How to Make Money on YouTube Without Making Your Own Videos

There’s an interesting trend going on in the YouTube world lately and it’s the topic of how to make money there without making your own videos (or using other people’s videos). Is this actually possible and if so how?

Well the answer is technically yes, and I’ll be showing you 4 ways this can be done in this post I’ll show you how. But before I do:

A quick warning about making money on YouTube without making your own videos (or using other people’s videos):

There are many people who hear about this way of making money on YouTube (like from programs such as Ministry of Freedom) and think it’s easy. They think that they can just use other people’s videos, be lazy and not make their own and still be able to reach success doing this.

If this is your mentality, you are wrong and even though the methods I’ll be showing you do work, they come with a bunch of different caveats that just don’t make them worth doing. There are major risks to every single one of these methods you are likely not considering or not being told about (but I’ll show you them).

And I have a lot of experience with making money online, including with YouTube:

• Here is my affiliate income reports page ($1.5 million)
• Here is my history with YouTube affiliate marketing (About $50,000).
• I also make money via YouTube monetization (About a $1,000).
• I also make some money with YouTube ads (Earned about $10,000).

Long story short, I have a “bit” of credibility to write on this topic. And here’s why I decided to write on it:

I see trends like these sprouting every single year, all of which pitch the following type of message:

“Making money online is easy, and this “shortcut” is how you do it.”

Now this trend has come to the YouTube world and I feel it’s necessary to give you realistic expectations on why this mostly is a false belief.

You see, there’s high ticket programs coming out that are preaching this and I think this is driving the trend and you need to be careful because the people behind these programs want to sell you the “make money online easily” idea so they can sell you their $1,000 programs.

Very often, this ends up being a bad deal for you, so before you dive into trying this, read this article fully so you know what is really going on with this subject.

Here’s how to make money on YouTube without making your own videos (or using other people’s videos):

1. Hire a freelancer to make videos on popular subjects for you.
2. Use Google Ads to advertise on YouTube (no video needed).
3. Use demo videos from product creators who let you use their videos.
4. Share people’s public YouTube videos in your blog posts and landing pages (probably your best option).

None of these methods require you to make your own YouTube videos and thought I will be explaining how each option works shortly, know that they all have their negatives and I’ve rarely used any of them and this is because:

I strongly believe in making your own videos, even if you’re very shy because unique video content, made exclusively by you, makes you far more likely to succeed, and there’s far less red tape or caveats involved as there would be via using these methods (which I will also explain).

1) Hire a freelancer to make videos on popular subjects for you:

Let’s say you’re very shy (or just lazy) and don’t want to make your own YouTube videos. You can head over to Fiverr.com or similar places and pay people to generate videos for you on whatever subject you want. If you can find a good content creator who you can outsource this to, then this method may bear fruit.

Here are the negatives to using this method:

• It will cost money for each video you pay to make.
• You need to do some research to see what subjects to make videos on.
• You need to do a lot of keyword research for the YouTube video too.
• There is no guarantee you’ll get a high quality video from the person you pay.
• There is no guarantee the video you pay for will get views/sales.

2) Use Google Ads to advertise on YouTube (no video needed):

If you sign up and get approved for Google Ads, you can make online ads and put them up on YouTube. Here is how that can look:

In this example, I did a simple YouTube search on “make money online” and before I could even see the video results, there are ads which up at the top of the videos and these are ads made by people or companies through Google Ads.

None of these people or companies had to make a video to show up on the first page of my YouTube search results.

Through this method, you can promote whatever it is you’re promoting via YouTube, but without making a single video to do it. You can advertise promotions on this ad network, get clicks from YouTube and promote things like:

• Affiliate promotions.
• High ticket promotions.
• Promote your products on 1 page landing sites.
• Collect an email list and so forth.

Here are the negatives to using this method:

• Google Ads is a very expensive pay per click network.
• You had better know the pay per click game very well to make this work.
• There’s more odds than not that you will lose money if you try this when you’re a beginner.

3) Use demo videos from product creators who let you use their videos:

A lot of product creators, especially in the digital marketing world who want affiliates to promote their stuff create demo videos and let their affiliates use them however they see fit. These affiliates then go around and share that video promoting the product.

Now some affiliates will literally re upload the same demo videos as their own on YouTube and then promote it that way (through YouTube SEO methods) and this is a grey area of ethics because in most cases, you simply cannot take someone else’s video creation and re upload it as though it is your own.

However, if the video is sharable, and you do have permission to use it however you see necessary (and it is already on YouTube), you can then share that video on things like:

• Blog posts (I’ll get into that in the next method).
• 1 page landing sites.
• And so forth.

The one area I’d use this in is in a blog post reviewing the product and I’ll explain why in the next method.

Negatives to this method:

Unless it’s for a blog post reviewing the product you use this for, I wouldn’t bother with this option.

4) Share people’s public YouTube videos in your blog posts and landing pages:

This is probably the only reasonable way I’d suggest making money with YouTube videos that aren’t yours and while it kind of breaks the rule of “making money on YouTube”, it is such an important method that it cannot be excluded from this list.

So let me explain why it’s so important:

1) Let’s say I am reviewing a product I am promoting as an affiliate.

2) I don’t want to make a YouTube video for it since I’m shy or something else.

3) Your next best bet is to review that same product on a blog post so you can get traffic there.

4) If you do this, you can literally find other people’s YouTube videos which do review the same product and embed it on your blog post.

5) This will enhance your overall review and help readers get more quality information on it. And this can lead to sales.

I have actually used this and it has made me sales:

I have done this in some circumstances, including one where I was reviewing a high ticket programs I did not recommend and in my written review of this program, I embedded a YouTube video of someone who did buy the high ticket product and gave people an inside look.

I used that video (legally) in my blog post to basically say “Hey look, this is an inside look and based on what I see, I don’t recommend it”. The video I shared was legitimate and helped enhance my review. And it was an example of ethical affiliate marketing.

You can use this method as long as the YouTube video you wish to use is sharable and public, meaning you can embed it on websites, social media and so forth and for promotional purposes, this can be used for this too.

In some ways, doing this also helps the person who made the YouTube video because when your blog post gets traffic, that video can get more views and help that person’s channel grow.

Negatives to using this method:

• You can have traffic leave your blog and visit the YouTube video instead (lost sales).
• You are better off with your own video because it helps your trust level rise.

My conclusions on this method of making money online:

I hope I persuaded you to the idea that this approach to making money online is not as easy as it seems because it’s not.

I do also hope I encouraged you to stop taking the lazy approach to making money and to consider working hard to build a real online business that works for you and if this is something you wish to do, my advice is to begin with programs which teach this reality, namely the Wealthy Affiliate program, where you’ll get able to get your best start in this.