hi again guys just me today but i've had so many questions and conversations with
different creators here on the platform and i thought it was time to make a video
about channel monetization and the type of content we produce
so it is you know frowned upon on youtube as most of you know it's hard to make a channel that makes
content like this uh and be successful and more importantly be able to monetize
some of that content so it can help support your channel because any of you
creators know or anybody who's making videos uh in this segment knows
uh it's a ton of work like putting in all the effort and everything we do into a video
days weeks months worth of effort and to make just one video uh and you know youtube will restrict
those and just make it so you you know all that hard work you won't get the views and won't help
grow your channel uh and you definitely won't see any kind of return from the views that you do get
so how can you monetize uh on youtube and how can you make content that's gonna help
your channel grow so in this video i'm gonna give you guys the tips on how to monetize your channel
uh and still be able to create content that you want to and that people will enjoy and will help
grow your channel faster uh because you'll get content that's being seen and not restricted
making content that's related to cannabis the gist of it all guys is if you want to be able
to monetize your channel and you want to be able to make content that's going to be seen by viewers
and not restricted either by age or ads or both um is to make content that doesn't feature any plants
or any smoking or anything that would be against the community guidelines so the guidelines are
pretty clear and i'll put a link to them in the description below uh but pretty much anything
that shows a plant or shows smoking or anything related uh directly in the video it's just gonna
get caught immediately by the algorithm so that's gonna immediately hinder your ability to get
followers and have people see your content that you're creating because it's gonna be restricted
and behind a wall of youtube so it's not gonna show up in search results it's not gonna show up
when people are watching other videos as related ones it really hinders your channel's performance
so to take it back a step like first let's just talk about the requirements to get your channel
monetized um so what you have to do is you have to hit 1 000 subscribers and 4 000 public watch hours
once you've achieved those then you can apply for monetization via the youtube studio um and when we
got this the first time we tried to apply after we met the goal of a thousand subscribers and
four thousand hours of watch time we applied we of course got rejected um and because if you look at
the rules and how it's stated if your channel has mostly content that's restricted you're probably
not going to get approved so what we did is we made some content that was unrestricted that means
it doesn't show plants doesn't show consumption and doesn't have things like that after we
release i would say a good five to six videos uh the good thing is every 30 days you can reapply
uh for your channel to get monetized again so after the first time we were rejected what we
did is we made some unrestricted content and then we went and reapplied after 30 days and after that
we got approved and got in because we had some videos that were restricted if they see your
whole channel in every single videos restricted age and monetization wise you're probably not
going to get approved until you at least diversify your content so that would be the first tip guys
diversify your content of your channel that means if you're going to be doing like light reviews
or something like that um you know do an unboxing and a feature overview of the light but just don't
show plants in that video as well not only is that going to help you get more views it's going to
help your channel out because then you're going to have some content that's not considered restricted
or age restricted ad restricted it's just gonna help your channel out immensely so
start to diversify your content and that's a really great thing to do for the channel even
before you hit the mark or the possibility to be able to apply definitely start to diversify
your content and try and make videos and think of ideas of videos that you can do that won't
feature any kind of plant content or consumption because that's not going to get restricted it's
going to get you more viewers it's going to get more views and plus it's going to add to
some videos that are unrestricted that are gonna help your channel when it comes time to monetize
so if you're not now start to think about ideas of videos that you can do that won't get restricted
that's just gonna help your channel and then that's gonna increase your chances of getting
approved once you finally hit those requirements after you hit those requirements and you have an
adsense account and everything's ready to go and you've applied chances are you're probably going
to get approved if you've diversified some of your content so once you get approved obviously then
there's a whole new set of rules and little tricks and things like that that can help you
just produce videos that won't get restricted and be able to monetize them while continuing to grow
your channel once you get approved you will start to get things like channel members which are going
to help support your channel and it's a great way for the viewer base that you've built to
if they enjoy your content support what you're doing we really appreciate our channel members
because you guys definitely help pick up where youtube has shunned us so it's a huge help and
um definitely look into that the memberships is a great feature because it offers incentives and
perks to your viewers who watch your channel and you know obviously you're still going to be making
content like grow series and things like that that are going to get restricted there's really no way
around doing grow videos showing plant content or doing consumption and having it be unrestricted
you can you can definitely when you upload them you can try and fight it but it's never going to
get approved like they're going to get reviewed either by the algorithm or it goes to a human
person and they're not going to they're not going to approve it it's a lost cause guys so if you're
if you're trying to look for a way to upload a grow video and have it not be restricted the
chances are slim to none so just get that idea out of your head right now and just focus on what you
can do um so once you get approved the memberships is a great way to help start generate revenue
off of the content that you're creating because people enjoy your content they're going to want
to support you because it is a lot of work and we all know that but once you get approved and you
can start to upload videos and monetize them you will see that you'll probably get access to the
self rating system so that means when you upload a video youtube will start to take into account your
rating plus the algorithms rating and it's really important that once you gain that feature that you
rate your videos accurately because if you rate them inaccurately like if we take a look at some
of the videos we've uploaded you can clearly see the limited ones that have been checked by either
manual review or the system and if it rejects it versus your rating it counts against you
so you really want to rate them accurately because the better you rate them and the more consistent
you are in your ratings of those videos the better off you're going to be trying to upload something
and have it not be blocked or accidentally blocked so when you upload videos and let's say you make
a talking video about something about growing or something related or maybe a nutrient that
you've used or just a method of you know training or something like that when you first upload that
and you make sure when you film it that there's no plant content and you're not consuming anything
um on screen you know that will probably go through chances are sometimes it still
gets restricted and then you can do a manual review sometimes even that will get rejected
and sometimes it takes re-uploading and then having them check it again and sometimes you'll
get through to the person that will approve it and then it's great good to go at that point but just
keep in mind at any point youtube can come back and still restrict that video we've had it happen
to videos that definitely featured no content um they wrongly accused of swearing and hate speech
when we were talking about plant container size um and they completely restricted that one i fought
it tooth and nail and they just would not turn it around there are um some new rules on youtube that
they've actually released um recently it's saying that you should not do tips and recommendations
on recreational drug usage or creation such as cannabis farming so that means making content
talking about farming is now considered restricted as part of these new rules so that's something to
think about and it could affect the content you want to create but it's really just a tip that
you can follow to try and help make content that conforms to the guidelines so definitely review
the youtube guidelines they are changing all the time and i'm sure at the point where it becomes
legal in the in the states here that these rules will probably again change because they're going
to want to reap the benefit of the ad dollars right so it's something to think about but
definitely make sure you're rating them accurately once you get that ability to do that and that's
going to happen during the upload process it's gonna ask you to self-rate your video and then
it's gonna rank it against how you rated it with the algorithm and if they don't agree your video
is gonna end up restricted another thing i found is that if during that upload process and you have
the self-rating feature enabled on your channel sometimes it doesn't always get enabled right away
sometimes after a while of having monetization it will become enabled just like memberships just
like merch just like supers and super chat those are all little things that get added after you're
approved to monetization but you can go on the monetization tab check your ad status and your
ratings and how you've rated versus youtube rated again if you do it inaccurately or you're trying
to slip things through and they catch you they're gonna catch that and then it's gonna hurt your
next uploads in all your other uploads um until you get consistent results and if you continually
try to slip stuff through or try and say stuff is good for ads and it's not then they're gonna
probably take away your monetization from your channel and unlink your adsense so really guys
in the end it's more about diversifying your content so you have content on your
channel that is unrestricted the easier it is to monetize your channel if your whole channel is all
age and ad restricted content you're not going to get approved just plain and simple even when you
do get approved a lot of times if you expect your old videos to either go back to like a limited
age restricted or ad restricted or a yellow dollar sign chances are they're not going to go
back through and approve those they're all going to be ineligible so if you're banking on old stuff
getting in once you get approved it's probably not going to happen so don't don't even bother what
will happen is your videos that you made that were unrestricted will be able to then be monetized to
immediately start helping your channel i've also found that when you upload a video if you don't
rate it before the upload finishes and there find something wrong with it or it would normally be
a yellow age restricted or ad restricted video it will just make it completely ineligible with
no option to try and appeal or overturn that so it's important to make sure you do your ratings
before it's finished uploading and then rate them accurately so it helps you in the future
rating your own videos it's really important to rate them accurately there's various other
things that will get videos restricted or blocked think about your thumbnails think
about the keywords and the metadata or tagging that you're using if you're using edgy words
in your thumbnail if you're in your thumbnail you have pictures of plants or anything like that
the algorithm is going to detect it and even if the video doesn't contain anything there's a very
good chance it will still restrict that video just based on the thumbnail or keyword metadata
so think about your terms and what you're doing sometimes you can see that happen live as you
upload the video let's say you upload a video with absolutely no content and then you go
through and do your keywords and suddenly the video is restricted sometimes you can appeal
that sometimes it won't let you overturn that so your only option is to then re-upload the video
and then be a little bit more selective or careful with your keywords that's something that
definitely helps get some videos approved that should have definitely been approved uh because
they didn't feature content or anything that would fall against the community guidelines but
it's just something to think about sometimes you do have to take a video and upload it a few times
to get it to pass and be approved even if there's nothing in it even if there's nothing questionable
it's just the algorithm usually once it gets to a human review they will agree and then approve it
sometimes you can upload the same bid three times and have them all pending approval it can take
sometimes it takes an hour sometimes it takes three days so think about that when you're
uploading and how long it takes for the appeal to go through if it passes um so just really kind of
judge your content that you're making with a critical eye and think about that
there's a lot of things that can lead to strikes or things like that for your channel which are not
gonna go away if you get three strikes your whole channel will be deleted and all the hard work
time energy and money you put into your channel is gonna be all for nothing because it's pretty hard
to get your channel undeleted after it has been so make sure you guys follow and know the guidelines
uh and what's gonna get you strikes so what is gonna get you strikes and that's
really easy and i see a lot of people make these mistakes both on instagram and youtube
this is clearly in the guidelines that you cannot put links to any kind of distribution company so
like your favorite breeder or genetic company if you're to put their website in your description a
link to their website who sells uh genetics that's gonna definitely get you a strike if
it's caught by the system and i've that the only time we've ever had a video got struck was uh a
genetic company's website in our video description and hard-coded into the video too don't think just
if you hard-code the website address into your video it won't get caught and that
will get caught as well um so don't ever put anything that's gonna lead to or link to the
direct sale event of anything related it's really risky for your channel that doesn't count like
gear intents and lights and things like that we're talking about actual uh either genetics
or things like that if you link to that kind of stuff and it gets caught it's it's a direct it's
going to be a strike immediately um and if you get three strikes your channel's gone you only get one
warning and that never goes away um sometimes strikes will drop off after x amount of time
um but you definitely want to be careful with what you're doing in the content you're making because
if you're breaking any guidelines even if it might get through for a while you could definitely get
hit on it later and it could cost you everything you've worked for so keep that in mind guys it's
a really important tip i just wanted to share this and get this stuff out here with you guys
because it's all part of normalizing and you know stop demonizing a plant and how to grow it or
information or tips or anything really it shouldn't matter if you see plants or not
i don't think that's a big deal and i think a ton of the community knows this as well along with the
rest of the nation so hopefully guys this will help you be successful in your channel and grow
it and be the content creator that you want to be but i hope this video has been helpful and gives
you guys some insights on how to monetize your channel and create this kind of content on youtube
it's definitely not easy and it's an uphill battle especially if you're trying to you know have the
dream like we do of making this a full-time thing or something that we could you know quit our jobs
with and enjoy doing um and there's restrictions and they're constantly changing so make sure to
stay up to date on the youtube terms of service and the community guidelines it's very important
to follow those and make make your content adhere to those basically if you're adhering to
the guidelines your video is going to get approved sometimes you might get the short end of the stick
but i mean that's kind of that's that's life you just want to see everyone succeed we've talked
to so many amazing creators already within the community been making videos a long time i have
a good understanding of youtube and we've been successful so far starting this channel out from
rock bottom less than a year ago so you know it's definitely doable but you just have to be smart
about it and you have to make content that adheres to the guidelines you kind of have to play ball
um but that doesn't mean you have to stop doing all your other content definitely do that because
so many of our viewers enjoy that kind of stuff just know that the content that basically takes
the most effort gives you the least return either on viewers or new subscribers or building your
channel because youtube blocks that if it's age restricted and it's ad restricted that means
it's probably not going to get seen by many people or even people who are already subscribing to your
channel or no one's ever gonna find it because it's buried and you're definitely not gonna get
any kind of return from all the effort you put into the video so that's kind of where things
like channel members and things like that will help pick in the pace you can start a patreon
and things like that um so those are other great ways to support your channel um without youtube
monetization but you know youtube monetization is a nice thing because it does help you with
all the views and all the hard work that you put in so you know support the creators you love guys
i hope this video helped you out if you're out here grinding away too i was thinking of doing
another one on tips for just generating income with your channel you know working with affiliates
setting up different things that can help generate revenue for your channel because it is so hard to
make a channel survive on here making this kind of content you really have to reach out to all the
different streams that you can to help support all the work you're doing thanks so much guys
i just want to help all the amazing creators out here too going through the same struggles
with just some things i've learned if you guys have any tips or anything that you've learned
definitely share in the comments below let us know guys really appreciate it and if you haven't
checked out our channel members that's probably the biggest support to our channel as a whole
youtube getting yourself monetized is great but realistically it's not it's not really that much
so for the amount of work and everything like that these tips are all just things that can help
you grow your channel help gain visibility and hopefully put you in a position to maybe make it
your job one day we want to see everybody succeed in that same fashion and that's a personal goal
for us me and heaven and our channel so we're just continuing on guys we really hope you
like this one if you did give it a thumb up like and subscribe and stay tuned for the next video