YouTube is coming up on being 20 years old in 2025, which is crazy to say, and the competition is now higher than ever among YouTubers all trying to exist in the same space. If you can find your place, there's potential for you to find success beyond your wildest dreams. But if you don't, you risk fading away into oblivion and maybe even giving up on your dreams entirely.
Which is why having a winning strategy is essential if you want 2025 to be the year that you finally go all in on your YouTube channel, even if you've already started a channel at this point. Point, there are important strategic decisions you'll need to make now for a successful and profitable year ahead.
So in this episode of full time YouTuber, I'm going to share how you can set yourself up for success on YouTube in 2025. By focusing on one simple strategy that will have a huge impact on your channel growth. And this is the exact same strategy I would follow myself if I was starting from zero in 2025.
Hey, I'm Ben and I help video creators who are entrepreneurs at heart grow their YouTube channels into profitable businesses. This podcast is for creators who want to help their audiences through informational content. Not to chase fame or subscribers, even though that may come, but rather to build a business that generates revenue while you sleep, so you can live your dream lifestyle.
Now, have you ever heard the advice, the best time to buy a house is 20 years ago, and the second best time is right now? I know I heard that advice, especially around the time I was buying a house, which is kind of unhelpful, but thanks anyway. And the truth is, the same lesson applies to a YouTube channel.
The best time to start a YouTube channel was 20 years ago in 2005 when YouTube first launched. The second best time is right now. I can say from my own experience that I've started many different incarnations of YouTube channels over the years, probably starting around 2007, all the way up to 2016, which is when I started the channel that I'm still running today.
And I remember, even back then, in 2016, I felt like I'd missed the boat. YouTube had already existed for over 10 years at this point. There were YouTubers with millions of subscribers. And I kind of thought, like, what's the point of doing it? It's far too late. But instead, I just persevered and did it anyway, and the rest is history.
So with all of this in mind, what I'd encourage you to do, is maybe take an even grander perspective look at this same equation. In your head, fast forward to the year that YouTube turns 50. I think most of us won't be here still at that point, but think about how much you would regret not starting your channel when YouTube was only 20 years old.
Because even though 20 years does seem like a long time, it's really not in the grand scheme of things. And right now in 2025, YouTube Is bigger than it ever has been before. And in order for you to have success to begin with, you need to be on a platform where the demand is really high. So you can provide the supply to that demand.
I just looked it up. And as of the start of 2025, YouTube has over 2. 7 billion monthly active users, which is nearly half of planet earth. So let that just give you some perspective on the scale of this platform. So even though there are a lot of creators, there is just so much demand out there that it makes it okay.
We can all exist on the same ecosystem, no matter how many creators there are, since the demand is just so high. So if I were to start a YouTube channel from scratch in 2025, here's what I'd do. First, I would pick a niche, and I would make sure that niche is something with very high demand and high earning potential.
If you really want to find success on YouTube over a long period of time, you're going to need these two things. High demand so you can connect with a large audience, and high earning potential so you can monetize that audience effectively. And I can say for sure the niches with the highest Earning potential relates somewhat to health, wealth, and relationships, since in those three categories, people have the biggest problems and therefore are willing to pay more for a solution, which unlocks a whole new level of monetization.
When I think back to when I started my channel in 2016, and my niche was tiny planet photography using 360 cameras. While my videos were good and I started building an audience, the niche was so unmonetizable because think about it, like what can you sell around tiny planets? I tried selling prints of my tiny planets, but I didn't get a single sale since people don't want to buy a print of someone else in it.
It's like buying someone else's self portrait. I tried making a course about tiny planets, but no one was willing to pay for it. The absolute best I could do from monetizing this niche was writing an. Ebook that I sold for like 7, which resulted in a grand total of drumroll, 150, which I was very proud of at the time.
But now when I think back that niche had such firm boundaries around it in terms of the monetization potential that I never stood a chance of making much money. Which is why over the years I slowly pivoted it towards 360 video and virtual tours, which were much more aligned with wealth of the health wealth relationships.
And suddenly I was able to one, find more demand and two, unlock new levels of monetization potential through affiliate earnings, brand deals, and selling online products. So if this is you sitting in the seat of someone with zero subscribers and no channel, I want you to learn the lesson that took me nine years to learn.
If you. Start in a direction that is highly monetizable by linking whatever your core skill is as closely as possible to health, wealth, or relationships. You will spare yourself years and years of making next to nothing. I really do think it's important to run your YouTube channel like it's a business.
Think about it. If you're a business owner inventing a product, firstly, you'd want to make sure there is market demand for that product. So are there hundreds of thousands, if not millions of qualified customers? Do those customers have buying potential, like who are they and do they have enough money to follow your calls to action and spend a bit again, if your niche is connected to health, wealth, or relationships, your audience will have that money then as a quote unquote business owner, all you have to do is create great content and send people to your calls to action.
Whether it's selling your own products or someone else's YouTube truly is one of the best marketing tools there is in 2025, especially in terms of organic marketing. And I know firsthand from being able to scale up my own business to seven figures, just how powerful YouTube can be as a free marketing tool.
So when choosing your direction, make sure it's something that is highly monetizable. Think about it in terms of a couple of different income sources. So with affiliate income, where you promote other people's products and you get a cut of it. Generally with affiliate income, the more expensive the product is that you're promoting, the more of a commission you'll receive when people buy.
So if you're trying to sell 10 products, like office supplies, the average affiliate commission on physical products is usually two to 5%. Let's go with five, which is 50 cents per sale. It's going to take a lot of 50 cent commissions to add up to even 10. Whereas if you were selling higher ticket products, like cameras or expensive software, those affiliate commissions are going to look more like 50 to 100 per sale.
And that really does add up quickly, especially in the holiday season, or when companies hold a sale and you promote it. And generally the more expensive products, again, revolve around health. Wealth and relationships for affiliate income as well. It's also a good idea to promote products that are already very popular.
So many big companies put a lot of time and budget into marketing their products and becoming very well known. So really all you have to do is just buy one of their products, review it, evaluate it, create an affiliate link and share it. And that's going to be a fantastic way of earning high affiliate commissions quickly.
So what about high earning potential when it comes to digital products? Well, again, if you're in a niche with very low demand and low value to people, like I was in the tiny planet photography niche, there's very little chance that I'll be able to make any more than 10 for the sale of a digital product, since I'm really not solving that big of a problem that most people would have.
Whereas again, niches with high earning potential, let's say you wrote a book about how to make money online. Or at least an online course about how to have a better marriage. Suddenly, you're solving far higher level problems that audiences are willing to pay higher prices to solve. And digital products are so good for anyone that is on YouTube and is a bit entrepreneurial.
Because it means that you Don't need any physical inventory. You don't need to arrange for shipping or drop shipping. All you do is sell a digital file, download, or access to a website that has content in it, and you can sell that infinitely. So it really is a fantastic business model that is made even better with.
These high earning niches. Another great one is coaching and consulting. Even if you were starting a channel from scratch right now in 2025, if you can prove that, you know, what you're talking about quickly, and you have some kind of coaching or consulting service that people can follow online by clicking the link in your description, chances are you will be able to convert paid clients, even if your videos are only in the hundreds of views.
Which they shouldn't be if you are going for those niches with high demand. But again, it really comes down to the level of problem you're solving for people. Even if a hundred people watch your video and that's it. If you're solving a very high level problem that is specific and niche and no one else is talking about it, then people will want to pay you to solve that problem for them.
If you want to know all the different ways that I make money with my YouTube channel, feel free to download my free guide on my website. Called my top 10 ways to make money with YouTube, which goes through 10 fantastic ways that you can monetize any channel in any niche and start earning money as quickly as possible.
You can download it at benclaremont. com slash YouTube guide, or follow the link in the show notes. Okay. So once you've aligned yourself with a niche with high demand and high earning potential. Now it's time to figure out what kind of content you're going to make. And I know that there are so many videos out there already, right?
Which you'd think would mean that there's nothing left to make. Well, I just want to say that that's actually a limiting belief and that there are no limits to the amount. Of content that can be made on any topic with every new year that passes all the information in text, image, and video format that was made in the previous year suddenly becomes dated.
Let me ask you this in 2025, are you going to be looking for videos on how to manage your finances in 2024? I'm guessing probably not. Yes, information becomes dated very quickly and it's human nature to want the most up to date and relevant information at the exact time people are looking for it. So if you think about every single topic out there, most of them have elements that become dated and can therefore be redone over and over.
The same way that same audience wanted the best financial advice in 2024 and in 2023, that was specific to each of those years. Same thing applies right now in 2025 as the new year comes in. So a great way to start here is by answering the most asked questions. If you know your topic well enough, you should know what these are.
If not, you'll need to do a bit of market research. You could create definitive guides to certain topics. For example, a beginner's guide to meditation. Or you can make videos around the most popular products in your niche. The vast majority of niches have products of some kind, whether that's a physical product or a digital product.
And these will always need to be reviewed and have tutorials made about creating an endless stream of content for YouTubers. So I'd really advise that you go for the low hanging. Fruit to begin with, since those videos are likely to get the most attention upfront and therefore grow your channel the fastest.
I'll also add that people want different perspectives on things. You know how you might find someone that you really like who talks about a specific topic on YouTube, let's say going to the gym, but then all of a sudden you discover this other person who makes videos 10 times better, their content resonates with you more, they're more relatable, and suddenly that new person becomes your new go-to.
Well, that's kind of the nature of YouTube, and also a reason that there will never be too much competition. Since it really is a constant totem pole, and therefore any creator can rise to the top of a niche with the right content and message. But also audiences like just different perspectives. Let's say you have a channel around product.
There are so many different approaches and opinions around a topic like this and most people like to hear a few different perspectives so they can find what resonates most with them. So if person one has this extreme opinion that in order to be productive you need to work 24 hours a day and then person two says you only need to work Two hours per day.
And in those two hours, you do very specific things. Those two perspectives are polar opposite, but they still share the same objective of being more productive. So having a fresh and unique perspective on a topic can be very refreshing for an audience and is a great way to stand out quickly on YouTube.
It's also a really good idea when you're making this content to somehow relate it back to your business and monetization strategy, whether that's offering your audience a free download in exchange for their email, encouraging them to follow your affiliate link or selling one of your products or consulting services directly.
It doesn't have to be long. It can just be a five second mention. But the more videos you make, the more chances you have to expose your business to a wide audience. I am going to add that this is a pretty advanced high level perspective that I'm giving you here. This is literally after nearly 10 years on YouTube, everything that I'm doing now and learned the hard way from not doing it, how important it is to run your channel like a business.
So I know this might come across as. daunting, talking about a business, monetization, going high level with health, wealth, and relationships. So feel free to pick and choose whatever resonates with you. But it's funny because if I were to start again in 2025 from scratch, this is still exactly what I would do.
In fact, I had this experience last week, if you've been following me on YouTube and the last. Podcast episode where I accidentally deleted my big YouTube channel that I've been working on for 10 years due to a fault in the Google account system. I made a very silly mistake and nearly permanently deleted it.
I won't give you all the details again, but something that I will say from coming so close to losing. Everything in just the click of a button last week. I think back to that 30 minutes that I became convinced that I'd lost my channel for good and the sheer terror that I was feeling. And it was like 99 percent dread and sadness.
However, there was also that 1 percent there. And what that 1 percent was that wasn't dread and sadness, was actually a bit of excitement. I know that might seem a bit masochistic, but part of me is always fantasized about starting this YouTube game again. And if I were to start it again from scratch, what I would do differently.
And with that came a bit of excitement. I thought if I am forced to start this again, after 10 years of work, what I'm going to do is reverse engineer the process and start it like a profitable business in one of the big three niches. And make it super focused on the direction I wanted to go in all along, with my ideal target audience in mind being entrepreneurial content creators, which is an audience with high demand and high monetization potential.
Now before I go, I just want to speak to the people who have already started a YouTube channel and maybe you've even been consistent on it and posted for a while, but you're still not getting the results you'd hoped for in terms of that big audience and your ability to effectively monetize that audience.
So what I want to tell you is that 2025 could also be a chance for you to reinvent yourself. It doesn't have to be a complete 180 where your channel is about cameras and then you switch it to being about horses. I'm not saying that, but what I am saying is if you feel like your channel isn't highly monetizable, I'd encourage you to ask yourself, how could I pivot it slightly to go in a more monetizable direction?
And this would probably come from appealing to people who are more professional within your niche. So anyone who has a. career in your general niche, what are the questions that they have? What are the topics that are important to them? How can you help them and give them the most value in terms of improving either their health, wealth, or relationships?
Because every niche can somewhat be related to one of these three big topics. However, the more explaining it needs, the harder it is to do. So if you're struggling, I'd be willing to bet that your niche needs a lot of explaining to connect it. So you might want to think about pivoting your channel slightly in a direction that requires less explaining.
I'd actually really genuinely like to help you with this because often YouTube channels only need a slight pivot left or right to go a million miles an hour. And I have something new and exciting that I'll be launching in very early 2025 that I'm designing specifically to help you find your winning channel direction.
So you can get that little nudge left or right that will align your niche more closely with health, wealth, or relationships and unlock monetization potential that was never possible before. Much like I did when I was making videos about tiny planets. And then I switched it over to teaching 360 video on virtual tours.
It's little nudges like this that you make early on that make a big, big difference in the long run, especially when it comes to your bottom line. I'll be announcing more around this product launch in the new year. Well, that's it for this episode. I hope you got value from it. I wish you all the success in the world.
And hey, don't forget, you're just one video away.
