- From the moment YouTube Shorts were launched,
creators have been asking this very simple question.
Can I monetize them and how much will I make?
Well, today we have the answer.
Nice.
(upbeat music)
You surely heard of his creative fund by now,
$100 million worth of cash to be shared up
between YouTube Shorts creators.
It was announced almost three months ago,
and since then we've heard nothing until now.
And that's because YouTube have just released
their full explainer video
on how they're gonna monetize YouTube Shorts,
and I'm gonna summarize it in this video
with a few sprinklings of my own thoughts and opinions.
I'm Rob, by the way, welcome back to a vidIQ,
educating you on your YouTube journey.
Today's lesson is all about how to monetize
your YouTube Shorts.
The plan is for YouTube to share $100 million
across the creator community that produces shorts
over 2021 and 2022.
To give you an idea of a size
of a YouTube Shorts creator community, millions of creators
are creating tens of millions of videos.
And according to a recent news article,
15 billion YouTube Shorts are viewed every single day.
It's clear then that shorts are here to stay
and YouTube is trying its very best to incentivize creators,
to keep on making them.
And the very best way to do that is through these,
Canadian banknotes,
because they are literally indestructible.
Actually I'm lying because Canada isn't one of the countries
eligible yet to receive the creator fund,
as you can see here, but as with everything,
YouTube will slowly be rolling this out
to more and more countries in the future.
However, when it comes to eligibility,
this is the biggest thing
you need to try and wrap your head around.
The Creators Shorts Fund is not part
of the YouTube partner program.
There isn't anything you need to apply for.
You don't have to be part
of the existing YouTube partner program,
in short, YouTube will contact you, and when they do,
you could earn as little as a $100 per month
or as much as $10,000 per month.
Yes that's right folks, there is an earnings cap,
which does make sense given the limited amount of funds
that are to go around the creator community.
The amount you will receive,
it will be determined by the performance of your shorts
and the geographical location
of the audience who watches it.
This, of course, it sounds very similar
to how YouTube ad revenue works,
but don't expect to go into your analytics
and find information on your estimated Playbox and CPM
for YouTube Shorts.
There's two reasons for this,
YouTube are still testing out ads on shorts,
so I don't think the views you earn
are directly related to ad revenue.
And of course this is all still at YouTube discretion.
You're not entering into an open partner program
where you can earn as much as humanly possible,
that's why there are caps in place.
Now as to actually who is going to receive
these invites and payments is a complete mystery.
If you divide this at $100 million over 18 months,
which is a remainder of 2021 and a whole of 2022,
that's five and a half million dollars every single month
to be spread across all of these shorts created.
Now let's just say,
there are 250 YouTube Shorts creators out there,
creators of the caliber of Jake Feldman,
who are gaining hundreds of millions of views
every single month, and they earn $10,000, the top rates,
well, that's $2.5 million gone
already from the monthly allocation of that creator fund.
On the other end of scale,
if 10,000 creators earn $100 a month, that's $1,000,000,
I don't know if YouTube are gonna be very selective
with the volume of creators who are in payments
or they're gonna try and spread it out
across as many people as possible.
I think in any case, $100 million dollars
is not gonna go very far.
Many creators are gonna be left somewhat disappointed,
but on the other hand,
it's better than nothing, it's a start.
The good news is their eligibility
for YouTube Shorts payments refreshes every single month.
So it's up to you to create great content
that gets their attention.
But at the same time, this will create some uncertainty
as you're not going to know from month to month,
whether or not you're going to be paid.
Now, although this shorts creator fund,
isn't technically part of the YouTube partner program,
there are still some eligibility criteria.
You do need to have uploaded a YouTube show
within the last 180 days,
and of course all of your content
does need to follow standard YouTube community guidelines.
Also, and this makes me so, so happy,
YouTube is about to leave a smack down on content
that shouldn't be on the platform.
If you're ripping content from TikTok, Instagram Reels,
or any other video platform
that contains an obvious watermark,
the content simply won't be eligible.
So I think this is a fair warning,
if you've been, let's be honest about this,
stealing content from elsewhere and putting it on YouTube
and you expect to be monetized,
you need to clean all of that stuff up right now.
Now of course, there may be those of you
who are legitimately repurposing your content
from another video platform onto YouTube,
but you're leaving in the watermarks,
I'm afraid you're in the same boat.
Your content needs to be clean
and it needs to be original to YouTube.
And the same goes for re-uploading copyrighted content
from movies and television, don't expect to be paid for it.
The one thing I'm not 100% certain about
is whether using popular music through the shorts camera
would impact eligibility
since it's technically copyrighted music.
I assume that because you would be using
this through YouTube built-in tools,
it would have no impact.
This afterall is why YouTube signed up so many music labels
so that you could use short clips of them.
But remember, you will only have this copyright claim
or strike protection if you use YouTube tools
to play the music.
I think it's fair to say that there are one or two
YouTube Shorts creator fund hoops
that you need to jump through,
but let's say for argument's sake
that you successfully navigate them all,
what happens when you receive a payment?
Well, you need to claim it,
between the eighth and the 10th of each month,
YouTube will email you to let you know
if you have a short bonus to claim.
So that's key point number one,
make sure that emails from YouTube
are not falling into any of your spam filters.
If you don't see the email,
you'll simply miss out on the bonus payment
because you have to claim it by the 25th of each month.
And you have to do this every single month,
eagerly await the email and then claim your bonus,
which leads us onto key point number two,
make sure any emails you receive are from YouTube
and that they are legitimate.
The last thing you want to do is click on a button
that compromises your YouTube channel.
I think YouTube are already wary
of this being a potential problem
as their support page on the shorts creator fund
or linked in the description
tells you that YouTube will never ask
for your password through an email
and to check the email is sent via YouTube or Google.
Although, this YouTube Shorts creator fund bonus payment
isn't part of a YouTube partner program,
in order to cash in this bonus payment,
you do have to go through a couple of steps
that are very similar
to applying for the YouTube partner program.
Those include accepting terms and conditions,
as well as connecting a Google AdSense account
to your YouTube channel,
if you haven't already done this
as part of the YouTube partner program applications.
The main difference here
is that when you apply for the YouTube partner program,
your channel is then reviewed
to see whether or not it's eligible for that program.
On the other hand,
when it comes to this shorts creator bonus payout,
YouTube has already reviewed your channel and accepted it.
So if you receive an email,
you just need to cash it in and follow the instructions.
The payout process is the same as a YouTube partner program
in that any revenue earned
is not actually paid into your Google AdSense account
until the following month.
The YouTube explainer video runs through this
in quite a bit of detail, so do make sure to check it out.
So, then as of time of recording,
we found ourselves at the beginning of August, 2021,
I'm really fascinated and excited to know
whether any of our community
is about to receive one of those YouTube Shorts
creator bonus payments in a couple of days time.
Do let us know in the comments below
or indeed share it on social media,
if you're willing to do that,
and of course, congratulations.
And I don't know if any of you watched my previous video,
which was all about YouTube Shorts
and we were talking about #justiceforJake.
I didn't say it (indistinct), did I?