How To Monetize Your Videos And Make Lots Of Youtube Money!!$$$
In this video, the creator addresses gaming YouTubers who want to earn money from their content. He explains what YouTube monetization means—allowing ads on videos and sharing ad revenue—and outlines the two primary routes to enable it: partnering directly with YouTube or joining a multi‑channel network (MCN). He cites YouTube’s official policy that game‑related videos can be monetized if the commentary is instructional or educational, and notes that many game developers (e.g., Mojang, Riot, Valve) publicly grant permission to monetize gameplay footage. The speaker then critiques MCNs, arguing that most do not have direct licensing deals with game publishers and instead take a substantial cut of revenue. He lists the factors he considers when choosing an MCN—size, legal support, revenue‑share percentage, and contract length—and evaluates five major networks (Freedom, RPM, Curse, Machinima, TGN) with their respective splits and contract terms. He advises against sub‑networks and warns that MCNs rarely help creators grow their audience. Finally, he offers practical tips to avoid copyright strikes (no hacks, no copyrighted music, no negative commentary) and emphasizes that, in most cases, game publishers view gameplay videos as free advertising and are unlikely to pursue legal action. The video concludes with a call for corrections in the comments and a disclaimer that any legal trouble is the viewer’s responsibility.
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I was thinking today and I noticed that it's been a while since I made a video about YouTube money. I mean, I pretty much built my entire fanbase, if what I have is considered a fanbase, off of talking about YouTube money. So what better way to bring it back than by talking about partnerships and monetization? Just before I say anything, if you get into any legal trouble because of taking advice off of this video, it is not my fault. Really, you're just stupid for basing your financial income off of what some random teenager on YouTube told you. Seriously though, if you get into any legal trouble because of following this video, Send me an email to the court address so I can, uh, you know, sit in the court and just laugh at you because you're a freaking idiot. So here's the million-dollar question: how do you get money off of your videos? Monetization. Plain and simple, that is pretty much every YouTuber's best friend. Wait, what is monetization? Monetization means that you authorize the presence of advertisements on your videos, and YouTube charges advertisers for these and also shares the fees with you, allowing you to make some money from people viewing your videos. So advertisers pay YouTube, YouTube gets the money, puts the ad on your video, and then gives you part of the money the advertiser's paid. Pretty simple, right? Now, how do you get this monetization feature? You either have to partner with YouTube, or partner with some gaming network, if you're a gaming channel. By the way, I forgot to mention this video is for gaming channels only. Everything I say is for gamers, like people who do Call of Duty videos or whatever type of videos float your boat. So we'll start off with the first one. Can you partner with YouTube if you do video game content? Yes. Surprisingly, you actually can. I'm going to be reading word for word off of the YouTube help page. This is YouTube's official statement regarding video game and software content. It says video game content may be monetized— monetized, sorry about that— if the associated step-by-step commentary is strictly tied to the live action being shown and provides instructional or educational value. So let's say you're a let's player and you play this game, you upload it to YouTube, and for the most part during the video, the main thing you were talking about, the main subject, was the game itself. You're giving commentary and you're talking about the game itself for the most part, and you upload it to YouTube. Yes, you can partner with YouTube and put ads on that video because you're talking about the game. And it strictly says here, if you're talking about the game when you play it, you can, you know, make money off of it. Another thing you could do when partnering with YouTube is it says you can upload video game content if the creator of the game gives you permission. Well, I can't just talk to Riot Games or Mojang or Valve or any of these big companies and just get permission to use their game, or can I? You see, Mojang has actually publicly given permission to people to be able to upload videos of their content onto YouTube. I'm reading straight from Mojang support right here: you are allowed to create videos of Mojang games, upload or stream from YouTube or other video game sites, and monetize those videos. It's free advertising for us, and we like watching you play our games. See, Mojang isn't stupid, and they realize that it's free advertising and actually healthy for the sales of their game. And this isn't public knowledge because Mojang isn't the only big video game company that has done this. Most people don't know that companies like Riot Games or Valve or Mojang, all these companies have actually given out permission for you to use their video game content on YouTube, on Twitch, on other sites. This isn't public knowledge for most people. Now, having said all that, why would you partner with the YouTube Network? They'll take 10, 20, 30, 40, even up to 50% of your income when you technically don't have to. And here's the biggest misconception throughout all of YouTube. People say, oh, I partnered with the YouTube Network because they get the rights from the maker of the video game, which allows me to monetize my content. With the exception of Machinima, and maybe one other YouTube Network, these networks have never talked to any of the makers of the video game content. They have no insider deals. They, like, there's so many games out there, there's no way possible that a YouTube Network could have deals with all these games either way. Like, they, it's such a lie. Like, these YouTube Networks do not have deals with the CEOs of these video game companies. And they do not get explicit rights to monetize that video game's footage. Now, after heavily bashing YouTube networks like that, I'm gonna say why I prefer to be partnered with one instead of going solo with YouTube. First off, I don't care about the money, so the YouTube network can take a part of my money. I really don't care. Pfft. I've never lied so bad in my life. I don't have an AdSense account, and I think you have to be like 18 to make one, which you need that if you're partnered directly with YouTube. Another reason is for legal help. Now, this really only applies if you're partnered with the bigger networks, Some of these smaller networks that only have like 5K subs and just are ran by teenagers, they ain't gonna do crap for you if you get into legal trouble. But if you partner with a bigger network like Machinima, TGN, uh, yadda yadda, networks like that, RPM, they can, uh, they can help you if you get in legal trouble a little bit. They'll be on your side and they can help you get out of stuff. They have experience with that, and it'll be a lot better than if you're running solo trying to work with YouTube because YouTube will never reply to you. At least when you're with a network, you can, you know, add the CEO on Skype and, you know, talk with them and he can help you out. Another thing is I'm pretty sure if you're partnered with YouTube, whenever you upload a video, YouTube has to approve it for ads or something like that. I'm not 100% sure. I've always been with the network. I don't know what it's like just partnering directly with YouTube. I'm pretty sure if you're partnered directly with YouTube, you, uh, whenever you upload it, you have to wait for YouTube's approval, and they have to go through and like their Content ID system, whatever, has to check it and say whether or not you can monetize it. And according to a lot of people, that system is really messed up, and things that you should be able to monetize, sometimes it does not let you monetize. So in conclusion, I would recommend that you partner with the network. Yeah, they're gonna take a percentage percent of your income, and they might actually never end up doing anything for you. But just partner with the network, be on the safe side. So now that I've kind of pointed out why I think you should partner with the network, we're going to talk about which network you should choose. Just whatever you do, please do not join a subnetwork of a bigger network. In case you don't know what a subnetwork is, let's say I go to RPM. RPM's a really big YouTube network. I don't know if they do this. And then I apply to them and start my own subnetwork and call it Fire. So then I go out with my Fire YouTube network and recruit people to Fire. So instead of partner— instead of people partnering directly with RPM and RPM taking a percent of their money, they're now partnering with RPM through me. So I, as a middleman, get like 5% of their money, and then RPM takes their normal cut. Partnering with a subnetwork does nothing for you. It just is a middleman who goes out and recruits people and then takes a percentage of the income they get off their monetized videos. Keep in mind that no YouTube network will help you grow. Not Machinima, not TGN, none of these big networks. No subnetwork, no big network, none of these networks are gonna help you grow on YouTube. They're all gonna claim that they'll help you explode on YouTube and give you tons of exposure, and they won't. The only way you'll ever get the slightest bit of exposure is if they feature you on their main channel, and there's a very slim chance that that will happen. Having said that, these are the things that I look for when I'm looking for a YouTube network to apply for. These are the things that I want in my YouTube network. I want the network to be big, that way I know they at least have experience with legal trouble with video games. They at least know what they're talking about. I want good revenue share and I want a really small contract longevity. I want my contract to be 1 year under or no contract if possible. So I'm gonna run you through the 5 biggest YouTube networks, or the 5 main YouTube networks in my opinion: Freedom, RPM, Curse, Machinima, and TGN. We'll start off with Freedom. Freedom has a 60/40 revenue split, so they keep 40% of your income. You make $1,000, they get $400 of it. That is, that is a huge no-no to me. I would never partner with Freedom just because of that. But Freedom does have a no-lock-in contract. You can leave with a 30-day notice, so that is a plus to Freedom. RPM is the same as Freedom. They have a 60/40 revenue split that is just absolutely terrible. But typically Freedom and RPM are for the smaller channels, people who are getting like 1,000 views a month and have less than 500 subscribers. That is when you would partner with these guys. But RPM has a 2-year contract, so I would not I would never lock myself into a 60/40 split for 2 years. That is just horrible. If anything, just partner with Freedom because you can leave within a 30-day notice. Next up on the list is Curse. Now Curse, in my opinion, is the best. I'm not actually partnered with them. I wish I was. I'm currently in a contract right now with my current network. I'm going to get out of it whenever I can and go apply to Curse because Curse has a 90/10 revenue split. They only take 10% of your income and you get 90% of it. That is extremely good. And to add on top of that, they have no lock-in contract. You can literally leave whenever you want, but I don't see why you'd ever want to leave if you're getting 90% of your income. That is definitely the highest I've ever seen out of any YouTube network. Of course though, Curse requires that you get a decent amount of views every month, so that is one downside. If you're a smaller channel, you can't yet apply to them. You're gonna probably apply to Freedom, and then, you know, once you get big enough, leave Freedom and then go apply to Curse because you get more money off of them. The next two are Machinima and TGN. I know nothing about these two networks. I never even applied to them. But, uh, Machinima supposedly has a 50/50 split and does require contract. That's just what I read online. I read a couple reviews on Machinima's partnership and both reviews said that it was a 50/50 split and obviously that's just terrible. I don't even have to say anything about it, but I doubt that's actually true. But that's what I read online is that it's a 50/50 split. I don't know, maybe someone who's actually partnered with Machinima can verify that in the comments section. And then TGN has a 70/30 split, which is not horrible, but that's still way too much money with contract. And those are the 5 top YouTube networks in my opinion, and I just ran you through why I wouldn't partner with them. But obviously you probably have your own opinions, and there are other things that factor in besides contract and revenue split, but to me those are the biggest things. So to summarize the entire video, technically you can partner with YouTube and still monetize your content as long as you're doing Let's Plays and primarily talking about the video game in your commentary over the game, or you can partner with the YouTube network. Technically though, you're not supposed to monetize stuff unless it's You know, you're not supposed to monetize a video game unless you're talking about the game. But if you're partnered with a YouTube network, generally they turn, you know, a blind eye. They just ignore it because obviously you're making money off of it. And as long as you don't talk negative about a game, as long as you don't use copyrighted music, as long as you're not uploading hacks about a game, you should never really get a copyright strike whenever you upload a game. Even if you don't have permission off their website to use it, because not all games do give permission, as long as it's not like a hack or just you cursing a bunch and just bashing the game, generally publishers won't care. I mean, it's just free advertising, and so many people do it, I doubt you'll ever get in any legal trouble. There's a 99.9% chance that you'll never go to court for uploading video game content, even if you don't have permission. The worst thing that's gonna happen is get a copyright strike, and the best way to avoid that is, like I said, just don't do hack videos. Don't be stupid, and most, you know, video game companies don't care. So I tried to lay everything out there, and like I said, some of this might not be true. Please, if anything I said in this video was false, correct me in the comment section. I'll throw an annotation up on the video. And that's pretty much everything. Hope you enjoyed, and let me know what you think.
