Looking to launch a YouTube channel? Or maybe you want to start earning more from your existing YouTube account? Then you’ve come to the right place. Harnessing a business mindset is the first step in becoming a successful YouTuber. And in this article, we’re helping you put that mindset to use by showing you how to create a stellar YouTube business plan.
A YouTube business plan is an all-in-one roadmap to launching a successful (i.e. profitable) YouTube channel. This kind of comprehensive blueprint helps you define your goals, outline your content strategies, and implement your production processes, so you stay organized and on-track when it comes to running your YouTube business.
Ready to build the YouTube business of your dreams? Then read on and check out our YouTube Business Plan Templates Bundle. This easy-to-use template bundle includes step-by-step instructions, helpful writing prompts, examples, and fillable tables that help you get your YouTube business up and running ASAP.
Why create a YouTube business plan?
So, why create a YouTube business plan? First of all, reframing your YouTube channel as a business will help you actually run it like a business. Ultimately, this mindset allows you to transform your expertise and passion into a viable business venture — which is the dream as a content creator, right?
There are many benefits to creating a business plan for your YouTube channel. A business plan helps you:
- Build a solid brand identity
- Strategically plan your content
- Reach your ideal audience
- Differentiate yourself from your competition
Altogether, these benefits enable you to max out your YouTube earnings.
Curious to know how much you could make on YouTube? Use our YouTube ad revenue and creator earnings calculator to get your estimates.
How to create a YouTube business plan
- Determine your YouTube channel’s purpose and target audience
- Develop a content strategy
- Create a monetization strategy
- Outline your operations
- Create a budget
Now that you’re aware of all the income-boosting benefits of creating a YouTube business plan, it’s time to, well, get down to business!
Here, we walk you through how to create a solid YouTube business plan in just five steps.
Step 1: Determine your YouTube channel’s purpose and target audience
The first step in creating a YouTube business plan is getting clear on your purpose. Why? Because everything about your channel, from what kind of content you produce to how you choose to monetize, will flow from its purpose.
So, what does “purpose” mean in this context? In a nutshell, your YouTube channel’s purpose is its reason for being. Your purpose answers the question “why?” and includes who you are, what you offer, and what you stand for as a YouTuber.
When writing your YouTube business plan, it might be helpful to think of your channel’s purpose in terms of its unique value proposition (or UVP). Your UVP is the “secret sauce” that sets you apart from the competition. To get a bit more technical, it’s a statement that outlines the unique benefits of your YouTube channel and how it solves your audience’s pain points.
Choose your niche
Before you can define your YouTube channel’s purpose, you’ll need to walk it back to the basics. This means choosing your channel’s content niche.
From beauty to gaming, there are hundreds if not thousands of niches that exist within YouTube’s content ecosystem. The niche you choose depends entirely on your own interests, areas of expertise, and knowledge base. For example, if your friends often approach you for financial advice, you might want to consider launching a personal finance channel. Or, if you love coming up with new makeup looks, you might consider becoming a beauty YouTuber.
While expertise and passion are two important factors in determining your YouTube niche, they’re certainly not the only ones. This step also requires a little bit of every creator’s favorite task: market research.
When deciding on your niche, you’ll want to conduct some market and keyword research to determine whether your prospective niche has a healthy market and just how competitive it is. A profitable niche will have a large market with high demand, but low competition from other creators. This indicates that there is an existing gap in the niche that you’ll be able to fill with your content and products.
Determine your target audience
After choosing your niche, it’s time to define your target audience. Your target audience is the group of people who will benefit the most from your YouTube content. Identifying them is important because these are the viewers you’ll be tailoring your content and monetization strategies towards.
To find your target audience, you’ll need to do a little more market research — specifically, some competitor research. This means identifying YouTubers within your niche and analyzing their content, as well as their subscriber base and comments sections. Be on the lookout for patterns in demographic and psychographic information among their followers, and pain points or problems that come up regularly in their YouTube comments sections.
This type of research will help you understand which market segments your competitors are targeting, how they’re going about it, and whether their efforts are successful. It also helps you figure out whether your competitors are targeting the same market segments as you or whether they’re targeting segments that you hadn’t even considered.
Remember that your target audience is a smaller subset (or segment) of a larger target market. This means that you’ll want to get as specific as possible when defining it. For example, as a personal finance YouTuber, you might want to zone in on single women from the ages of 25 to 35 living in metropolitan areas, rather than targeting anyone and everyone within the same age range.
Getting specific helps you fine-tune your content and monetization strategies so that you’re creating the products and content that best serve and best resonate with your target audience.
Set your goals
Finally, you’ll want to set goals for your channel. If your purpose is your “why,” then your goals are your “what.” Ultimately, your YouTube goals should be aligned with your channel’s purpose. And, vice versa, your purpose should propel you towards your goals.
When coming up with your YouTube goals, don’t be afraid to think big and reach for the stars. There are many different goals you can set for yourself as a YouTuber, including building authority, generating revenue, or building a community. Ultimately, the goals that you set for yourself come down to your values, beliefs, and purpose as a YouTuber.
Step 2: Develop a content strategy
Now that you’ve laid out your channel’s purpose and identified your target audience, it’s time to develop your YouTube content calendar and strategy. This means determining the type of YouTube content you want to create, along with how frequently you’ll upload content.
Brainstorm content topics
Developing your content strategy starts with brainstorming content ideas for your YouTube channel. To do this, think about your content niche and your target audience’s interests and pain points. What kinds of topics do they find interesting, entertaining or valuable? What kinds of questions do they want answers to or pain points do they want solutions for?
Need an example? Let’s say you’re a personal finance YouTuber catering to single women between the ages of 25 and 35. In this case, you’ll likely be eyeing topics like budgeting, saving, and investing.
Define your content pillars
A stellar content strategy is propped up by a solid set of pillars — content pillars, that is! Content pillars are the key themes that you’ll focus on with your content. Most YouTubers’ content strategies includes a few different content pillars.
Having strong, well-defined content pillars makes it easier for your to brainstorm content topics and plot out your content strategy, so you’re never at a loss for what you post next. They also help solidify your personal brand, as your content pillars define the themes and topics you’ll become best-known for as a YouTuber.
To figure out your pillars, take a look back at the content topics from your brainstorm. Notice any similarities between them and group them into broader categories, accordingly.
Need a visual? Let’s say you’re a beauty YouTuber. A few key pillars for a creator within YouTube’s beauty ecosystem might be makeup education (i.e. tutorials on various techniques, tools, and makeup looks), product reviews, and YouTuber partnerships.
Determine your upload schedule
The final step in creating your YouTube content strategy is plotting out your upload schedule. This means determining how often you’ll be publishing new videos on your YouTube channel.
Remember, consistency is key when it comes to YouTube success. Whether you’re uploading videos three times per week or once a month, what matters most is that you establish a consistent upload schedule that you and your audience can rely on. Establishing a consistent posting schedule helps you manage your content strategy. It also helps build trust with your audience and generates a sense of healthy anticipation for your content.
For these reasons, you’ll want to decide on a consistent publishing schedule that you can reliably stick to over time. When plotting out your schedule, be as realistic as possible and don’t overcommit. Sure, it might be tempting to set a daily posting schedule. However, if you’re not able to maintain this posting cadence, your content strategy will become derailed and your YouTube views will suffer. Instead, ask yourself what posting cadence best suits your current schedule and your YouTuber workflow.
Want to create your YouTube content strategy easily? We have a template for that.
Our YouTube Business Plan Template Bundle walks you through building your content strategy with helpful writing prompts and fillable tables that will take you from ideation to implementation in just a few minutes.
Interested? Get our YouTube Business Plan Templates Bundle now — for free!
Step 3: Create a monetization strategy
Now that you’ve created a solid content strategy, it’s time to channel those strategic planning skills towards your monetization efforts. That’s right: it’s time to plot out your YouTube monetization strategy.
Luckily, there are tons of different ways to generate revenue on YouTube, from in-app ad revenue sharing to selling digital products. The streams of revenue you decide to harness depend entirely on your niche, your audience, and your needs as a YouTuber.
That said, in order to max out their income and (maintain a sense of financial security), most YouTubers opt to pursue a combination of different income streams. This might mean tapping into the platform’s ad-revenue sharing program, while also selling digital products and subscription-based content.
As you plan out your YouTube monetization strategy, here are some of the best monetization methods to look into:
Earn ad revenue
One of the most popular ways that YouTubers earn money is through the platform’s ad-revenue sharing program. You know those pre-roll and mid-roll ads that play during a YouTube video? Well, creators earn a cut of the money paid to YouTube for running those ads on their videos.
In a nutshell, YouTubers taking part in the platform’s ad-revenue sharing program earn money for running ads on their videos — and more views equals more income. In order to earn ad revenue through your videos, however, you’ll need to enroll in the YouTube Partnership Program (YPP) — and there are a few eligibility requirements you’ll need to meet before you can join.
Once you’ve joined, however, ad-revenue sharing can become a consistent stream of YouTube income for those with large, engaged followings and a consistent (and we mean consistent) publishing schedule.
Sell digital products
Selling digital products — like mini-courses, tutorials, and templates — is one of the most lucrative, low-effort ways to generate income through your YouTube business. Why? Well, because digital products are a source of passive income. This means that once you’ve created your digital product and put it up for sale, you can just sit back as the cash rolls in.
Even better? The Leap makes creating your digital product offering easier and faster than ever before.
Powered by AI, The Leap enables you to create mobile-friendly digital products in just minutes, while its link-in-bio storefront tool lets you sell your products without leaving the platform. Once you’ve created and uploaded your digital product, simply promote it through your YouTube content to max out your sales and earnings. Try The Leap for free today!
Create and sell digital products in minutes using The Leap!
Partner with brands
Brand partnerships and sponsorships are some of the most well-known — and lucrative — ways for YouTubers to make money.
Of course, as with any third-party monetization method, you’ll need to do a little bit of research and outreach in order to find the right partners. When choosing a brand partner, it’s important to keep your purpose (remember Step #1?) and your target audience in mind. In other words, ensure that your brand partners align with your values, your niche, and your audience’s interests in an authentic way.
In the end, the work it takes to find the right brand partners goes a long way. And once the cash starts rolling in, it’ll all be worth the effort.
Become an affiliate
The idea behind an affiliate program is pretty simple: you promote a company’s product with a unique shopping link and then earn a commission from any sales made through that link. Easy, right?
No matter your niche, there’s an affiliate program out there with products that you can organically recommend to your YouTube subscribers. All you need to do is look for them. (And a little Google search never hurt anybody, right?)
Even better? YouTube has its own affiliate program, so you can start earning an affiliate income without even leaving the platform.
Sell memberships
As a YouTuber, you can also rake it in by selling subscription-based content to your subscribers.
When you set up a YouTube channel membership, your subscribers will pay a monthly fee to access exclusive content and other perks through your channel. In essence, these subscribers are paying for a subscription to your channel — and these subscriptions are a great source of recurring monthly income.
If you’ve joined the YouTube Partner Program and meet other eligibility requirements, you can start earning cash through channel memberships today.
Step 4: Outline your operations
Getting your channel’s operations in order is crucial to laying a solid foundation for your YouTube business.
So, what does “operations” mean when it comes to a YouTube channel? Your operations are everything that make your content creation process possible. When laying out your operations, you’ll want to outline your production process (from content ideation to upload), along with compiling the tools and software you need to make it happen.
Need help organizing your operations? Our YouTube Business Plan Templates Bundle will have you sorted out in no time.
In addition to walking you through the rest of your YouTube business plan, this template bundle provides you with a YouTube operations template that ensures you hit every mark when it comes to establishing your channel’s operations.
Sounds good? Get our YouTube Business Plan Templates Bundle for free now.
Step 5: Create a budget
What’s a business plan without a budget? In order to set your YouTube channel up for success, you’ll need to get clear on how much money you expect to bring in (and how much money you expect to spend!) In other words, you’re going to need to create a financial plan for your YouTube business.
To go about this, you’ll need to break down all of your monetization methods and project the revenue they’ll bring in over time, as well as determining your channel’s fixed and variable costs, and your break-even point.
Don’t want to miss a beat creating your YouTube budget? Then we’ve got just the template for you.
With step-by-step instructions and helpful fillable tables, our YouTube Business Plan Templates Bundle helps you create a solid, comprehensive YouTube budget, from your revenue projections all the way to your break-even analysis.
Want to create your YouTube budget in no time? Grab our YouTube Business Plan Templates Bundle for free now.
Launch your YouTube business today
And that’s it! Your step-by-step guide to launching a successful YouTube business. Now, it’s up to you to put this article (and the accompanying templates bundle) to good use and begin plotting out your route to YouTuber stardom.
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Further Reading
- YouTube Money Calculator: Estimate How Much You Can Make on YouTube
- How Much Do YouTubers Make? (+Free YouTube Money Calculator)
- YouTube Monetization Requirements: How to Monetize Your Videos
- YouTube Shorts Monetization: How To Start Earning (Even Without 1,000 Subscribers)
- How Many YouTube Views Do You Need To Make Money?
- 11 Tips for Getting Your First 1000 YouTube Subscribers
- How To Sell Digital Products Online: A 6-Step Launch Checklist
