Want to know a secret?
I used a hack to get my YouTube monetization approved in just three hours.
Have you ever wondered how long it takes to get monetized on YouTube and how long the
YouTube monetization review process takes?
Well in today's video I am going to break down the entire process, the timelines, what
to expect, what you need to do.
But then I'm also going to share a little hack that I use to get my application approved
in just three hours.
So if you want to know my secret then keep on watching.
So as a small Youtuber, getting your monetization is one of your number one and top priorities.
Everyone is working towards getting their 1000 subscribers and their 4,000 hours of
watch time so they can finally make a little money off of their videos.
I actually just did a video all about the entire YouTube monetization process, so you'll
definitely want to check that out because I cover the process from start to finish there.
And I also give tons of tips on how you can get monetized faster.
But in today's video I am going to break down the monetization review process.
What happens after you submit your application and it seems like it's just the waiting game.
Like I mentioned in that other video you need to apply to the YouTube Partner Program.
This is the program that enables you the ability to put ads on your videos.
What's unique about this program is that after you meet the requirements, it's not like you're
automatically accepted.
There is actually a manual review process that happens by someone who works at YouTube.
Now, while YouTube has a fantastic algorithm and tons of machine learning that has automated
a lot of things in the YouTube process, this is still one of the things that YouTube wants
human eyeballs on because they want to make sure that people they are accepting into the
program truly do meet their standards and requirements for their advertisers.
They do not want to put ads on weird shady, spammy accounts and so that's why it has to
go through a human and again, the reason they're doing this is because they want to make sure
that your channel is advertiser friendly.
What is advertiser friendly content?
I'll just include the full list right here.
Basically they're looking for profanity, violence, drug use, those sorts of things.
So if your channel or your videos have those things you might not get monetized.
So what are the things that they look at when they are reviewing your channel?
First off, they are going to look at the main theme of your channel, just to get a sense
of what you're about.
They're going to look at your most viewed videos.
So what are people gravitating to most on your channel?
They're gonna look at your newest videos to see what your new content is all about.
They're gonna look at videos that give the largest proportion of watch time.
Again, the reason I'm looking at the things with the most views or the most watch time
is because even if you have thousands of videos, that doesn't matter.
They want the ones that are going to get the most ads.
Now since the application has to be reviewed by a human, it can take awhile and according
to YouTube itself, this process can take about a month.
Now, YouTube also States that there could be other reasons for a delay such as higher
than usual application volumes, system issues or needing to shift resources.
Sometimes certain channels need multiple reviewers, so that can be another reason why your channel
is taking so long.
And YouTube also States explicitly that there is nothing that you can do to speed up the
process.
I think I may have found a way around and I wanted to see exactly how long this has
been taking for other people.
Were people getting monetizeT faster than that?
Longer than that, around four weeks.
So I went on Twitter and these are what I found.
I found that some people had been monetized within a few weeks, some even a few days,
but then there were other people who had been waiting months to get reviewed.
And personally I don't think that's acceptable, but that's what it is.
So I also noticed that a ton of people were tweeting @TeamYouTube and it seemed like they
had this script saying, "Hey, this is what I have.
These are my hours, I've got this, here's my channel."
And from what I can tell @TeamYouTube not responding well to those.
They were just saying, "Hey, sorry, we're backed up due to you know what", so whoever
initially told people to do that hack because it seemed like people were copying and pasting
this template into their tweets and tweeting @TeamYouTube.
It does not seem to be working so I would not recommend that.
Now all that being said, those are just people who were tweeting about it on Twitter.
If you are waiting for your applications reviewed, let me know in the comments below because
I am really curious to see how long other people on YouTube have been waiting as well.
Now, in my case, it took me six months to be monetized and you better believe that as
soon as I hit those requirements I submitted my application and then I waited.
But even worse, right as I was submitting the application for that final step that says
we're reviewing your process.
There was a big banner that said, "Hey, due to pandemic, which shall not be named.
The review process for the YouTube partner program is going to take a lot longer."
So you can imagine how deflating that is, not only for me but for anyone else who was
eligible to be monetized at this time.
So I waited patiently like the good girl that I am, and after a week I said, you know what,
there's gotta be something I can do to speed this along.
So I went to good old Google and I did some research and I came across this little hack
and I'll include the link to the original source down below.
And I just decided, well, it doesn't hurt to try, right?
Well I did.
And then just three hours later I got an email saying that my channel was approved for monetization.
So I'm going to go in and I'm going to show you this hack right now.
But before I do, I'm just going to preface this with saying this may or may not work.
It doesn't seem like a coincidence that I did this one thing and then three hours later
I got the approval.
Especially when going to Twitter and talking to other people.
They have been waiting weeks if not months to get approved.
So since I had only been there a week and I did this, I am pretty confident that it
does work.
All right, so now I'm going to show you exactly what I did.
What is this secret hack that got my application reviewed in just three hours, high level?
What the hack is is you're using these send feedback button in the YouTube creator studio
and using that to send a message to the team at YouTube to let them know that, "Hey, I've
been waiting for this.
Is there anything that you still need for me?"
So I'm going to walk you through this right now so you can see right here I'm on my YouTube
studio dashboard.
I'm on the analytics page, which is where you are going to want to be because you're
going to have to send them some screenshots to prove what you have done.
Now the send feedback button is located all the way at the bottom on the left hand side.
But before we even hit that button, what I want to do is you want to change the timeline
for your analytics to be the last 365 days.
They want to see that 4,000 hours of public watch time during the last 12 months and they
also want to see 1000 subscribers.
So this right here, the main snapshot of your analytics page will give you everything that
you need to do.
So you can see right here, my watch time is definitely 4,000 hours over the past year.
And my subscribers, you don't want to use this subscribers.
This is subscribers you have gained within the past year.
You actually want to go over here, which is your real-time subscriber number.
So since we have those things, let's go ahead and send our feedback.
So you hit send feedback.
So what the send feedback page is used for, it's meant to give feedback to the product
team for YouTube studio.
So it's going to go to the product managers who are then going to collect that feedback
and they're going to use that to improve the products or be able to detect bugs or things
that are wrong.
And I know this myself because I was a product manager for a large tech company myself, so
I am very familiar with these feedback collecting mechanisms and I'll be honest, for some companies
this just goes nowhere.
Nobody checks it.
It's just kind of a black hole.
And other companies are really on top of their feedback because they want to know what is
working and what is not working so they can get ahead of problems.
So the first thing that you need to do is you need to put a little blurb about what
this feedback is.
So I'm not going to bore you watching me type this, but basically what you want to say is,
"Hey, I recently met the requirements for the YouTube partner program.
I have over 4,000 hours of watch time, 1000 subscribers.
I submitted my application on X date.
I have been waiting X weeks or months.
I am just checking in to see if there is anything else that your team needs from me to review
my application.
Also, here's a screenshot verifying these numbers."
All right, so I wrote that it's just very simple, concise.
You just need to state the facts.
You don't need to get emotional about it, don't get mad about it.
Just say, "Hey, checking in, here's the numbers you need."
So next you need to go in and submit a screenshot of what you were seeing.
And the cool thing about this screenshot is that you can highlight different sections
on your page.
So click in this middle button where it says click to highlight or hide info.
And you're going to click on the little yellow section right here cause this will be highlighting
different sections of your screen.
So first I want to highlight my number of subscribers and you can actually just hover
over certain sections and it will already highlight that for you.
You can just click that.
But I like to highlight the whole thing.
So next I'm going to highlight my watch time and then I'm also going to highlight the number
of days just so they can see that this screenshot that I'm sending actually is from the last
365 days so they can then see that date.
Now if there is any private information that you need to hide, you can click this box and
you can hide certain things so they can't see your name or whatnot, but again, I don't
think that is really helpful and that's not really necessary because they know your account.
The only other thing that you can do is you can highlight your name and your channel just
so they know your channel names so they can just have everything that they need all in
one place.
What channel is this for?
Did they hit the requirements?
Was it within the timeframe?
Yes.
Check, check, check, check.
Okay, great.
Once you are done with that, just click done.
There isn't anything else that you need to send because it already is going to send a
screenshot of your page that you are looking at right now in YouTube studio.
Now after that, it's plain and simple.
You just hit send.
I'm not going to hit send because I already did this, but once I did hit send, I was very
surprised that just three hours later I got an email that said, congratulations, you have
been accepted to the YouTube Partner Program and you better believe.
As soon as I got that email, I started putting ads on my videos right away.
Now if you do do this, please don't spam or abuse this.
Don't send it multiple of these a day or every other day.
Just send the feedback one time, see if it works.
If not, then you're going to have to wait.
You do not want to be on the bad side of YouTube by being super annoying and then they're just
going to reject your application altogether.
Just be a good person.
Just people like don't spam them.
Don't bother them.
Just do it once and hopefully it'll work for you.
So just to recap, if your YouTube partner program application seems to be stuck in review,
there are three things that you can do.
You can just wait it out and wait and wait and wait.
You can tweet team YouTube and try to get a response, but most likely they're not gonna
respond or you can try this.
Send feedback hack.
In my case, option three worked great for me.
It bumped me straight to the line and I was approved just three hours later.
Pretty good, right?
So I hope this really broke down the review process, the timelines, the expectations for
the YouTube partner program so that way you can finally get monetized.
Now, if you tried the little hack that I talked about in this video and it worked for you
or it didn't work for you, let me know in the comments below.
I want to see, did you do it?
Did it work for you?
And if it worked, how long did it take for you to get approved?
Be sure to give this video a like and subscribe to join the tribe.
I talk about YouTube and social media marketing tips on my channel and that's all I have for
today.
I'll see you next time.