Want to get straight to the point and find the finest YouTube alternatives? Uscreen and Thinkific are two of my options.
It’s no secret that YouTube is widely regarded as the world’s leading video monetization platform. With over a billion hours of video watched every day, YouTube is more than simply a place to watch Ted Talks and kitten videos. With news of how lucrative ad revenue may be, who wouldn’t want to create a YouTube channel this year?
Making it on YouTube isn’t simple, and it wasn’t years ago. It required a lot of time, effort, and perseverance to create a monetizable channel and audience. It’s even more difficult now. Being a YouTuber comes with challenges, setbacks, and the possibility of legal action.
If you’ve been struggling to make money on YouTube, this blog post is for you. In it, we’ll look at why YouTube isn’t as profitable as most content creators believe it is, as well as some of the best YouTube alternatives.
I’ll explain why you should think about other wonderful sites like YouTube, which have lower hurdles to earning a bigger and more reliable revenue with superior monetization tools.
Let’s look at the top YouTube alternatives you can use right now.
7 BEST YouTube Alternative: Video Sites Like YouTube in 2022
With a clear understanding of how to transfer your business away from YouTube and increase your earning potential, let’s take a look at seven top video monetization sites and alternatives to YouTube to start sharing your video content.
1. Uscreen.
Uscreen is a video-on-demand monetization platform that does it all. It enables content creators to take their knowledge and turn it into high-quality video material to share with the rest of the world. It’s also simple to use, allowing you to start adding movies, organising them, and customising the appearance and feel of your storefront right away.
When it comes to monetizing video, you can sell it in whatever way you want (one-time payments or subscriptions), stream it live to any device (including OTT applications), measure subscriber growth and churn, and own your audience’s contact information (something not possible with YouTube).
Mini Case Study: How a YouTuber Increased Her Revenue by 10x in 12 Weeks
Francis Long established her YouTube account in 2017. It arose from a passion for memory books. Francis sees an opportunity in a market of people interested in learning how to construct their own memory books. However, YouTube was not profitable. Despite having over 17,000 subscribers, 600,000 views, and nearly 100 videos, Francis’ best month yielded only $380.
She knew she had a good idea, but she realised that YouTube might not be the greatest location to commercialise it. She required the ideal YouTube alternative to assist her in achieving her goal. Francis opted to try Uscreen in 2019.
That’s when things started to get interesting. She no longer had a competing channel, but rather a complete standalone platform where she could sell her videos online for a premium subscription charge to admirers. Her website went live in seven days, and she earned $13,000 in the first four months.
YouTube – Francis Long
At Uscreen, stories like Francis’ are not uncommon. On Uscreen, hundreds of producers and businesses from diverse niches monetise their video content. They can develop autonomous brands and predictable scalable income streams.
Uscreen also includes marketing and community tools. They work together to reduce turnover and enhance revenue. You can give away gift cards and coupons, use email marketing, interact with your audience in the comments section of videos, and hold a live chat.
In addition, the platform has 1000+ connectors with your favourite online tools, in-depth statistics, and more than ten ready-to-use website styles and video categories that you can quickly change to match your branding.
price for uscreen
Pricing begins at $79 per month. If you want even more outstanding features, we make it simple to design your own app without any coding skills. You can meet them with new videos on any device they use because more people like to watch high-quality videos as well as content on smartphones, iOS, and Android.
2. Thinkific.
Thinkific is a platform for creating online courses. It enables authors to sell online courses delivered via video lessons. To date, the platform has earned $500 million for course creators. It is one of the most popular YouTube alternatives for course developers.
Thinkific is one of many course platforms that have sprung up to fulfil the growing demand for online education. It is also quite simple to use. Sure, you’ll need to design course content, which will necessitate meticulous planning, but once yours is live, it can produce cash with no effort from you.
Thinkific costs a monthly subscription for access to their platform, but you may create an unlimited number of courses and keep 100% of the profits. Aside from its ease of use, one of Thinkific’s main flaws is that, while you can design a landing page for your course, it does not have a sales funnel builder like other platforms in the market. To grow your funnel, you’ll need to invest in third-party software.
Thinkific also does not offer live streaming. Sure, it’s a course platform, so it might not be the first thing that comes to mind, but live streaming video sites are fast expanding. Incorporating the functionality would allow authors to interact directly with students through live events, as well as collect crucial metrics and data to assist develop course and marketing content.
Coastal Drone is a drone flight instruction company that assists people in obtaining drone pilot certification. They use Thinkific to reach out to a larger audience with their online courses.
Courses in Coastal Drones
Pricing begins at $39 a month, and you can try out the platform for free.
3. Patreon
Patreon has altered the way creators make a living and establish a truly independent career. It’s a website where fans can pay a monthly fee to gain access to exclusive content.
Using their video-sharing site is free, but they take between 5% and 12% of your money, depending on the package you choose. Some creatives will benefit from the platform, but not all.
You see, if you’re looking to establish a brand that can stand on its own, Patreon doesn’t offer options like creating your own website to add your branding and truly make it your own. You also can’t fast and simply launch your own app like Uscreen.
If you’re already using Patreon or thinking about it, check out Uscreen’s post on why Uscreen is a strong Patreon alternative.
Pomplamoose is a husband-and-wife musical combo from the United States. Nataly Dawn is a singer-songwriter and bassist, while Jack Conte is a multi-instrumentalist. They make music and provide a variety of Patreon subscriptions that provide members with unique access to fresh weekly material.
Patreon pricing begins at 5% of monthly income earned by creators on the platform. This means that the platform is only paid when its creators are paid.
4. Facebook.
It’s difficult to fathom life before Facebook. It has reshaped social media, and with video’s rapid growth, artists may now capitalise on massive audience reach. Facebook, like YouTube, allows anyone with an account to broadcast to the entire world.
They take 45 percent of the money earned from adverts in exchange for the ability to use the Facebook user experience as a video platform. Facebook also restricts access to audience information; nonetheless, you can broaden your brand to earn more money by employing any of the monetization tactics listed above.
With the correct promotion approach, you can lure more people into sales and marketing funnels and convert them into paying customers. On the other hand, in order to stand out on Facebook and grow a following, you’ll need to provide a lot of material.
People scan through their feeds quickly, and unless you attract their attention, your videos will be drowned out by everything else. You’re up against anything from short videos, TV shows, and documentaries to funny videos, music trending videos, video games, GIFs, and other popular videos.
Facebook also recommends a slew of other videos in a playlist format, and these are frequently from rival creators. This means that they must compete for more user attention on their video sharing platform.
While it isn’t the finest YouTube replacement, it provides another option for ad monetization.
Pat Flynn is a well-known online business owner. He co-founded SwitchPod, a new camera tripod for vloggers, in 2018. To assist market the new product, he made vertical videos and shared them on Facebook, such as this one from VidCon.
5. IGTV.
Instagram is a Facebook business, thus much of the revenue model for photo apps and online video is identical to Facebook’s. Ads added on your videos can earn you a 55 percent share.
Unfortunately, the same audience contact information limits remain on Instagram, but you can experiment with different methods of monetizing your videos.
Consider Greg Preece. He founded Start Starting Up, a brand committed to assisting people in starting online enterprises. Preece frequently uses affiliate marketing and links in his IGTV posts to monetize his video content.
As a result, IGTV and Instagram’s social media platform as a whole are excellent alternatives to YouTube for affiliate marketing, brand offers, and so on.
If you want to monetize further, you might look into sponsorship arrangements like TV host, entertainer, and traveller Virgi Lantu. The Instagrammer presents a touching video in his video and announces a Mastercard contest that his followers can enter.
6.Twitch.
Twitch is often associated with online gaming videos and video streaming websites. It is completely free to join and provides affiliates and partners with numerous possibilities to monetize their content. You can accept donations, offer items, and receive monthly subscriptions as an affiliate.
Twitch also has a partner programme that gives individuals who qualify a portion of ad revenue. Partners receive a portion of each Bit that streamers use to cheer on video players. Unfortunately, the platform does not disclose how much you will earn as a member of their programme.
While Twitch has transformed the online gaming industry, there are certain disadvantages to creating a channel on the network. For starters, Twitch has a large number of players and account holders who all stream in order to gain publicity and revenue.
There are numerous channels covering a wide range of topics, including gaming, music videos, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies.
Keeping up entails spending countless hours on their live streaming site, a difficult lifestyle to maintain. Twitch may be one of the greatest free YouTube alternatives to try out for the gaming community.
TimtheTatMan plays video games on Twitch. While he earns money from donations, he also promotes NZXTBLD gaming hardware.
7. Vimeo.
Vimeo is a video sharing website that is a perfect alternative to YouTube because it allows producers to create their own channels where they can sell content. It provides OTT apps on growth and corporate plans (beginning at $500/mo per app with a two-app minimum need), allowing fans to consume content on their preferred platforms.
While Vimeo does offer live streaming, it is only accessible on their most expensive plan (Enterprise), and you will need to contact them for price.
While Vimeo is a positive move, there are a few places where the site may be improved.
For starters, when it comes to video hosting and uploading, there are just a few themes to choose from, and they have limited customising options. Marketing tools, which are an important part of building powerful and revenue-generating campaigns, but also not as comprehensive, which may make scaling your company more difficult.
Finally, integrations are an important component of establishing an online business, yet integrations with Vimeo are scarce. While you may not require every app to function with your video platform, being without those on which you rely to expand your business might be catastrophic.
Millionaire Hoy creates fitness stuff. He switched from YouTube to Vimeo in order to have more freedom and earn more money from his videos. He’s been able to turn his firm around since his relocation, relying on membership contributions rather than YouTube ad revenue alone.
Vimeo pricing begins at $7 per month (paid annually) and includes capabilities such as video creation and unrestricted screen and webcam recording.
Why Do You Want a YouTube Alternative to Monetize Your Videos?
YouTube is a fantastic platform. It’s jam-packed with content makers and artists covering practically any topic you can think of. This is what makes it so appealing to internet users and content developers. Making a living on YouTube, however, is not something that everyone can do.
According to Bloomberg, the top 3% of YouTubers earn less than $17,000 a year, while the remaining 96.5 percent earn between $0 and $12,140.
Why?
There are several causes for this.
Ads must be included in videos.
To begin, videos are monetized if they are relevant to a product or service that an advertiser is advertising and your audience matches the advertiser’s target customer profile. Understanding your user base is critical to provide them with the greatest videos available.
This means that if you want to make money from your videos, they must be ad-friendly. To stack the odds in your favour, you’ll also need to choose profitable sectors or spend a lot of money on YouTube ads.
Because YouTube video hosting is owned by Google, you must verify that your video uploads are ad-free.
Revenue sharing takes a portion of what is made.
Revenue sharing isn’t a secret on YouTube, but it’s a notion that very few YouTubers comprehend. When marketers place commercials on your channel, YouTube takes 45 percent of what they spend, leaving you with the remaining 55 percent. This is true for every advertisement you’ve ever shown to your audience.
This implies that as your channel expands, you will only ever get a 55% cut. That hinders your growth in certain ways. Scaling your income is difficult unless your audience continues to expand exponentially and you continue to make videos that outperform the competition.
YouTube is extremely competitive.
Competitors are also fierce. Sure, there are two billion people that return to YouTube’s homepage each month, but there are also a plethora of creators competing for their attention when they upload their films. According to Tubics, the number of new channels on YouTube increased by 40% in 2019.
On YouTube, competition is competing for greater ranking positions and visibility. If you want to make money on YouTube, you need to grasp how the latest iteration of YouTube’s algorithm works to optimise videos and obtain more clicks than your YouTube competitors. And if you’ve been online for any length of time, you know how difficult it is to keep up with YouTube’s algorithm adjustments.
Income is affected by policy changes.
YouTube’s policy changes have gotten a lot of attention recently, and not in a good way. These include minimum video watch time restrictions and the number of subscribers you have.
Consider the following example. A channel is no longer eligible for monetization if it does not have 4000 hours of viewing time in the last 12 months and a minimum of 1,000 subscribers, according to YouTube’s revised eligibility standards.
In short, if your channel isn’t up to par, you won’t generate any money. The unfortunate side is that it takes a long time to create a subscriber base of devoted fans. Making money on YouTube isn’t guaranteed if your channel falls just short of the minimum standards. This does not make for a thrilling user experience.
Eligibility for YouTube
Then there’s COPPA, or the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which was passed in 1998. It was designed to avoid fraudulent marketing tactics that target youngsters in exchange for personal information.
In summary, COPPA prohibits YouTubers from generating and disseminating child-friendly content.
The problem with COPPA is that it is too broad and provides little room for honest YouTubers to make a living. Failure to comply can also result in a $42k fine for each video that violates the legislation. Another reason to look for a good YouTube alternative.
Aside from YouTube
Aside from YouTube, let’s look at how you might produce a more predictable income. And, certainly, that is conceivable. In our experience at Uscreen, we’ve seen YouTubers progress from earning pittances through YouTube’s ad-based business to making thousands of dollars each month (more on this later).
Moving to a YouTube alternative involves looking into new ways to make money, and there are a few you should be aware of that have shown to be extremely profitable.
Models of video monetization
Monetizing your videos does not always have to involve displaying advertisements. Here’s a list of seven different ways you can monetize your videos.
VOD stands for video-on-demand.
Offering videos to an audience is part of video on demand. These can be restricted or open to the public. But, since we’re looking at ways to make money from videos, let’s take a look at three different VOD models.
Video-on-Demand Subscription (SVoD)
Subscriptions allow regular access to material for a cost. This strategy is particularly prevalent on video services such as Netflix, Hulu, AppleTV, DisneyPlus, and Amazon Prime. You can watch as much video as you like for a monthly cost. You have access to TV shows, movies, and many people end up watching videos in ultra HD quality.
Rentals
Rentals allow consumers to watch video streaming for a set period of time for a one-time cost.
Life-time access or Transactional Video-on-Demand (TVoD) Life-time access provides users with indefinite access to content for a one-time price.
Affiliate promotion
Affiliate marketing has a negative reputation. It’s not so much that affiliate products are poor as they are pitched. The truth is that being an affiliate marketer is simple and lucrative. Simply promote products and services to viewers and receive a portion of all sales to profit from this monetization approach.
Sponsorships
Sponsorship is a little more involved than simply recommending something. To be rewarded for sponsorship arrangements, you must have a large enough audience that brands are interested in reaching. You’ll be able to make deals and provide innovative content that helps sponsors get results for their businesses once you’ve built a sizable audience.
Merchandise sales
Physical goods sales are one of the more accessible opportunities. You can gain cash from sales by designing your own product and promoting it in your videos. It may take some time and money to design and manufacture real things on a wide scale, but with a large enough following and a solid promotion and outreach strategy, you’ll be able to convert more viewers into paying customers.
Offering information products for sale
The most common product category you can sell is information products. They are inexpensive to produce, simple to distribute, and have large profit margins. It is all about condensing important information when creating high-converting info goods. Your items could be an eBook, guide, video course, or membership site.
Streaming in real time
Live streaming isn’t a new concept, but it’s gaining popularity as more platforms make it available. You may also monetize live streams by charging a charge to access them (aka Pay-per-view live streaming). To make this work, you’ll need a platform that can host live streams, record them, and accept payments (more on this later).
As you can see, there are numerous options to monetise your video material that do not rely on ad revenue from YouTube. What’s the best part? You can use more than one of these to diversify your money streams and business.
