RAPID MONETIZATION METHOD: How To Get Monetized on YouTube ASAP

If you want YouTube to pay you for publishing videos, but you are not yet monetized, then this article is for you, because I’m going to show you exactly how to become monetized as quickly as possible. PLUS if you want a sneak peek behind the scenes into how much we’ve made in the past year with our small channel here on YouTube, you’ll want to read all the way through to the end.

How Does Monetization Work?

YouTube runs off of content created by people like you and me, and they make money selling ads on the videos that you or I create.

The great thing about YouTube is they split the ad revenue with creators 45/55.

YouTube keeps 45% of all advertising on your videos, and you get the remaining 55%.

??Thank you, YouTube.

But before that can happen, your channel has to qualify to become monetized first by passing some very specific requirements.

YouTube requirements for Monetization are simple:

• 1,000 subscribers (no time limit)
• 4,000 hours of watch time in the past 12 months

I want to clarify this a bit for you, because when I first heard these requirements I immediately looked at our channel’s analytics. From the data I saw, I figured we were totally qualified to request monetization.

What I didn’t realize was I was looking at how many minutes had been watched, not hours, so ensure you pay attention to the total watch hours, not minutes; that’s what matters.

Good news though is that live streaming does count toward your watchtime so you can use that to your benefit to boost your numbers.

Another point to consider is that watch hours gained through private or unlisted videos, or even deleted videos, or through TrueView ad campaigns, do not count toward your watch time. If you choose to delete a video on your account, then its watch time is actually going to be subtracted from your total count.

What’s a TrueView Campaign?

A TrueView Campaign is when you run ads to a video on your channel.

You can set up this campaign so that your video is an ad before another video, it could show up as a related video ad on the right sidebar, or even an in-stream ad.

You cannot use this as a tool to “buy” watchtime for your channel.

Once your channel has qualified and monetization has been turned on and is running, it will stay active on your channel even if you do lose some subscribers and possibly dip back under 1,000 subscribers, or if you possibly even dip below the 4,000 hours watch time in the following years.

However, don’t take that for granted and get lazy! YouTube can remove monetization at their discretion if you become inactive, or even stop posting for upwards of 6 months… so make sure you remain an active content creator.

Then once you meet these thresholds, you’ll need to follow a few steps to have your channel officially become monetized.

Set Up Google AdSense

The first thing you will need to do is set up your Google AdSense account.

In order for you to activate your AdSense account, Google will need to verify your bank account by doing a small deposit into your account (just a few cents) so that you can verify what that deposit amount was.

After you’ve verified this with AdSense, you’ll need to wait for Google to manually review your channel to ensure you’re a good citizen of YouTube and sticking to community guidelines.

So now that you know what is required to qualify for monetization, let’s break down the numbers, starting with watch time, so you understand how to actually reach these requirements as fast as possible.

Let’s do a few calculations.

You need 4,000 watch hours in 12 months:

4,000 (hours) x 60 (minutes) = 240,000 minutes

That’s 240,000 minutes of watch time that your channel will need in a 12 month timeframe to meet the monetization requirement.

Let’s break this down in some more manageable numbers so you’re not left feeling overwhelmed.

Let’s say you’re producing 10 minute videos with an average view duration of 35%.

That means each video on your channel has an average watch time of 3.5 minutes.

If you create one video every week, you’ll have 52 videos/year.

If you spread out 240,000 minutes of watch time between those 52 videos, that’s 4,616 minutes of view time per video.

240,000 (watch time minutes) ?52 videos = 4615.38

And, at 3.5 minutes of watch time per video, you would need about 1,319 views per video in order to reach your monetization goal.

Now if you’re doing two videos a week, that’s 104 videos per year, and only 660 views per video to reach the 4,000 hours of watch time.

And maybe that still seems like a lot for a small channel, and maybe it is, but there are ways to make this a lot more doable which I will share with you shortly.

Now obviously those are just rough numbers. Your channel views and watch time won’t ever work out perfectly orchestrated like this, but it gives you an idea of how this works.

You’ll likely have fewer views on your first videos, and you can also rapidly just blow past that 660 views as well. These are simply estimates. Every channel will experience this differently.

Now, feel free to play with the numbers a bit. For example if you only get 330 views per video, then you need 208 videos, or four videos a week to qualify for monetization.

As mentioned earlier, there isn’t a time limit for how long you can take to get your first 1,000 subscribers.

Most channels get 1,000 subscribers long before they reach the watch time requirements. As long as you’re on track to hit your watch time requirement, you’ll likely have enough subscribers by the time that happens.

What It Really Takes To Monetize

So the question is, how do you meet these requirements faster?

Well, the simple answer is that you need more watch time, and there’s a few easy ways to do that.

One is pretty obvious create more videos.

Instead of producing one video a week, try making at least two videos if you can manage it.

Depending on the type of videos that you create, you may even be able to do a video everyday.

Another way that you can increase watch time is to simply produce longer videos.

If your channel is getting an average view percentage of 30% — 40% on your videos, and you’re creating typically five minutes videos, you may want to try testing out what would happen if you created 8–10 minute long videos.

If your average watch percentage stays the same at 30% — 40%, you’ll be getting twice as much watch time from one single video.

However, If your average percentage goes down, and the view time still drops off around the 3 minute mark, then it’s probably better just to stick with the shorter videos and produce more of them instead.

Create Binge Worthy Content

The last tip for getting more watch time- Create videos that are meant to be watched in a series, and really pushes from one video to the next.

If you create a series of videos that people in your audience will like and want to binge watch, you can entice them to keep watching the next one at the end of your videos, showcasing the next binge-worthy video on your end screen to encourage your viewers to go to the next video in the series.

This may dramatically improve your watch time.

Now if you’re sitting here thinking, “Hmm, that’s great, but I need more views on my videos to make any of this happen…”

Well, don’t fret your pretty little head! After I give you the behind the scenes on how much we’ve made in just over a year with YouTube monetization, I’m gonna point you to a video to watch next that really lays out how to maximize your views on your videos with very specific, simple steps that you can take and implement today to get more views on your videos.

The Big Reveal

How much money did we make from YouTube monetization after just about one year’s time?

Well, here are our analytics on our channel.

Now we first became monetized mid-November of 2018. And we started off pretty slowly putting our videos out onto YouTube.

We have only monetized a handful of videos, and only monetized for a couple of ads.

It was very slow, and we gradually opened it up after that. So obviously if we had turned on all ads right away, we would have earned more..

So over the past 15 months we’ve made around $5,200 bucks from our ad revenue. Honestly, that’s not a small chunk of change for our small YouTube channel.

Now if you want to learn some super simple ways to get more views on your videos, check out THIS VIDEO now. I’ll see you there!