- YouTube monetization is something
that every new YouTuber thinks about
in the back of their mind when they start a YouTube channel.
Getting paid for the content that you love creating
is something that all of us here
on the platform wants to actually do,
but the requirements to get monetized on YouTube
and get paid for the ads that show up in your content,
require you to get 1000 subscribers
and 4,000 hours of watch time.
Now, the previous video,
we actually talked about exactly how
to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube.
So, if you haven't watched that,
it's gonna be linked in the description down below.
Today I wanna focus
on the 4,000 hours of watch time specifically
and tell you exactly how to get 4,000 hours of watch time
for your YouTube channel,
so that you can apply for monetization
in the YouTube Partner Program.
Now, I hope some of you like math,
because this video is actually gonna contain a lot of it.
And I know that as a small YouTuber,
you can feel that this is an impossible goal to reach,
without it taking forever,
but it's actually something on a completely new
and faceless YouTube channel
that I've actually managed to do at the beginning of 2020
in terms of getting very close to that 4,000 hours
of qualified watch time.
The channel that I'm talking about right now
is sitting at about 3000 qualified hours of watch time
for the YouTube Partner Program
and 4,000 hours of watch time total.
Something you absolutely need to know
is that YouTube Shorts do not count,
towards your watch time total when it comes to qualifying
for the YouTube Partner Program
and getting monetized on YouTube.
So, in addition to the fact
that you're probably not making money off
of your YouTube Shorts anyway,
they also won't help you qualify for the watch time
to start making money on YouTube.
So YouTube Shorts, not really a lot of money in it,
can help you grow your channel,
can get you a ton of views,
maybe even some subscribers,
but if your goal is YouTube monetization,
at least right now, it's not gonna help you.
We'll also talk about YouTube live streams
and whether that helps you
with meeting the watch time requirements
and a specific strategy for that.
But let's focus on just YouTube channel uploads for now,
since YouTube Shorts doesn't help us
and YouTube live streams are something we need
to dig a little bit more into.
Now in my previous video,
about getting your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube.
One of the things we focused on
is something called the 1% rule.
And here's just the short version of how this works.
Typically this is not 100% of the time,
but typically in order to get to 1000 subscribers on YouTube
you usually have to get about roughly 100,000 views
on YouTube total in order to hit that milestone
of 1000 subscribers.
And this is important because as we said,
you need 1000 subscribers
to get into the YouTube Partner Program.
You also need 4,000 hours of watch time
and your account needs to be more than 30 days old.
So, those are your basic requirements,
before you can submit an application
to the YouTube Partner Program,
get monetization and start getting paid on YouTube.
Now, getting to a hundred thousand views
is our primary target here,
because that's gonna give us the most opportunity
in order to get subscribers and to accumulate,
watch time by people actually caring about
and watching our videos and becoming invested
in our channel.
When you break down 4,000 hours of watch time,
it becomes 240,000 minutes of watch time that you need.
So, almost a quarter million minutes of watch time, 240,000.
This number is actually gonna be really helpful to us,
knowing that we have to get 100,000 views
and then 240,000 minutes is something that sets us up
with the perfect formula
to actually get to monetization on YouTube.
One of the most important metrics in YouTube analytics
that you could be looking at, at any given time
is average view duration,
because this helps you realize
that people are enjoying your content,
unless you see on average,
how much of your content they're typically watching,
all the way through.
Now, when we look at average view duration
and we think about the fact that we're shooting
for 240,000 minutes across a hundred thousand views,
it tells us that we need an average view duration
of usually between three to four minutes
to absolutely be safe when it comes
to meeting these watch time requirements
if we can get enough views.
And that's why I said that this video
is exactly how to get 4,000 hours of watch time on YouTube,
because we are going to break down the math
that you need to hit so that you know,
where the goal post actually is.
And you can come up with a plan.
I understand that everybody makes different types
of content on YouTube across different genres,
whether it's tech, beauty, gaming, lifestyle, vlogs,
all of it,
but this at least helps most people understand
what they need to do with their content strategy
and the way that they're setting up their videos
and the way that they're making their plans to move forward.
Knowing that you have to hit three to four minutes
of average view duration,
can help give you a guideline
for how long you're going to end up making your videos,
while you're pursuing this goal.
It's also gonna come in handy later,
that 240,000 minutes it's gonna come in handy later
when we talk about live streams.
And when we talk about StreamYard,
but more on that later.
There's a question that new YouTube has always ask,
how long should my videos be on YouTube?
And the typical answer is not a minute longer
than they need to be.
And that's actually true.
However, if your goal specifically is to get monetized
as quickly as possible,
then I would recommend considering if your videos will fit,
you making videos that are between 8 and 12 minutes long
and there's a couple of benefits to this.
Number one, when your videos do eventually get monetized,
you'll be able to go back and add a mid-roll
and post-roll adds to your videos on YouTube.
Anything over 8 minutes is allowed to have mid-roll ads,
which means you would make more money on that content.
As long as you're not interrupting the viewer experience.
And it's not put in a very awkward place.
I don't really see a problem with this
as it means that you're getting more money for the effort
that you put into your content.
As long as the viewers are okay with it,
it's not gonna be a problem.
So, making videos between 8 to 12 minutes makes sense
for the longterm anyway, even if you don't feel
that your first videos are gonna be watched all
that much in the future,
than it still is worth pursuing just,
because you will get more mileage out of them.
Also, this means that people are enjoying that content
and it is evergreen content
that people can keep coming back to
and watching over and over,
if it's part of a series or anything like that,
this is also really helpful.
The key thing here is that by having 8 to 12 minute videos,
we're more likely to get people
to watch about 30 to 50% of them,
which puts us in our margins to hit three to four minutes
of average view duration
from at least the majority of our viewers.
And that is what's gonna help us achieve,
our 240,000 minutes of watch time aka our 4,000 hours.
I told you
this video is really for people who like math
and that's what's gonna make this work for you
is this is a mathematical formula you can use
to make an effective content strategy on YouTube
that is going to lead to you,
getting those first 1000 subscribers
by getting 1% of those views of those hundred thousand views
that we're shooting for to turn into subscribers,
who hopefully keep coming back and watching your videos.
I do need to warn you
that subscribers aren't always notified of the videos
that you upload,
whether they hit the notification bell or not.
Some of you may have heard,
bigger YouTubers complain about this.
Do not mistake the idea of having subscribers
for the actual number of people you can reach
with your YouTube content.
It does not work that way.
At least not since 2015.
Changes are kind of the norm here on YouTube.
Don't get comfortable or used to anything, ever.
But that's okay, your favorite content creators have had
to evolve through the same process.
Maybe not always the same rules,
the same goalposts,
but the same shifting sand over and over
of YouTube always being something new
and fresh to challenge us.
I know some of you were thinking,
"Well, Roberto what about live streams?
"If I live stream for an hour,
"couldn't I get to that requirement faster,
"since we're measuring this by 4,000 hours of watch time,
"what if I can get hundreds of people
"to watch my live streams?"
Well, that's a great tactic.
And it does give me an opportunity
to talk about today's sponsor,
StreamYard since they are the simplest solution
for live streaming on YouTube
and pretty much any platform.
Some of you actually may tune into my free creator workshops
on the weekends where I talk about the creator economy.
I bring on guests and we talk about everything
from how to get brand deals as a smaller influencer,
what it takes to be a full time YouTuber.
And we also break down things like YouTube analytics
and dig into the backend of channels.
Sometimes we even do channel reviews
for people who are part of the community.
And the way that I do that is with StreamYard.
StreamYard allows me to actually simulcast,
across multiple platforms,
YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn Live
and even Twitter all at once.
And I can easily bring guest into my live streams,
without them ever having to download software.
And so, when I wanna do live streams and pad my watch time
and then I actually have a really great tool
that helps me to do that and it's StreamYard.
And the best part is you can sign up
for StreamYard completely free
and take advantage of most of the features,
without actually needing to pay a monthly fee.
But if you do want to get all the features,
they have affordable monthly plans.
So, thank you to StreamYard for sponsoring this video.
Let's get back to getting you 4,000 hours of watch time.
So, like I was go saying live streams could be a great tool
for you in terms of trying to get
to those 4,000 hours of watch time.
However, I don't recommend doing this,
until you are a little higher up on your subscriber goals,
maybe around 300 to 500 subscribers.
This actually becomes a viable strategy.
In my mind, your goal should be to try
to get 100 people onto a live stream,
that's gonna be about what hour to 90 minutes.
And the reason that I have for this
is that that means that you're gonna get,
about a hundred hours of watch time
from one piece of content.
And when we're looking at 4,000 hours of watch time
that may not sound like a lot, but let's think about it.
If you manage to do 10 live streams,
let's say you started doing a live stream once a week
for the community that you're building.
Lets say that you are on your way to those 1000 subscribers.
And maybe you started to build a community in discord
or you have people that follow you
in other social media platforms.
And they would like to be part of a live experience
or they invite friends or they share out your stream.
Or maybe somebody that's large in the community,
actually ends up plugging your stream
or you have them on as a guest.
And then they're bringing their audience with them.
Well, if you can get 100 people watching your live stream
and they stay on for an hour,
when that live stream goes public on your channel,
you're gonna have 100 hours of watch time.
If you manage to do this once a week
and you were doing it for 10 weeks,
that's 1000 hours of watch time right there.
That's one fourth of the goal
that you have in terms of getting monetized
as a small YouTuber and starting to earn from ad revenue.
But not only that,
you started to build an audience
that will want to support you and might donate
in terms of Super Chats once you do get monetized.
For those of you who don't know,
part of the way the YouTube Partner Program works
is that once you're monetized on YouTube,
you get splits on ad revenue
and that's a 55, 45 split with you getting 55%
as the content creator.
But when you may not realize
is that when you do live streams,
people can donate directly to you,
through what are called Super Chats.
And you actually keep 70% of that.
And YouTube only takes 30%.
Again, you might feel iffy about that.
Why is it they're taking 30%?
But if you were on Twitch as a live streamer,
they'd be taking 50%.
So, this is actually a fantastic deal when you look at it.
And it's a great opportunity.
By doing live streams with your community early on
as long as you can get a loyal viewership
on those live streams,
you're conditioning an audience
that shows up for you specifically
and is the most likely to wanna support you,
not just with their eyeballs, but with their wallets.
So, this could be extremely lucrative in the future
to get your audience used to you doing live streams.
Since you're trying to monetize,
I assume that that's something
that would be important to you.
Remember you also get channel memberships now
at 1000 subscribers, which means people could decide
to support your content monthly
and maybe decide to kick in $5 a month
for your exclusive content
or just for some perks that you give to the community
or just to support you because they like your content.
And once again YouTube takes 30% of this
and you the creator keeps 70%.
So, this is something important.
And I really hope nobody's skipping over this part,
because it's something
that people don't consider beyond ad revenue.
Ad revenue is just one of the ways
that you can monetize a YouTube channel.
And it goes well beyond just getting Super Chats
and memberships or even merchandise
that you can sell directly to your audience
on top of the ad revenue.
There are so many ways to monetize YouTube
and you don't have to wait until you're
in the YouTube Partner Program.
Something I talk about a lot on this channel.
Since we talk about making money online
as a content creator, we talk about the creator economy
and the industry here.
Do not get caught up in the AdSense.
It often ends up being about a 10th of a penny per view,
but going back to this idea of live streams,
I really think that this is an underestimated strategy,
but I've told you how to do it the best way
that I know how.
Doing it when you know that you have an audience
that will show up for you
and knowing that you're not broadcasting to zero people.
The other good thing about StreamYard with the multicasting
is that frankly the live viewing experience on YouTube
is superior to the other platforms.
However, the Notification System might be better
on some other platforms for letting people know
that you're live in the first place.
So, this is something you can use to your advantage.
And that's why I think it's actually really powerful to do.
I also think that by having other creators,
maybe people in your niche that are just slightly bigger
than you or even the same size could be great,
because then you can pull your audiences
and you can grow together.
A high tide raises all ships.
These people aren't your competitors,
there more like your comrades or in theory,
you could even think of them as your colleagues.
240,000 minutes of watch time is not impossible.
It can be done and it can be done right now.
It just isn't gonna happen overnight.
Like I said, the other channel that I've been using
to test this idea and this data and break things down on
is a music channel.
It is a faceless music channel
that doesn't really benefit that much
from me being Roberto Blake.
So, what I've been doing over
on the Zen Buster Music Channel
is I've been using different formats,
whether it's music tracks that are just four minutes
or hour long loops of those music tracks,
anything from 10 hour extensions.
And I've been able to see clearly
that little by little piece by piece,
over the course of a couple of months,
you absolutely can accumulate 4,000 hours of watch time.
You just have to be strategic.
Here's one thing I do want to tell you
when it comes to live streaming, that nobody talks about.
If you're doing a 24 hour live stream,
a 24/7 live stream,
since that never gets published
and it doesn't really end it goes on forever
and ever and ever.
It actually doesn't count toward the public watch time
that you need in order to qualify for monetization,
which is why my music channel,
has its 4,000 hours of watch time,
but only 3000 hours of it count currently.
And so that's something you need to be aware of
in the same way that YouTube Shorts don't count toward
your watch time for modernization.
It'll count toward the whole channels cumulative watch time,
but it won't count toward the qualified watch time
for YouTube monetization.
And I know that that can be confusing.
So, it's only videos that are public,
not videos that are private,
not videos they're unlisted
and not live streams that haven't ended.
So, if you're doing 24/7 live streams,
that's not really a strategy
to be able to accumulate the watch time you need,
maybe get you exposure, maybe it gets you subs,
but it's not gonna help you
on the 4,000 hours of watch time, not one bit.
And of course the same goes for YouTube Shorts.
Now, for those of you who are gonna ask in the comments,
like the five of you,
yes, premiers do count toward the cumulative watch time.
Once the premiere is over
as long as you make the live video public.
So, as long as the video is public,
it counts toward your watch time hours.
It just can't be unlisted
or private or still an ongoing stream.
Also videos you delete,
do not count toward your public watch time hours.
That should be common sense,
but I just wanted to cover it.
So, now I think I've covered everything you need to know
in terms of exactly,
how to get 4,000 hours of watch time on YouTube.
So, you qualify for YouTube monetization.
Question of the day.
(bell dinging)
How many of your views,
what percentage of your views are coming
from your subscribers versus your non-subscribers,
let us know in the comment section,
because that's actually gonna help people,
understand how YouTube actually works.
If you enjoyed this video,
make sure you're checking out this other video
on "How to Get your First 1000 Subscribers."
If that's something you're struggling with also feel free
to watch my playlist
on "The Best Tips for New YouTubers."
I think it'll help a lot of you.
Both will be linked in the description down below.
As always, thank you so much for watching and don't forget,
go out there and create something awesome today.
Take care.