7 Ways Small YouTubers Can Make Money Without Adsense

The number one complaint Alston hears from small YouTubers is this: it is almost impossible to keep creating content when every upload costs you time, money, and energy, and nothing is coming back. You are paying for tools. You are buying equipment. You are spending hours editing. And YouTube keeps dangling that 1,000-subscriber, 4,000-watch-hour carrot in front of you like the only prize worth chasing. Here is what nobody says out loud: AdSense is not the business model. It is a vanity milestone designed to keep you pumping content into the algorithm and hoping something goes viral. The actual business model, the one Alston has been running since he had 500 subscribers, has nothing to do with that partner program counter.

In this breakdown of his video, Alston walks through eight concrete ways small YouTubers are making real money right now, without a single AdSense dollar. He has personally used every one of these methods at 500 subscribers, at 5,000 subscribers, and at 50,000 subscribers. They work in every niche. They do not require a minimum watch hour threshold. And you can start all of them today. Here is exactly how each one works, what it pays, what the drawbacks are, and how to get off the ground.

What You’ll Walk Out With

How to run a paid group workshop on Zoom this week, even with under 100 subscribers
The workbook pricing structure Alston used to turn a $5 product into a $25 average cart value
Why affiliate marketing commissions on digital products can hit 50 to 75 percent
How a 30-minute micro coaching call at $50 becomes a backdoor into higher-ticket packages
The one thing that kills group coaching memberships and how to prevent it
How planners and checklists generate passive sales 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
Why a course delivered inside a Google Drive folder can still sell at $97
Not sure which of these fits your channel? Find out at finder.platformproof.com

Why AdSense Is a Trap for Small Channels

To get paid by YouTube’s partner program, you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. That sounds achievable until you realize the platform wants you chasing those numbers indefinitely, producing more content, targeting a broad audience, hoping a video catches the algorithm just right. The problem is that strategy requires volume and patience, and most creators burn out before they ever see a check. The channels that survive are the ones that build a real business alongside the content, not dependent on it.

What Alston discovered when he started is that your audience does not need to be large to be valuable. They need to be the right people, people with a specific problem, people who have money and are ready to invest in a solution. A list of 200 engaged subscribers in the right niche can generate more monthly revenue than 20,000 passive viewers watching entertainment content. The eight methods below are built on that principle: solve a specific problem for a targeted group of people, and get paid directly.

Method 1: Group Workshops

A group workshop is a live, paid Zoom session where you teach one specific skill or process. This was Alston’s entry point, and he ran it on a repeatable schedule: every Thursday at 10:00 a.m., he charged $50 per person to attend a live training. The topic was specific: how to turn views into money on TikTok, including how to create a digital product within three days. Attendance ranged from five people to twenty people on any given Thursday. Do the math: at $50 per seat, five attendees means $250. Twenty attendees means $1,000. In a single morning.

The content itself did not change from week to week. After enough repetitions, Alston had the session down to exactly one hour and 58 minutes. Same stories, same framework, same result. New attendees each time because new people discover your content every week. The other major advantage: you record the session, send the replay, and then you have a product you can sell on the backend without running another live call. The workshops also surface real questions your audience is wrestling with. That feedback is fuel for your next three videos.

The setup requires almost nothing. Use Gumroad (free) to build the sales page and collect payment. Use Zoom (free tier available) to host the call. Post the link in your video descriptions and mention it at the end of your videos. If you want to extend the relationship, drop attendees into a free Facebook group and deliver the replay there. That gives you a warm audience you can pitch your next product to. The only real cost is your time during the call itself.

Honest drawback: You are trading two hours of your time for that income. If nobody shows up on a given week, you made nothing. The model also requires you to have a clear, repeatable process, not just general knowledge, but a step-by-step sequence someone can follow in a defined timeframe. If you cannot articulate that process yet, start by figuring it out before you charge for the workshop.

Method 2: Workbooks

A workbook beats an ebook because the buyer has to actively do something. There is buy-in. There is engagement. And because they are doing work, they actually get a result, which makes them far more likely to trust you and buy your next offer. Alston’s most successful workbook was the 2-Day Affiliate Workbook, designed to help people make their first $1,000 with affiliate marketing. It walked buyers through identifying their niche, choosing their content type, signing up for affiliate programs, and executing the strategy step by step.

The workbook had two layers: a fillable document and a short video component that walked through each section. The video was not required. You can sell a workbook with no video at all. But it added perceived value and reduced refund requests because buyers felt supported. Alston sold it for $5 at the front end. Then came the upsells: an order bump on the checkout page and a one-click upsell immediately after purchase. Average cart value landed at $23 to $25 per buyer. So while the front-end price looked like a no-brainer impulse buy, the backend economics were close to what a $25 product generates.

You can build the entire workbook in Canva for free. They have templates specifically designed for workbooks, planners, and guided documents that you can customize with your branding. Total time investment for a first workbook: a focused weekend. The bigger time sink is figuring out exactly what problem to solve. If you do not know your audience’s most painful question, you will iterate. Your YouTube comments are a free focus group. Read them. The question that shows up most often is your workbook topic.

Method 3: Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is recommending or selling other people’s products and earning a commission when someone buys. Alston demonstrates this in the video holding a Rode wireless GoTo wireless microphone, a product he has created content around. The approach is straightforward: pick a product your audience is already searching for, create content types that match where buyers are in their decision process, and drop your affiliate link in every description.

The content formats that convert best for affiliate marketing are: unboxing videos, first impression videos, feature walkthroughs, six-month reviews, comparison videos (this product vs. that product), and “don’t buy until you watch this” style reviews. These work because the viewer already knows the problem and the general solution. They just need confirmation that this specific product is the right choice for their situation. Your video gives them that final push.

Commission rates vary significantly by product type. Physical products through Amazon Associates typically pay 1 to 4 percent, which means you need volume. Digital product affiliate programs (software, courses, info products) often pay 40 to 75 percent of the sale price. If you are choosing between promoting a $200 physical camera at 3 percent ($6) and a $97 course at 50 percent ($48.50), the math speaks for itself. Alston’s recommendation: lead with physical products to establish trust and authority, then layer in digital affiliate offers for the revenue lift. Getting started requires nothing beyond finding the affiliate program (search “[product name] affiliate program”) or joining Amazon Associates, grabbing your unique link, and including it in your descriptions.

Method 4: Micro Coaching Sessions

Micro coaching is a paid 30-minute one-on-one call where someone can ask you questions about your area of expertise. Alston’s suggested price point: $50 per session. You collect payment up front through Gumroad or a similar tool, use Calendly (free tier available) or Zoom scheduling to handle booking, and show up to the call ready to answer whatever they bring. The buyer prepays, which means you have guaranteed income before you say a word.

The real value of micro coaching is not the $50 per session. The real payoff is what happens at the end of the call. Thirty minutes goes fast. Most buyers have more questions than they can cover. When time is running short, Alston uses that moment to introduce his larger coaching offer: a package with two-hour sessions, structured over six weeks or six months, at a higher monthly price. Because the person on the call just experienced your value firsthand, conversion rates are dramatically higher than cold pitching. They are not buying a stranger’s coaching program. They are upgrading with someone they just spent 30 minutes with and found genuinely helpful.

This method works across every niche, including entertainment. If your channel is about gaming, travel, or personal finance, people in your audience want to know how you do what you do. They will pay for 30 minutes of direct access. And once you have run enough micro sessions, you have the material to build a course, a workshop, or a group program that packages your answers for many people at once instead of one at a time.

One important note: hold the payment for a week or two, or until the session is complete, before spending or reinvesting. Buyers occasionally request refunds, especially on new products or services. Do not spend money that may need to come back.

Method 5: Group Coaching or Membership

Group coaching and memberships generate monthly recurring revenue, the closest thing to a salary that an independent creator can build. Instead of selling a one-time session or product, you create an ongoing container where people pay each month for continued access, community, and support. The format can take many shapes depending on your niche.

In the woodworking niche, Alston describes creating new project templates and design ideas each month. Members pay for the ongoing stream of fresh material. In the wealth and business niche, the membership might include live group coaching calls, monthly workshops, Q&A sessions, and a community space where members can get feedback and mentorship. In entertainment, the Patreon model applies: exclusive behind-the-scenes content, outtakes, uncut footage, and access that non-members never see.

To host the group, Alston has used paid Facebook groups and School (formerly Skool). Gbolt Systems also integrates community features. Pick one platform and stick with it. The community will not grow if you keep moving people around. The landing page where people sign up can be built on Gumroad, Gbolt Systems, or any funnel builder you are comfortable with. The key metric to watch is engagement: if only you are posting, the community feels hollow and members cancel. Your job as the host is not just to deliver content. Your job is to get members talking to each other. The more peer-to-peer connection you foster, the longer people stay and pay.

The biggest drawback: People tend to look at you as the expert and wait for you to speak rather than interacting with each other. If you solve that problem through structured prompts, accountability threads, and active moderation, you have a community people renew month after month. If you do not, they feel like they are just on a mailing list with a monthly charge.

Not sure which of these eight models fits your channel and niche right now?

Answer a few quick questions and get a clear recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

Method 6: Planners

Planners are digital downloads that help people organize a specific process or habit. They sell passively. Once you list them, buyers find them and purchase 24 hours a day without you doing anything. Alston has created planners in Canva (free) covering fitness, online business, and social media organization. He has also built planners inside Notion, which can be sold as templates that buyers duplicate into their own workspace.

The examples he gives are deliberately concrete: a water intake planner that tells you exactly when to drink throughout the day, a woodworking planner that walks through a project step by step, a social media content planner that maps out what to post and when. What makes a planner sell is not clever design. It is a clear, specific result. The person buying knows exactly what problem it solves before they hit the purchase button.

Setup is minimal: create the planner in Canva, build a simple sales page in Gumroad or Gbolt Systems, link to it in every relevant video description. You can use AI tools to build the initial structure or outline, then refine it yourself. Checklists fall into this same category and sell through the same channels. Like workbooks, planners work best as front-end products that introduce buyers into your world. Once someone buys your planner and gets a result from it, they are primed to buy your course, workshop, or membership.

Method 7: Online Courses (Sold on Your Own Platform)

Alston is specific about this: do not sell your course on Udemy or Skillshare. Sell it yourself. A course priced at $9.99 on Udemy because the platform dictates pricing can sell for $97 on your own platform, because your audience already knows, likes, and trusts you. That is a 10x increase in revenue for the same material, and you keep all of the margin instead of sharing it with a marketplace.

People buy courses from YouTubers for three reasons: they trust the creator, they cannot find the step-by-step information consolidated in one place on YouTube, and they want to avoid the ad breaks and scattered search process that comes with assembling free information. Your course provides the organized, linear path that your YouTube videos cannot. Each video is standalone, but a course is a sequence.

Alston’s first course recommendation: make it small. Solve one specific problem, not every problem. His own first major course was a 7-Day Affiliate Marketing course that got people started with affiliate marketing in a week or less, sold initially through his own WordPress site. The production level does not need to be high. The first course he ever purchased was delivered inside a Google Drive folder with videos labeled “Video 1,” “Video 2,” and so on. No fancy platform. No branding. Just clear, actionable content that delivered the promised result.

To build and sell your course, Alston recommends Gbolt Systems as a full platform option. Alternatively: record short videos with your phone propped against a stack of books, host them in Google Drive, create a sales page in Gumroad, and deliver the Drive link automatically when someone purchases. Add a community on the back end, either a Facebook group or a School community, where students can ask questions and support each other. That community is also where you sell them the next thing.

Bonus Method 8: SaaS (Software as a Service)

Alston added an eighth method to the list: software as a service. This model generates recurring revenue every month as long as users find the product valuable, and you are not trading time for money on a call-by-call basis. His specific example is Gbolt Systems, a white-label version of GoHighLevel that he offers to his audience at $17 per month. GoHighLevel charges significantly more for the same core features; Alston pays $4.97 per month per account to GoHighLevel and passes the savings on to his users while still earning the margin.

He is transparent about the white-label arrangement: Gbolt Systems is not a proprietary platform built from scratch. It is GoHighLevel, repackaged and supported by Alston’s team. The buyer gets most of the same functionality at a fraction of the GoHighLevel price. Alston gets recurring monthly revenue. Both sides win. You do not have to build software from scratch to enter this category. White-labeling is a legitimate and common path for creators who want the recurring revenue model without the engineering overhead.

The other options Alston mentions for SaaS entry: buying an existing software product, building something purpose-built for your niche, or finding other white-label platforms similar to what he did with GoHighLevel. The barrier to entry is higher than a workbook or a planner, but the ceiling is also substantially higher.

Honest Drawbacks Across All Eight Methods

None of these are passive from day one. Each method requires upfront time to build the product, write the sales page, create the content that drives traffic to it, and iterate based on what your audience actually buys. The passive income comes later, after the system is built. Here is a realistic breakdown of the effort required:

Group workshops: High ongoing time (you show up live every week), low setup time, fast cash
Workbooks: Medium setup time (one weekend in Canva), then largely passive once the sales page is live
Affiliate marketing: Low setup, long compounding runway that builds over months and years as videos accumulate views
Micro coaching: Zero setup beyond payment and scheduling tools, maximum direct time trade, highest conversion to bigger packages
Group coaching / membership: Medium setup, high ongoing facilitation energy, best recurring revenue potential
Planners: Low setup, truly passive once published, lower average price point than courses
Online courses: High setup time, very high revenue ceiling, largely passive after launch
SaaS / white-label software: Highest barrier to entry, highest recurring revenue potential, requires ongoing customer support

Alston’s instruction is to try one at a time. The temptation is to launch all eight simultaneously. The reality is that none of them will get the focused effort they need if you spread yourself across eight projects at once. Pick the one that fits where you are right now, in terms of your audience size, your available time, and what you already know how to teach, and do it until it works before adding the next.

How to Pick the Right One for Your Channel Right Now

The method that makes sense depends on three variables: how much time you have to invest upfront, whether you want active income (trading time for money) or passive income (building an asset that earns while you sleep), and how well-defined your niche audience’s problem is. Here is a rough decision framework:

Need cash this week: Group workshop or micro coaching session: the fastest path to money in your account
Have a weekend to build something: Workbook or planner: set it up once and earn from it indefinitely
Already creating review or recommendation content: Affiliate marketing: add links to descriptions you are already writing
Want monthly recurring revenue: Group coaching membership: requires the most ongoing effort but builds the most stable income base
Ready to go deep on one topic: Online course: highest revenue ceiling once built, most portable asset you can create

Find Your X

Alston built all eight of these revenue streams starting at 500 subscribers. The subscriber count was never the limiting factor. The limiting factor was always knowing which method matched where he was, what he had to offer, and who he was trying to help. If you are not sure which of these eight paths fits your specific channel, niche, and skill set, that question has a fast answer at finder.platformproof.com. It takes two minutes and cuts out months of guessing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need 1,000 subscribers before I can make money on YouTube?

No. The 1,000-subscriber threshold is only required to join YouTube’s partner program and earn AdSense revenue. Every method in this list (workshops, workbooks, affiliate marketing, coaching, memberships, planners, courses, and SaaS) works with any subscriber count, including under 100. Your audience size does not determine whether you can monetize; the specificity and value of what you offer does.

How much can I realistically make from a group workshop as a small creator?

Alston charged $50 per person and consistently had between 5 and 20 attendees per Thursday session. That translates to $250 to $1,000 per live workshop. The income varies by niche, how much your audience trusts you, and how specific and valuable the workshop topic is. Early workshops may bring in 3 to 5 people; as your list grows and you build a reputation for delivering value, attendance grows. The replay also has standalone sale value after the live session.

What is the best tool to sell digital products as a YouTuber?

Alston mentions Gumroad (free to start, takes a percentage of sales) as the most accessible entry point for workbooks, planners, and course sales pages. For more control, Gbolt Systems includes sales funnels, email marketing, and course hosting in one platform at $17 per month. Your first sale does not require a complex platform. A Gumroad page and a Zoom link are enough to run your first workshop or sell your first workbook.

How do I get people to show up to a paid workshop if I have a small audience?

Create content on YouTube that is specifically relevant to the workshop topic, and include a call to action in the video directing people to sign up. Your email list (even if small) converts better than social media for paid events. Start building it early. You can also promote in relevant Facebook groups, Subreddits, or Discord servers where your target audience already gathers, as long as you are providing genuine value in those communities before promoting anything.

Is affiliate marketing worth it when commissions on physical products are so low?

Physical product commissions through programs like Amazon Associates are typically 1 to 4 percent. At that rate, you need volume to see meaningful income. The real opportunity is in digital product affiliate programs (software, courses, and information products) frequently pay 40 to 75 percent commissions, sometimes with recurring monthly commissions. Blending both (physical for credibility and audience trust, digital for the revenue) is the approach Alston recommends for channels that review or recommend products.

What is a micro coaching session and how is it different from regular coaching?

A micro coaching session is a 30-minute one-on-one call focused on answering a buyer’s specific questions about your area of expertise. It is a lower-stakes, lower-priced entry point ($50 is Alston’s suggested rate) that lets someone experience working with you before committing to a longer coaching package. Regular coaching typically involves multiple sessions over weeks or months at a higher monthly investment. Micro coaching serves as the proof of concept that converts buyers into ongoing coaching clients.

Can a group coaching membership work if I am in a non-business niche?

Yes. The model adapts to any niche where people want ongoing support, accountability, or exclusive content. A woodworking creator can offer monthly template packs and project walkthroughs. A fitness creator can run monthly accountability groups with workout plans. An entertainment creator can use a Patreon-style membership for behind-the-scenes access and exclusive videos. The recurring-revenue mechanic works anywhere there is a community of people with a shared interest who value regular, organized access to one person’s expertise or creative output.

How do I know which of these eight methods to start with?

Alston’s recommendation: pick one based on your current constraints and start there. If you need fast cash, workshops and micro coaching produce income this week. If you want to build a passive income stream, workbooks and planners are the fastest to set up. If you want long-term compounding revenue, affiliate marketing and courses are the highest-value investments of your time. Do not try to launch all eight at once. The method that earns you your first dollar outside AdSense is the one you actually execute on, not the most sophisticated one you plan for months without launching. For a personalized recommendation based on your channel and niche, visit finder.platformproof.com.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “7 Ways Small YouTubers Can Make Money Without Adsense,” youtube.com/watch?v=6A_1HZ25as8
YouTube Partner Program eligibility requirements, YouTube Help Center
Gumroad: free digital product sales platform referenced in video
Gbolt Systems: Alston’s white-label GoHighLevel platform, $17/month
Canva: free design tool for workbooks and planners
Calendly: free scheduling tool for micro coaching sessions