Marques Brownlee was saving up his allowance money in high school when he decided to launch a YouTube channel.

The money he was saving up would help him buy a new laptop, where he could film and edit videos.

To help run the day-to-day of his creator business, Brownlee signed with the talent agency WME, and he has a small team of motion graphics artists, cinematographers, and assistants.

Advertisement

"Oh, this is the number one holiday family reunion question," Brownlee told Nilay Patel in a recent episode of The Verge's podcast "Decoder."

For most YouTubers, their main source of revenue comes from the ads placed in their videos by Google.

"So, YouTube ads is the primary, fundamental way that YouTubers make money," Brownlee said on the Verge podcast. "You upload a video, there's ads somewhere on it or in it, and the YouTuber gets paid for the placement of those ads because they brought the eyeballs to the video."

Here is a breakdown of the main ways Brownlee makes money as a creator:

Creators who are part of YouTube's Partner Program are able to make money from their YouTube channels by placing ads within a video. These ads are filtered through Google's AdSense program.

Brownlee said on the Verge podcast that he also earns money by promoting brands in his YouTube videos.

"I negotiate the rate," Brownlee said on the Verge podcast. "The contract is usually built by my agent. I work with WME. And so, their lawyers will look over the contract and negotiate the terms, so I'm not literally reading the contracts. That's an arm I chopped off. I used to do that, too. They take their cut, obviously, for also bringing some of those contracts and companies to my inbox. But at the end of the day, if you could see the amount of stuff we say no to - it's just like a constant flow of, 'We want to be on the channel. We want to be in a video' - to find the stuff that really makes sense. And then, that's just me going, 'Let's see how we can make this work best.'"

But influencers don't have to run their own merch operation to take advantage of the business opportunity. Many, like Brownlee, partner with a company (he sells merch through the site Cotton Bureau.)

"For example, we have a merch store. You can buy apparel that has our cool designs on it," Brownlee said on the Verge podcast.

Read more: The top 7 merchandise companies helping creators on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok earn money without relying on ads

Original post:

Marques Brownlee details his business as a tech YouTuber and how he makes money on the platform - Business Insider India