How to make real money with Python and YouTube?
How can you make some passive income stream with YouTube & Python? Where do I start? What are the prerequisites?
In this article as an example we will be talking about an already existing fully automated YouTube Channel Trendy TikToks and how anyone can create something like this with their own hands.
1. Intro
The probability is pretty high, that you’ve already seen compilations like these before:
Let’s check out how we can do something like this as well. Let’s go …
YouTube has become a content phenomenon. According to Statistics Brain a staggering 1,325,000,000 people use YouTube, watching 4,950,000,000 videos every day. 3.25 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube each month. So there is no surprise that some of the YouTube stars are often more influential than traditional celebrities.
Python as a general purpose, server-side language is used for a variety of tasks from simple scripting to advanced web applications, ML and AI. It still remains on of the most popular programming languages based on the recent LinkedIn postings.
So, why not to combine both things together?!
This article aims to give you an example of real-life aka. side hustle aka. data science project, that can generate you some real passive income, audience traffic and in the first line some fun! And remember:
“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” — Greg Anderson.
Table of content
- Intro
- Prerequisites
- Finding niche
- Idea generation
- Monetization
- Development
- Outro
2. Prerequisites
As a preface, in order to create something fully automated similar to Trendy TikToks you will need some foundational understanding of:
- Python (incl. Pandas, Numpy packages)
- OpenCV (for video & image processing)
- APIs (e.g. YouTube API)
- Marketing & Design (e.g. creating Thumbnails to increase your CR)
Now, let’s dive deeper into some of the following steps and try to decompose the whole process of idea generation, backend development, monetization strategies etc.
3. Finding niche
Finding a niche for your fully automated YouTube channel might be freaking hard. But it is essential to keep an eye on a clear understanding who your viewers are, why they need to watch you and what is the value of your channel to them.
There are plenty of already existing highly competitive niches out there such as productivity, meme compilations, motivational videos, passive income, health & fitness etc.
But it doesn’t mean that you can’t try to find something else and create a channel around extremely narrow topic. Some examples of very specific niches are: gardening for engineers, rare cooking tutorials, plant-based fasting, AI marketing etc.
Finding a perfect niche is a tedious way to go and it’s very unlikely that the first videos you upload will break into trends. Instead, focus on consistency and provide subscribers to your channel with plenty of videos to watch. The more subscribers a channel accumulates, the more likely it is that your videos will be seen by people outside of your subscriber-base and will be picked up by YouTube algorithm. Add to this some bunch of social media & WoM marketing, good thumbnails and you are ready to rock & earn!
4. Idea generation
As was mentioned before, there are plenty of different types of channels out there for literally any topic: sports, blogs, cars, music videos, compilation videos, beauty etc. If nothing particular comes to your mind, try to gain some inspiration from already existing YouTube Channels.
In the following we will be using Trendy TikToks YouTube channel, that posts daily trending & funny TikTok compilations.
5. Monetization
Getting monetized on YouTube is a goal every creator wants to reach. It helps them start side hustles, make YouTube their full-time job, or even create a full-scale business selling products in physical stores.
These days, the possibilities are endless. There are several ways of monetizing your YouTube channel.
5.1. YouTube Partner Program (YPP)
Reaching partner status is an upgrade for your channel, as it allows you to place advertisements on your videos and make money (potentially) every time you upload content. In order to be able to apply for YPP you’ll need to meet the requirements, namely 1000 subscribers and 4000 public watching hours.
5.2. Affiliate Marketing
Relying only on YPP might be not a good idea, because advertisement rates go up and down, so it’s hard to make same amount of money in every quarter.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most easiest revenue streams you can think of. This is how it works:
- Sign up for various affiliate programs with different brands/companies.
- Get custom product links to share with your YouTube audience.
- Earn a commission when viewers buy stuff using your link.
Investing enough time in understanding the underlying principles of affiliate marketing can make you a good chunk of money:)
5.3. Partnerships
With an active partnership you will be featuring a product or a service in your videos. You can work with multiple brands if you want, which leads to more money for your channel and less stress about earning AdSense revenue.
Many of the creators out there implement this strategy to create a continuous revenue stream.
5.4. Patreon & PayPal
Patreon & PayPal are good ways to get donations from the loyal customers/viewers of your channel.
One of the extra reasons so many YouTubers have a Patreon account is to post videos that would violate YouTube’s guidelines and be demonetized. There are many reasons YouTube may demonetize content — a video may touch upon sensitive topics like violence or contain offensive language, such as curse words, and therefore be demonetized.
5.5. Sell your own merchandise
If you have your own good to sell, you might consider selling them directly on YouTube. Most of the time, merchandise comes in the form of clothing. YouTube is not manufacturing clothing for you to sell to your audience. You still have to go out and make your own. Some examples of goods are E-Books, T-Shirts, caps, content-related goods etc.
In a long term perspective with a trusted audience and high-quality content you might be generating some real cash selling your own products.
6. Development
If you’ve ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. I’ve also never seen a single person, that willingly manually spend hours typing some repetitive texts or merging videos on the daily basis. The main purpose of the backend coding is maximum automation of repetitive processes on every stage of the project. Let’s move to the application...
All the automated channels are based on the same principles. Pictures are worth thousand words:
Basically, the steps may vary a bit, but the general idea remains the same:
Scrape videos or generate content → Concatenate videos using Python → Format videos to the YouTube format → Generate catchy thumbnails from the video you already have → Access YouTube Data API → Finalize upload JSON data using Python functions etc. → Execute script → Check the video ;)
It´s crucial to stay curious and try to automate every single piece of work, that is done manually. Learning by doing is a key.
Check Trendy TikToks again and try to decompose the process by yourself (I promise it is not difficult). Write down every single step you think might be automated. Watch couple of videos to get the understanding of how you can do it using Python modules such as OpenCV, MoviePy, Numpy, Pandas and your knowledge of Python.
❗ DISCLAIMER ❗
Once my Medium reaches only 100 subscribers, I’ll post an article with detailed YouTube automation channel development tutorial using Python.
If you don´t want to miss my next article on development of fully automated YouTube channel, make sure you follow and subscribe to my newsletter.
P.S. I already have some ideas on how to implement game development, speech recognition and customized sentiment analysis for my project ;)
7. Outro
In 2022, there are many ways to monetize your YouTube channel and make some real passive income stream. And as we´ve seen today, there are plenty of opportunities and niches on how you can automate with Python video creation, thumbnail creation, upload process using YouTube Data API etc. The opportunities are huge, so stay curious, create, enjoy and earn some real money on the way. One day when I´ll have less things going on in my life, I´ll create the same and document it with you here. It is a tedious way, but it absolutely worth it!
Here I´ll add link to the Trendy TikToks channel again, so you could decompose by yourself the mechanics of a fully automated YouTube channel.
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