- So you've been diligently working away
on your YouTube channel,
trying to get to four-thousand hours of watch time
to monetize your content.
Checking YouTube's homepage to see
how your progress is getting on,
and then all of a sudden, you've lost tons of hours.
What on Earth just happened?
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As always, school is in session.
Now, if you have been a regular visitor to vidIQ,
you will know that I love to keep you up to date
with all things monetization on YouTube.
But this little new story came out of no where
and caught me completely by surprise.
What has happened to your watch time?
If you are a video creator working towards
one-thousand subscribers
and four-thousand hours of watch time.
You'll be very familiar with
this monetization eligibility screen.
Which tells you exactly how close you are
to meeting those requirements,
or so you thought.
Now, that screen is very much part of
the classic YouTube Creator Studio.
And if you are a video creator, you should know by now
that there is a new Creator Studio with lots of new
analytics and features.
For more information about that,
check out the video over here.
But this screen is old and it needs updating
and YouTube have done just that and it now looks like this.
So, creators working towards their monetization goal
have a new, much cleaner, and simpler screen to reference.
But, what they also seem to have is new.
A much reduced watch time hours, than what they saw before.
I'm sorry if this has raised any alarm bells for you,
but you might want to go check your
monetization page right now.
The problem is, unless you are a real eagle eye
and have been checking these statistics every single day,
you might not be sure whether or not
your numbers have changed.
But if they have, and you know exactly how much,
let us know in the comments below.
Over the last few days, I've been seeing
several tweets complaining that they have lost
hours from their channels, just as they thought
they were gonna hit the monetization threshold.
And here lies a quick extra little tip:
If you have a problem with YouTube, complain on Twitter.
And you'll usually get a response.
And this is what YouTube are saying;
The old YouTube Partner Program sign-up page
used to show total watch time hours for the channel.
Public + Private + Unlisted.
But YouTube only considers public watch hours alone
for monetization eligibility.
They fixed this technical issue
in the new Studio sign-up page,
to clarify whether you're eligible to monetize.
So that means one of two things;
Both of which are a little worrying to be honest.
Either, YouTube has been showing you the wrong numbers for
eligibility for years.
In which case, shame on you, YouTube.
Or, YouTube have changed their policy a little bit,
and haven't clearly communicated that.
And the reason I say that
is because I asked YouTube, over twelve months ago,
whether private and unlisted video count towards
your watch time hours for monetization.
And at the time, they said private doesn't,
but unlisted hours do.
Now it could have been a miscommunication
in the conversation I was having.
But, hmm,
have YouTube quietly removed unlisted hours from videos?
If you have any experience of this,
again, let us know in the comments below.
If that second theory is completely bologna,
then let's go back to the first one.
Because it might explain why so many channels
have been in review, without ever being accepted.
Because, they don't "technically"
have the required number of public hours.
Even though, they thought they did.
Because that's what YouTube was showing to the creator.
This all gets very confusing, very quickly. Doesn't it?
Let's put the theories to one side, however,
and concentrate on the cold, hard facts as shown in this
YouTube support page.
They now talk about valid public watch hours, which is
definitely a new term when it comes to monetization.
And definitely suggests to me that YouTube wants
to clarify this requirement, and the following block of text
confirms this.
The simple question is;
What counts as valid public watch hours?
And YouTube's answer is by saying;
Watch hours gained from videos you've set public.
However, watch hours gained through the following types of
videos do not count towards the
YouTube Partner Program threshold:
Private videos, unlisted videos, deleted videos--
so that's one reason why you should never delete
a video on YouTube.
And, TrueView campaigns. So you can't buy your way
towards monetization.
And all of this lead to a question in my head
that I want to oppose YouTube:
What if you have a video that was public?
Let's say you do a livestream, and then you want to
set that livestream to unlisted.
If the video is set to unlisted, or private,
do the views that you gain whilst it was public
still count towards the watch time hours?
And YouTube's answer was yes.
I don't know, I don't sound confident, do I?
And I'm not sure if I'm confident on the answer they gave me
either. But, that's what they told me.
I guess what you could do is set some videos
to unlisted for a couple of days,
and see if that does effect your monetization number.
But, you don't really want to risk that,
so I'm not gonna suggest you do it.
Go on, someone's gonna do it for me out there, yeah?
Let us know in the comments.
Now, as I have already said, we've done tons of video
on monetization, especially four-thousand hours
of watch time. So check out the videos over here.
And if you're wondering;
Yes, I am growing a beard!
I'm gonna try it out over the winter months.
What do you think?
As always, let me know in the comments below.
(beard scratching)