This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
When can I start getting paid for YouTube views? Hey friends, welcome back to Side Hustle School. Today's question comes from Brian in Dallas. He's eager to start making content for YouTube and he wants to know when he can start getting paid for his efforts, for his efforts and for the people who view his videos. So you're gonna learn a little bit about the requirements for monetization, a couple of strategies to grow a channel quickly and some tips to maximize earnings.
I'll try to give that to you in a very brief action-packed episode, always something you can learn, an idea you can pursue, some inspiration or just motivation to proceed with the idea you're already working on, which is great. I wanna help our listeners go from idea to income. So let's talk about this particular question and my answer in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hey, it's Ryan from Dallas. So I wanna make content for YouTube and I'm wondering when I can start getting paid for my views, like what are the requirements to monetize a YouTube channel and how can I increase my chances of meeting those requirements quickly?
Any advice on growing my channel and maximizing my earnings would be much appreciated. Oh, and I've been listening for years. [Music]
All right, Ryan. Well, yesterday we talked a bit about threads. Let's today focus on YouTube and YouTube is a bit different.
Some of the principles we talked about yesterday are the same in terms of posting consistently, understanding the algorithm and so on. But for YouTube, YouTube has been around a lot longer so we know a lot more about it and it's a little bit more predictable in some ways. So to start earning money from your YouTube views, you need to meet the requirements for the YouTube Partner Program, YPP. This might change in the future, but for now you need 1,000 subscribers. You need 4,000 watch hours on your videos within the past 12 months.
So that's not just from one person, of course. It means cumulatively you need to have 4,000 hours watched. You need to set up an AdSense account. That's pretty simple. You can do it in just a few minutes.
And then of course you need to comply with YouTube's policies and guidelines. Not terribly difficult unless your videos are about a controversial or provocative topic. So once you meet those requirements, you can apply directly through the YouTube account. You'll automatically see a message about that or it should be easy to find once you meet those requirements. And both to get there and to go beyond, you want to optimize your video titles.
Titles, descriptions, thumbnails makes a huge difference. A lot of creators say that the thumbnail image is the single most important decision or the single most important factor in which videos get clicked and watched compared to others. You want to engage with your audience, respond to comments, ask for feedback. Always encourage people to subscribe. This is why you see this in every YouTube video.
People are like, "Hey, click the subscribe button," because that actually works and is really important. The more people take action on your videos, the more those videos will be shown to other viewers. So that's what you want to do. And then in terms of maximizing the earnings, ad revenue is going to be your primary source of income. So make sure monetization on all your videos is enabled.
There's an option for that. There are some different ad formats, so you can experiment a bit. And then you usually want to have longer videos. For YouTube, YouTube rewards longer videos in the algorithm, and then also longer videos can show more ads. So as you create and optimize and grow your channel, if you do all those things right and people are interested in your content, then you will make more money.
So get those thousand subscribers, get those 4,000 watch hours and see what happens next. See what you can do to grow and iterate along the way. Brian, thanks for the question. Best of luck, listeners. If you have a question or a comment, sidehustleschool.com/questions or just sidehustleschool.com.
We'll continue to feature listener content throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch and grow their projects. Thanks so much for being out there. New episode coming out tomorrow. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
