- I'm gonna answer all your questions
about YouTube Shorts including what is it,
and can you make money with it,
and what happens when your videos spike up
and then they drop and then they spike up again?
I have answers to those and some others,
and I ask these questions over on my YouTube community feed.
And I said,
"What questions do you have about YouTube Shorts?"
You asked the questions and now I'm gonna answer 'em.
Starting with question number one.
This first question comes from Coherent Squidd, who says,
"What is YouTube Shorts and how do I make one?"
YouTube Shorts is a new feature created by YouTube
that is a short-form video feature,
for vertical videos only, this way, up and down,
not this way.
And they have to be 60 seconds or less.
Now, if you have the YouTube Shorts camera
like you do in India, if you're watching this from India,
and select parts of the world who had this beta feature,
you might have access to the Shorts camera.
And if that's the case, you might have a reduced time.
If you look at YouTube's information on this,
they say if you record a video inside the Shorts camera,
you can only make a video that's 15 seconds long.
But if you upload a video, it can be up to 60 seconds long.
And if you upload a longer video,
all you have to do is put a #Shorts in your title
or somewhere in your description,
and that identifies to YouTube that this is a Shorts video.
But that doesn't guarantee it's going to end up
on the YouTube Shorts Shelf.
And I'm gonna talk about the Shorts Shelf in just a second.
It's up to YouTube to determine
if your video is gonna end up in the shelf or not.
But if it does end up in the shelf,
this is what people are seeing, explosive growth.
Now, before I go into the next question,
I do wanna talk about the Shorts Shelf and what it is.
The Shorts Shelf shows up in two places.
The first place it can show up is on the homepage,
and it looks like this.
It simply says short videos,
and you can scroll over to the left
and scroll over to the right.
You can tap on each one and scroll down from there.
And it also shows up on an actual video page.
So if you're watching a video and you scroll down,
you can see Short videos there as well.
These are called the Shorts Shelf.
This is the promised land.
This is where you want your Shorts to end up,
because this is where all the traffic is.
But like I said, just because you uploaded a Short,
it doesn't necessarily mean that it's gonna end up here.
And we'll talk about why a little bit later.
The next question comes from Sewil, who says,
"How many subscribers do you need to upload them,
and how do you do it?"
The good news here is every single person on YouTube,
regardless of your subscriber count,
regardless of your watch time,
regardless of how new or old you are on the platform,
every single person has access to Shorts.
Like I mentioned before,
all you have to do is upload a vertical video
60 seconds or less,
and drop the #Shorts on it,
and this will identify that video as a Short,
and it might end up in the Shorts Shelf.
The next question comes from Neel's World.
Neel says, "Does it have a negative impact
on overall channel growth?
If by chance."
That's a great question, and the answer is no.
In fact, just the opposite happens.
If your video ends up in the Shorts Shelf,
you can see explosive growth here.
Some channels are uploading Shorts,
55 seconds, 30 second videos,
and they're seeing explosive growth,
pilin' in tons of views and tons of subscribers.
So it can have very positive effects on your channel.
But, and this is a big but here,
the key is you need to make Shorts that are relevant
to the type of content that you're making on your channel.
What I mean by that is,
I make content for mobile content creators
and mobile live streamers.
I would not wanna make Shorts about pranks
or about food recipes or travel or anything like that.
I wanna make sure my Shorts have something to do
with helping mobile content creators
or mobile YouTubers.
Because as people find my Shorts,
they might subscribe to my channel.
So you wanna make sure that when people find your channel,
they're interested in the other types of videos
that you have on your channel.
But if you don't do that
and you upload different types of content on your Shorts
and someone subscribes to your channel,
and they're not interested
in all of your other types of content,
then that could have a negative effect on your channel.
So keep it relevant.
The next question comes from Paul Peck DrywallTube,
and he says,
"I'm seeing a lot of repurposed TikToks on the Shorts Shelf.
My question is, can these Shorts be copyrighted
because they're using the music from TikTok too?
Thanks Dee."
That's a great question and the answer is
you can absolutely have issues with copyright
for a couple of reasons.
One, I'm seeing a lot of channels
just stealing popular videos from TikTok,
uploading them on YouTube as Shorts
but they don't own those videos,
they don't have the rights to those videos.
So they do risk it in a copyright claim
or a copyright strike.
Two, music can get you in trouble as well.
TikToK actually pays royalties to music companies
and record labels so you can use that music on TikTok.
YouTube hasn't paid those same royalties, at least not yet.
So you can't use TikTok music on YouTube.
So the same exact thing applies to your YouTube videos
as it does to your Shorts.
You need to make sure that you have permission
to use that music.
That being said, when you finally do get the Shorts camera,
YouTube will have music in there
that you can add on your Shorts.
Now, I don't know if this music is going to be different
than the music inside the YouTube audio library,
or if it's gonna be popular music like you see on TikToK.
I don't know yet, I don't have access to the Shorts camera.
But YouTube is saying that you do have access to music
if you have the Shorts camera.
And by the way, if you do have access to the Shorts camera,
and you do have music,
please go down leave a comment and let me know.
Is it popular music,
or is it just music from YouTube audio library?
The next question comes from ProsPeace, and Pro P says,
"Do I have to optimize YouTube Shorts for SEO?
Or can I just upload without tags
and without keywords or description?"
Fantastic question.
And the answer is treat your Shorts just like you would
any other piece of content.
That means you should make a thumbnail.
You should write a good title.
You should write a description.
Put your tags in there.
Do everything for your Shorts
just like you would a YouTube video.
And the reason you want to do that is,
because this Short will upload to your channel.
When somebody lands on your channel
they're gonna see your Shorts,
just like they're gonna see all your other type of content.
So you wanna make sure those are optimized.
The other reason is,
your Short is going to live out there on YouTube
just like all your other content as well.
That means it might show up on someone's homepage,
or it could show up being suggested as a watch-next video.
So just because you upload a videos as a Short,
it doesn't mean you want to neglect everything
for SEO or the thumbnail.
Treat it just like you would any other piece of content.
Now here's where things get interesting
and a little confusing.
If your video ends up in the Shorts Shelf,
YouTube strips some of that stuff away.
For example, like your thumbnail.
Your thumbnail is not gonna show up.
However, your Short will live on the Shorts Shelf,
and at the exact same time,
live outside of the Shorts Shelf.
So it can still surface elsewhere on the platform
and still show up on your channel with the thumbnail,
with everything that you've added,
while being in the Shorts Shelf at the exact same time.
So yes, you wanna optimize your Shorts
just like you would any other YouTube video.
Farmstead Smith is up with the next question,
and she says,
"Do you think there's any way to re-prompt a video
to get on the shelf again?"
And what she means by that is,
and I know a lot of you are seeing this happen
if you are uploading Shorts.
You upload a Short.
Sometimes immediately it goes into the Shorts Shelf.
Sometimes it takes a couple of days
and you get this spike in traffic and then it drops off.
And she's wondering,
what can you do in order to get that to come back?
That's a great question, but you have to keep in mind
that YouTube is looking at Shorts
just like they are your videos.
They're looking to see how people respond
to your actual Shorts,
just like you do with your normal videos.
They're looking at watch time.
You're looking at engagement.
They're looking at all the metrics they normally do
to find out if people are enjoying your Shorts or not.
And if you're wondering why you see that big spike
of views and then it drops off,
that's because your video leaves the Shorts Shelf
because YouTube is rotating videos in there currently.
For example, on the main homepage
there's only 15 Shorts across.
And if you tap on each one,
there's 50 Shorts going down that you can scroll through.
That's only 750 Shorts at any given time,
so YouTube is rotating those in and out.
And if you look at the view counts on all of those Shorts,
most of them are Shorts with huge view counts.
So if you upload a new Short
and you're just getting started,
maybe you don't have a lot of views,
you're competing with Shorts with hundreds of thousands,
and sometimes millions of views.
So they rotate you in for a little bit,
and then they rotate you out.
YouTube giveth, YouTube taketh away.
But what about everybody who sees that second spike
and then sometimes a drop?
And sometimes a third spike and a drop?
That's the rotation.
And it comes back to how people are actually responding
to your video.
If your video did well, they're gonna rotate you out,
and maybe they're gonna bring it back.
And then they're going to rotate you out,
and it's gonna bring you back again.
But if your video does incredibly well
and you can stand toe-to-toe
with some of these other Shorts
with hundreds of thousands of views,
or sometimes millions of views,
then there's a really good chance
that you're gonna go toe-to-toe with those other Shorts,
and you're gonna stay in the Shorts Shelf
for quite some time.
And that's gonna continue to grow the video.
But for the rest of us who are just mere mortals,
we upload the Shorts.
If they do well, they might come back a second time,
but they're not gonna go in there too many times.
Because we're competing against Shorts
with huge numbers of views and tons of engagement.
And this is just like your other videos.
They normally don't end up on YouTube's trending page.
So kind of think of Shorts like a trending page
in terms of YouTube is finding the most watched videos,
then they're putting them up there for people to see.
And in the process,
they're peppering in some people
that you're subscribed to.
They're peppering in your videos to see how they perform.
But of course the most popular videos,
the trending videos, are always going to dominate.
That's why when you're lookin' at Shorts right now,
you don't recognize most of the people uploading them.
You might see a few people you subscribe to,
but most of them are videos
that you're not even interested in.
But look at the view count.
They're huge.
They're popular trending Shorts.
The next question comes from Elijah Bisnath who asks,
"When will the feature come out for everyone
instead of making vertical videos
and putting #Shorts?"
Well, the first thing I want to address is that
it's always going to be vertical.
That's the whole thing with the Short.
If it's a vertical and if it's 60 seconds or less.
it can be considered a YouTube Short.
So this is not going away.
But when is it rolling out to everyone?
I don't know.
India currently has the full version of this.
They have the Shorts camera, they have the Shorts Shelf.
They've had this for a while,
This was the first country to get it.
But some people with iOS devices do have the beta feature.
I believe some people in Australia have it,
and some people peppered around the world.
But I don't know when it's gonna roll out to everyone.
I hope eventually we're gonna be able
to drop the #Shorts as it officially rolls out.
But until then, I don't have an answer for that.
But I also want to mention that there are Shorts videos,
again, trending videos, popular videos,
that are ending up in the Shorts Shelf
that do not have #Shorts.
So if you have a popular video that's shot vertically,
60 seconds or less, even without #Shorts,
it is possible that it could end up in the Shorts Shelf.
And that tells us that great videos are always going to win.
It doesn't matter what hashtags you use.
It doesn't matter what tags you use.
A great video is a great video.
Next question comes from CocaCoke who says,
"Are Shorts get higher chances
to get recommended in YouTube?"
So do Shorts increase your chances
of getting recommended in YouTube?
Well, if you upload a great Short
and it ends up in the Shorts Shelf,
even if it's for five minutes or 30 minutes or an hour
or even an entire day,
lots of people can see that.
And that is how a lot of channels
are seeing explosive growth.
So yes, it can definitely help you out
in terms of people finding you
if you end up in the Shorts Shelf.
The next question comes from Farouk Tech.
He has two questions,
but I'm gonna tackle the second one
because I've already answered the first one
in terms of how you actually make Shorts,
and it doesn't matter if you're on an Android or iOS device,
the process is the same.
But the question is,
"Are YouTube Shorts also monetized by AdSense?"
Okay, so this is where it gets tricky.
If it's anywhere else on YouTube,
on your channel, if it's suggested somewhere,
if it's on YouTube homepage, it can be monetized.
You can make money from that
if you're in the YouTube partner program.
YouTube will treat the Short just like it would
any other video you have on your channel
if you're in the partner program.
However, if that video goes into the Shorts Shelf,
while it's on the Shorts Shelf,
it is not currently being monetized.
So while it can be monetized anywhere else in the platform
anywhere else at surfaces,
it cannot be monetized currently
while it actually shows up in the Shorts Shelf.
And I know that's confusing
and it's got a lot of people scratching their heads,
including myself.
But just think of it as your video is living
in multiple places at the exact same time.
And you only don't make money from it
when it goes into the Shorts Shelf.
The next question comes from My E-Class in Bytes.
He asks, "Why is it some Shorts go viral in some do not?"
Why does any video go viral?
If it's a great video, if it performs really well,
if lots of people watch it
and they're watching it to the end,
they're sharin' it and they just can't stop watching it,
there's a good chance your video might go viral.
And this applies to all videos on the platform.
It doesn't matter if it's going on your YouTube channel
or if it's going on the Shorts Shelf.
If it's a great video, a high performing video,
there's a good chance that it might go viral.
In terms of a formula of what could go viral,
like I mentioned before, go over to TikTok.
Look at the top videos over on TikToK.
Look at the trending videos over on TikToK.
That's the type of content that can go viral here on Shorts.
Look at your current Shorts Shelf.
Look at the videos that have the most views on them.
Those are the ones that are going viral.
Study them.
You just might be able to figure out the formula
and make one for yourself.