Becoming a professional video editor can be a great way to make money online.

Video editing is an in-demand skill, growing at a 7% per year pace. And when you see the millions of YouTube channels, TikTok videos, and Instagram reels, it really comes as no surprise.

Full-time video editors earn an average of $52k a year, and freelancers often command rates of $40 an hour and up, depending on experience.

So how can you get starting making money as a video editor? Here are some ideas.

1. Start a YouTube Channel

Creating a YouTube channel is an excellent way to make money as a video editor. If you want to get started with this, you need first to create some videos that will attract viewers.

Once established, you can start monetizing your content by placing ads on your videos. Lately, YouTube is around an $800-1000 a month income stream for me, despite my pretty basic editing skills.

You can also offer sponsorships to promote products or services on your channel. You can do this with just a camera, phone, and the right video editing software.

If you’re looking for a way to make money as a video editor on your own terms, starting a YouTube channel is one way to do it. After all, top YouTubers can earn thousands of dollars a day.

2. Freelance Video Editing

There are also thousands of people who want to make their own videos, but don’t know how or have the time or resources to do so. By offering your services as a freelance video editor, you can help them out.

As a freelance video editor, you can pick and choose the projects that interest you and build up your reputation as an expert in your field. Freelancing is a great way to make money as an editor because it gives you complete control over what kinds of projects you take on and how much time you spend working on them.

Many freelancers start on Fiverr or Upwork to build up a portfolio of work. In fact, I came across a fun story of a guy who essentially got paid to learn a new video editing software by offering to edit videos on Fiverr.

I’ve always wanted to learn video editing, so I went online and purchased a lifetime deal for a basic video editor (I think I spent $39).

I once read that one of the best ways to learn something is to produce an output from whatever you are learning.

— Max Bernstein 📘📖🤯 (@MentalWeapons) July 27, 2021

If waiting for orders to come to you seems too slow, you can also proactively reach out to prospective customers. For example, you might send a note to YouTubers who aren’t on TikTok, and offer to help them slice up their videos for the shorter format.

3. Create a Website and Use It to Advertise Your Services

Create an impressive portfolio of work so potential clients can see what you can do for them. The more samples you have, the better your chances of getting new jobs.

You can also use your website to showcase your work, tell people about your services and even put up testimonials from previous clients.

Here’s my free guide on how to quickly and affordably set up a website for your service business.

Take a look at sites like Video Husky and VidChops to see how they present their editing services and pricing menu.

4. Make Short Videos for Friends and Family

If you want to get paid for your work, you need experience first. It’s the classic chicken vs. egg problem of freelancing.

The easiest way to get experience is to practice editing videos for yourself, your friends, or your family. This can be anything from short clips of your dog playing fetch or your niece doing somersaults.

Make sure that once you’ve made the video that it’s something someone would want to watch more than once (which doesn’t mean it has to be good). Once you have some experience under your belt, then you can start charging for your services.

If someone asks you to edit their wedding video or create a quick slideshow for their birthday party, don’t turn them down just because it seems too much work. These small jobs can help build up your portfolio and provide valuable experience editing different types of media formats (like photos and videos).

When my wife and her partner were starting their photography business, they booked some very cheap and even free jobs to build their portfolio. Since then, they’ve increased rates more than 20x!

5. Do Video Editing for Non-Profit Organizations

One of the best ways to make money as a video editor is by working for non-profit organizations. These  churches and charities often need help promoting their causes through video.

It may not be the best-paying work, but can be a way to build experience and your professional network. On top of that, you may even be able to get some publicity from working with such groups if they need their videos posted online or used in presentations and other public events.

6. Edit Wedding Videos

More than 2 million weddings happen every year, and many of those couples want a video to remember their special day.

Even if you don’t want to shoot the raw video at the wedding, you may be able to make money editing the footage. A professional videographer may charge $2,000-$5,000, and is often willing to share some of their fee with a video editor.

Reach out to local videographers to see how they currently handle their editing. Perhaps you could offer to take a stab at one event for free to prove yourself, and then work out a paid partnership.

Documentary-style wedding videos are the most popular at the moment, which allow for a lot of creativity in putting together a fun and memorable experience.

7. Edit Home Videos for People

If you enjoy working with videos and have some basic skills, this is a great option that doesn’t require much equipment or training.

You can find people who want to hire someone to edit their home videos and offer your services on websites like Fiverr or Upwork. You might also find work through Craigslist or other local classified ads.

Many people like to record videos of their kids and family members doing different things. Still, they don’t always have time or know how to edit them into something good-looking and professional. That’s where you come in! You can offer your services as an editor for home videos.

Millions of people have home videos they’d like edited down into more manageable clips — but don’t have the time or skills required to do so themselves if this sounds like something you could do well and enjoy doing, this is probably your best option!

8. Edit Promotional Videos for Companies

People often hire professional editors when they want their promotional videos to stand out from the crowd. It’s not enough to have a nice message — these days, it has to look good too!

If you’re skilled at making videos look good, this is an excellent option for making money online as an editor.

As a video editor, your main job will be to take footage captured by someone else — either through filming or photography — and edit it into a coherent piece of content.

9. Publish Video Editing Tutorials

Another way to make money as a video editor is by publishing tutorials on platforms like Skillshare and Udemy. You get paid based on the number of students who watch your course.

Video editing has become so essential for businesses that there’s always a demand for new tutorials and courses. Here are some ideas for what types of online courses you could create.

How to Use Specific Software

Show people how to use video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro. These are great because you can piggyback on the popularity of existing software. (And new versions are always coming out!)

Tutorials on Specific Projects

If you are working on a particular project, you can make a tutorial on how you did the editing for that specific project.

10. Sell Stock Footage

One way to make money as a video editor is to sell stock footage. Stock footage has been created specifically for use in other projects, including:

YouTube videos
Corporate training videos
TV and film

It’s easy to get started selling stock footage. All you need is a good camera, computer, and editing software. Once you’ve created your first batch of videos, you can submit them to sites like Getty and Pond5.

Some websites offer royalties for every sale you make, while others will pay upfront for exclusive rights to your video.

Selling stock videos is very much a volume game. It takes a lot of work and a lot of footage to make consistent sales.

11. Edit Film Trailers

Video editing is one of the most lucrative professions in the entertainment industry. A good editor can make or break a film or television show. The best editors are often sought after by directors and producers, who want someone who can make their vision come to life on screen.

Video editing has become an increasingly popular career choice for those who want to be involved in the film industry. Whether you’re looking to become an editor or have a hobby, there are many ways to make money with your video editing skills.

Video editing isn’t just about cutting together footage and adding music and transitions. It’s a highly skilled profession that requires patience, creativity, and an eye for detail.

Keep an eye on sites like Indeed for video editing jobs nearby or online.

For remote-only jobs, FlexJobs is a great resource. A recent search turned up over 800 video editor job posts.

12. Work in Video Advertising

Video advertising is one of the fastest-growing areas of the video industry. As more companies realize the power of video and how it can help them connect with their customers, they’re hiring professional video editors to create their ads.

You can work in advertising by creating and editing commercials for TV or online advertising campaigns. You might also be hired to edit promotional videos that companies use to promote their products through social media platforms.

How to Make Money as a Video Editor: Conclusion

There are some great opportunities out there for video editors to make money, including:

one-time projects
recurring freelance gigs
longer term employment

And then of course there are the options of teaching others your skills through online classes or selling stock videos.

As with many creative services, how you choose to market your skills will be up to you. You can create your own business website or blog, pitch to potential employers directly via email, join freelance websites like Upwork, and even showcase your work on social media.

Which avenue you chose will depend entirely on your strengths and goals as a video editor. The good news is that there is plenty of money to be made doing what you love!

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David Paxton had a passion for golf but quickly realized how expensive the sport can be. Between equipment, apparel, shoes, and greens fees, costs add up fast.

As a self-described frugal guy, David appreciated good deals that helped make golf more affordable. So in July 2021, at the height of golf season, he had the idea to launch DailyGolfSteals.com — a website to curate and share the best daily golf deals he could find.

And thanks to David’s hustle and some key strategies, Daily Golf Steals earned over $2,000 in its very first month!

(Definitely a cool way to monetize a hobby.)

Tune into episode 583 of The Side Hustle Show to learn:

How Reddit provided instant traffic to validate the idea
The strategies now driving ongoing visits and sales
How automation helps David manage the demanding daily workload
The challenges of running a daily deals operation long-term

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Finding Inspiration in an Established Niche

The world of daily deals and group buying took off 10+ years ago with the rise of sites like Groupon and LivingSocial.

But while the hype around those big players has died down, the business model remains viable in niches with an engaged audience.

In fact, discovering HuntingGearDeals.com, run by Camron Stover (featured in Side Hustle Show episode 485) is what originally inspired David to give it a try in golf.

After listening to how Camron built his hunting deals site while working a full-time job, David had a pivotal “lightbulb moment.”

Chatting with Cameron gave David confidence he could make daily deals work in the golf niche too. He saw the potential for steady growth by delivering consistent value to an engaged audience.

This competitive analysis validated the opportunity and accelerated David’s timeline for getting Daily Golf Steals off the ground.

Leveraging Reddit for Instant Traction

Perhaps the biggest challenge when launching any business is getting visibility.

How do you get eyeballs on your new website or product when you’re an unknown entity?

Paid ads work but takes trial and error to dial in. Organic traffic sources like SEO can take many months or even years to gain steam.

But David was able to completely circumvent the audience-building phase by leveraging existing communities on Reddit.

Reddit is a massive online discussion platform with thousands of focused topic subgroups, known as subreddits. There are active subreddits around pretty much any interest or niche you can think of.

David focused his efforts on one of the largest golf groups, r/golf, with over 800,000+ members, which already had an established “deal guy” role.

As it turned out, this subreddit already had an established “deal guy” role in place. For years, someone had been posting great golf bargains as a helpful free service to the community.

David essentially took up the mantle of finding the best discounts and steals for this community of golfers, and the Reddit audience instantly responded.

Despite their general distaste for self-promotion, the r/golf subreddit embraced Daily Golf Steals because the deals were genuinely valuable.

David struck a careful balance those first few weeks. He’d share a mix of deals — some with direct affiliate links, others as pure “giveaways” without monetization. This mix demonstrated he wasn’t solely there for profit.

Thanks to the instant traction from Reddit, Daily Golf Steals earned thousands of dollars in month one. The power of a pre-built audience cannot be overstated for accelerating new side hustles.

Driving Ongoing Traffic Through Email and Paid Ads

Clearly, leveraging Reddit for a fast start was a huge win. But David knew he couldn’t rely solely on Reddit long term.

To achieve sustainable growth, he needed to diversify his traffic sources.

The two primary strategies Daily Golf Steals uses are:

1. Building an email list

David includes a call-to-action in the footer of every single Reddit post. It invites people to have the deals sent directly to their inbox via email newsletter.

This tactic alone nets approximately 10 new email subscribers per day.

He also captured over 15,000 emails from a contest giveaway run by Golf Advisory Council. David contributed gift cards to the prize pool, and in return got access to all 80,000+ contest entrant emails.

By scrubbing the list and only keeping highly engaged people, he added 15,000 targeted new subscribers.

2. Running Facebook ads

David has invested heavily in Facebook ads since starting Daily Golf Steals. To date, he’s driven roughly 10,000-12,000 email sign-ups via Facebook.

His cost per acquisition averages around $1.25-$1.30. Factoring in subscriber lifetime value, he estimates Facebook ads are at least break-even if not slightly profitable.

With a current email list size of 30,000+, David sends out approximately 22 emails each month. He targets a 40% open rate to ensure his audience remains engaged.

To make the high volume affordable, David uses the self-hosted email service Sendy rather than MailChimp or Active Campaign.

Thanks to these two primary lead generation strategies, Daily Golf Steals is less reliant on Reddit and continues to expand its reach. 

How Daily Golf Steals Operates & Scales

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges with Daily Golf Steals is the constant need for new deals.

Manually hunting down discounts 7 days a week simply isn’t sustainable long term. Burnout is almost inevitable.

So David has taken steps to significantly automate the deal sourcing process:

He hired a couple contractors

David brought on a couple students from his college golf team to handle both deal finding and email/post formatting.

This freed up countless hours that David would otherwise have to spend on daily operations.

David tapped his programming skills

With no Python experience prior, David taught himself enough to write scripts that compare yesterday’s product catalog and pricing data to today’s updated feeds.

This automated analysis flags any new markdowns or products, which his contractors can quickly validate as deals to share.

He built templating tools

For further efficiency, David built a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) tool to take a deal’s info and automatically format it for the newsletter, website, Reddit, etc. This saved tons of manual copying and pasting.

Thanks to these efforts, David simplified the daily requirements to just 1-2 hours of his contractors’ time. And it takes David himself only about 3-4 hours per week of oversight at this point.

Multiple Revenue Streams

Daily Golf Steals has other moneymakers:

Affiliate commissions

The core monetization stream comes from affiliate commissions earned when site visitors click a deal link and complete a purchase.

Commission rates vary quite a bit based on the size of the partner and negotiated terms, but tend to range from 1% to 20%.

The largest partners like Callaway Golf Pre-Owned pay commissions around 5-10% given their scale and brand recognition. Smaller direct-to-consumer brands pay up to 20% since they rely more heavily on affiliates for traffic and sales.

This means on a $100 purchase, David would earn $5 – $20 in commission depending on the source. These purchases add up over thousands of clicks per month to form the majority of revenue. 

Sponsorships

David sells banner/text ads in his daily email newsletter and on Reddit. He looks for brands relevant to the subreddit community and showcases them in a dedicated “Other Links” section below his daily deals list.

As his audience has grown, he can command higher rates.

While affiliate marketing remains the core focus, David is looking for more ways to diversify revenue. Building a loyal audience gives him options like physical products, coaching, and events down the road.

Why the Website Remains a Key Asset Despite Minimal Traffic

Given the strong response from Reddit and email, you might assume the Daily Golf Steals website itself generates significant traffic.

But interestingly, David shares that his site gets minimal direct visitors at this point.

Still, in his view, maintaining the site remains crucial for several strategic reasons: 

Credibility for affiliate applications – most programs want to see you have an established web presence before approving an application. A website demonstrates you’re a legitimate business, not just someone hawking links.
Central place for key tasks – the site houses David’s product data, automation tools, redirect creator, etc. The theme he chose has helpful built-in functionality.
Future search visibility – David’s thousands of old deals create extensive long-tail content, which could drive search traffic with improved domain authority.

So despite the modest numbers to date, David keeps his site updated and leverages the behind-the-scenes utility it provides.

For any business, it’s important to recognize that a website can offer immense value beyond just traffic and clicks.

The Challenges of Maintaining a Daily Deals Business Long Term

Although Daily Golf Steals has earned impressive income right out the gate, it’s still not without challenges. David cites three major difficulties:

Inconsistent revenue – income fluctuates widely day-by-day based on deal quality. Bad weather or low inventory can mean bad days.
Lots of manual work – automation helps, but securing and formatting deals takes daily, consistent grind. Even with contractors doing most of the heavy lifting, burnout is a risk.
Rejections – the most surprising hurdle was getting rejected by Amazon Associates for not providing enough unique value.

But rather than get discouraged, David persists through the ups and downs.

He’s constantly tweaking his systems to save time and locking in affiliate partners to open up new deals.

Revenue surpassed $100k in year one, so the earnings potential is certainly there. It simply requires tenacity to grow and manage a daily deals business.

And as a new dad, he’s now able to manage the business in just 3-4 hours a week.

Keys to Replicating This Side Hustle Idea

For anyone looking to borrow David’s business model in their own niche, here are some key strategies:

Passion pays – choose a topic you genuinely enjoy and already spend money on. Your enthusiasm will fuel the hustle.
Start where the audience is – online forums like Reddit offer instant traffic. Be a value-first member of the community.
Automate relentlessly – dealing with daily posts is tough… find any way to save time with scripts, tools, or contractors.
Plan beyond affiliate – commissions are great, but develop diverse income like sponsorships to support yourself.

It takes immense work ethic to make daily deals succeed long term. But the model clearly has profit potential, even as a side hustle.

If you can automate a chunk of the busy work and thrill your niche community with outstanding value, the financial rewards may surprise you too.

David’s #1 Side Hustle Tip for Side Hustle Nation

“Show up every day.”

Links and Resources

DailyGolfSteals.com
Groupon
LivingSocial
HuntingGearDeals.com
Side Hustle Show Episode 485
Reddit
r/golf
Skimlinks
Golf Advisory Council
Sendy
MailChimp
ActiveCampaign
Callaway Golf Pre-Owned
Amazon Associates

Looking for More Side Hustle Help?

Start Your Free $500 Challenge. My free 5-day email course shows you how to add $500 to your bottom line.
Join the free Side Hustle Nation Community. The free Facebook group is the best place to connect with other side hustlers and get your questions answered.
Download The Side Hustle Show. My free podcast shares how to make extra money with actionable weekly episodes.