ask me my advice on how to grow their income potential, I always say, as soon as I learned these two things making money became really easy. Those two things are; confidence and hard work. There is nothing special about my skills and my talents. I simply have more confidence in myself and work harder than most people.", Parker says.
Conclusion
There you have it, those are the 6 key factors that helped Parker to exponentially scale his AdSense earning to $178 000/ year through his Youtube channel.
AdSense was just a part of the $4 700 000 revenue he generated online in 2021. Parker also generates revenue from selling an online filmmaking course, affiliate marketing, sponsorships, and AdSense which all rely on his Youtube channel as the main source of traffic.
For anyone aspiring to build a Youtube channel in 2022, it's absolutely possible to grow exponentially just like Parker did if you have the right plan and you’re ready to execute it consistently for a long period of time.
We hope this was insightful for you.
