Monetizing a niche channel

Hello!

My first post, but I've been following this forum for quite a while and also have been trying to kick-start a youtube channel.

I have a niche youtube channel with currently 13k subs. and getting about 10k views each day. The thing is that so far I've uploaded videos, to which I do not own the copyright so I cannot monetize these. Otherwise the niche seems quite good, as I have uploaded only about 10 vids in 6 months and been getting good views and interactions.

My question is, what could be the ways to monetize this? As I understand, I cannot put out any links or anything to videos which I do not own the copyright to?

How could I proceed - should I start doing videos myself for this niche? So then I could monetize it? I dunno if I could beep the quality, but I can at least try...

EDIT: I also thought about selling some merchandise that connects with the channel, but is this legal with not owning copyright to video material?

All help is appreciated

You can upload the copyright videos and put a watermark on them with your website. Then all that traffic will be directed to your site where you monetize.

You can sell merch from your website. Put links in description

You can use amazon affiliates in your description also.

CPA could also work.

Post money link in description.

Is it legal to have direct links to amazon or CPA links if I do not own the videos? Would not want to get in trouble for copyright infringement or something.

Yes you can monetize the description and annotation section of the video which is not yours.
Its just that you wont be able to monetize it with adsense.

well, you could try getting around copyright by methods such as zooming in or changing the audio pitch if necessary.
you haven't told us what the videos are of though.. why are they copyrighted?
since you have a decent subscriber base i'd definitely look into finding a way of making your videos monetizable, whether it be what i suggested or making your own videos without copyrighted material.
CPA wouldn't work as well for all types of content and it may drive away some subs, idk. i don't have any experience with it.

Thanks for the answers!

Well, I'm basically copying funny gifs all over the internet and posting them on youtube. I'm afraid I will get in trouble if I try to monetize the content (taken randomly from the internet). Whats the worst case scenario if someone claims copyright of them - do I have to share the earnings or there might be bigger lawsuits?

Probably a noob question, but just to be certain about where I stand.

Thanks for all replies!

A collage of gifs will most definitely fall under fair use - with that said, they still might be challenged by copyright holders. Try to add some of your own edits and filters to it to further strengthen your fair use

Cool niche. Also try uploading webm videos from chan dumps.

oh so you technically can monetize them it's just you choose not to?
from a copyright strike on a monetized video you'll get like a 3 month adsense ban at most i think, i don't think anybody's ever been sued or had it taken out of the domain of youtube/adsense before.
if i were you and i didn't have any ethical qualms about it i'd just monetize them, if they're just gif soups it's very unlikely you'll get any strikes against you