YouTube shorts monetization has arrived.
And some creators have now received
their first bonus payments.
So the next big question is how much did they make
from that $100 million fund.
(bell chimes)
Really, so a lot of views for not that much money.
So, credit to YouTube,
this all happened very quickly in the end.
At the beginning of August,
they announced that they would be starting to pay out
from their YouTube Shorts Creator Fund.
YouTube even told us when creators will be notified
between the eighth and the 10th of the month.
So if you haven't got anything that by now,
fingers crossed for September.
But for those creators who were lucky enough to be paid out,
let me share with you some of her experiences.
First of all, the email.
This is what it looks like,
the bonus amount, how to claim it,
and one expires.
As I've mentioned earlier,
make sure any emails you receive
about the YouTube Shorts bonus payments are legit.
It looks something like this,
and either have a @youtube.com or @google.com email address.
When you claim the bonus,
you need to accept the YouTube shorts Fund
redemption terms and conditions.
Now, this one is important because it represents
the difference between the YouTube partner program,
monetization through AdSense
and this new form of bonus payments through YouTube shorts.
It does not matter if you're already
part of the YouTube partner program.
It does not matter if you're not monetized
at all on YouTube.
Everybody needs to accept these terms.
This screen will also help you set up
and connect an AdSense account to your YouTube channel
and let you know when the shorts payment will arrive
in said accounts.
And once you've done all of that,
you should receive this final confirmation email.
And boom, $200 from 7 million views,
a fairly straightforward on this.
Now, let me stress at this point,
none of this should be considered facts
because we don't have all of the data
and they come from creators experiences.
Let me explain what I mean.
We don't know. If he's at 7 million views
all came from shorts traffic,
and each payer is influenced by the location of the viewers.
That might explain why this creator
got a hundred dollars more from 2 million fewer views,
but there's also a complication to add to this,
because the creator admits their most popular video
had copyrighted music on it.
Which brings us back to this figure, $2,300
from 130 million views.
It almost sounds a little pathetic, doesn't it?
If he's 130 million views were regular YouTube views,
you'd be looking to attract tens of thousands of dollars.
If not hundreds of thousands of dollars
from AdSense revenue alone.
But on the other hand,
nobody was earning anything from shorts content
this time last month.
Oh, and they also admitted to using copyrighted music.
Which is interesting in itself
because it reveals two things.
Assuming these are copyright claims rather than strikes,
you're not going to be barred
from a YouTube short bonus payments.
But at the same time, you're not going to be rewarded
for those views from content
with copyrighted material on it.
But for other YouTube creators,
copyrighted content is the least of their worries.
If you don't live in one of these countries,
it doesn't matter many views you've got.
You ain't earning diddly squat,
much to irritation of his creator, living in New Zealand,
we've 7 million YouTube shorts views.
And then there's this creator
who did get a bonus payment email,
but they can't claim it because they don't live
in the country based set their location to within YouTube.
This is why you never mislead YouTube.
It always comes to bite your back.
But in saying that, sometimes you do everything right
and YouTube just bites you anyway.
According to this very unfortunate creator,
when they claim the YouTube shorts bonus,
YouTube remove them from the YouTube partner program.
Apparently this has happened to several creators,
but it's my understanding that this has now been resolved
or will be very soon for those creators affected.
Sadly though for other creators,
this bonus payment scheme has all come
just a little too late.
Earlier this year,
some channels were getting millions of shorts views
every single month,
but they haven't been able to sustain the same momentum.
I guess that's increasing competition for you.
Now then, although strictly speaking,
there are no minimum requirements
for a YouTube short's payments,
many creators have been trying to figure out
what they would realistically need
to reach that $100 minimum payout.
Those who are receiving bonus payments
all appear to be well-established creators
with thousands of subscribers, if not more.
As for views, a number in the low millions per month
seems to suggest that you might stand a chance
of getting a payment.
Although one creator I saw was claiming
that they got less than a million.
And remember, none of this is fact,
this is just the word I'm hearing on the YouTube stream.
And we've also got to consider that these bonus payments
are only available to a very limited number
of countries right now.
My guess is, as more and more people become eligible
for these payments, the bar is only going to get set higher.
But so far we've only talked about the minimum payment.
What about the maximum payments?
Has anyone received $10,000?
You know there's only one person
I'm gonna check in with, to answer this question, right?
Jake Fellman's 3D animation shorts
netted him over 600 million views last month.
But even this wasn't enough to earn him the full bonus.
He was close, but he didn't hit that cap.
All of Which leads me to two final questions.
If Jake Fellman wasn't able to hit the $10,000 cap
for a monthly YouTube bonus payment,
did any creator hit that cap?
And how many views do you think it takes?
A billion?
I'll let you try and answer that one in the comments below,
but if all of his talk of bonus payments
has whetted your appetite for YouTube shorts,
this video will tell you exactly how to make one.