Why Blog When You Can YouTube

You may be thinking, you’re a YouTuber, you don’t need a stinking blog! For most hobbyist YouTubers this may be true, a blog is just slow you down. For YouTubers wanting to make a living on their content creation having a blog is almost a necessity.

Here we are going to go over the benefits and rewards of YouTuber having a blog. How a blog can strengthen your YouTube channel and separate you from the rest of the hobbyist YouTube channels. We will then go over our personal experience, and as always, you are allowed to leave your feedback below, we don’t ever claim to know everything. 

FYI – A blog will make more revenue than YouTube!

Blog Revenue Sources For Tubers

So you just took the leap and have a YouTube channel of your very own. Well per YouTube rules you won’t receive a dime for your effort until your channel reaches 1000 subscribers. You also have an uphill climb because you are new, YouTube takes a long time to start pushing your content to others, so it is up to you to really start selling your video creation

With a blog, you don’t have to wait to monetize, you just need to look for ad services, and affiliations that pay you to send customers their way. Ad services we currently use are Google AdSense and Video Intelligence “VI”, with Google being our top here. Then look at affiliates and there is a ton to be found, we currently work with Amazon, Bluehost, Target, and Walmart. Amazon is our top perform from ads on our website, and then YouTube with our product reviews.

Currently, we make 1/3 our revenue from the sources above, not to include YouTube ad revenue, or things not related to YouTube or our Website. We have noticed that per click we get paid more by adsense than on YouTube. We also have more control to prevent users from browsing our content until they white-list our site.

We have had some ads approve for us from some providers that we immediately discontinued. They were either too intrusive effecting the website user experience, our ads not fitting our image. We would recommend not using every ad provider you get approved for, ever.

No Swag For Fans, 10K Subscribers So Far Away

So YouTube has a rule that does not allow you to use their provider to get your fans cool gear. Well with your own website you make the rules, you can have zero traffic and offer all the swag you want. You can create areas that your fans can post themselves in your gear. Also adding links in your YouTube videos description to your shop is allowed, these links can be set as default for every new video you upload.

At the time of our writing this post we only have 7K in subscribers, so here is what we did. We have BlueHost as our platform provider, and then for our swag provider, we use Printful. YouTube’s swag provider would not even meet our needs if we qualified with the swag we wanted. We want to offer cool stuff like Aprons, digital downloads, and pay only content. Also on our website, we can give our opinion of the swag, and leave a video to help fans decide.

Minor In Video, No Comments Allowed

While this is not an issue for us, not getting feedback from fans because you have kids seems disheartening. If you are a family channel, it can feel like YouTube wants to be the parent, they think you don’t have your child’s best interest at heart. With a blog, you become the parent again and can communicate with your fans.

There is an added bonus to having a blog with fans writing, they see what you want them to see. You control the ads, the swag, and many more things that YouTube will never offer you. You could even have a forum that allows peoples questions to bring more revenue your way. Of course, all this comes with more work, but hey, you are building your empire.

Notify Fans Right

Your subscribers in YouTube get a little bell at the top of the screen when you make new vids, your fans on your blog can get so much more. Not only can your fans know about new content through email and all your social media, they more detail crafted by you to peak their interest. Here you can be more personable without just posting directly on social media of news and events you are doing.

Final Thoughts

I know this is not everything we have done to improve our social presence with a blog, and we are constantly looking at ways to improve. If you have ideas, suggestions, or this blog helped you, please leave your feedback below. Danielle and I love to help others so we can all achieve our Big Dreams