Earn Money on YouTube!
We’ve been talking about using YouTube to do business the easy way by applying monetization strategies that help you to turn viewership into profits from sales driven through the YouTube platform.
But let’s not forget about channel monetization, the main income strategy offered by YouTube to content creators, which you can leverage to generate an additional income stream from ads that run on the videos that you upload to your channel.
How Does Monetization Work?
Channel monetization is a revenue sharing model implemented by YouTube to encourage creators to upload the highest quality content possible to the platform.
The more a creator is able to engage viewers and increase watch time, the more money they can make.
And it works like this: You follow a series of simple steps to apply for monetization, and once your channel is approved, ads will start running on your videos. Each time a viewer completes watching an ad for a certain period of time, the advertiser pays YouTube for the ad, and you get a cut from that payment.
Things To Know Before Enabling Monetization
Enabling monetization is a great way to supplement your YouTube business income, but YouTube is going to review your channel before enabling you for monetization.
These are some things you need to know in order to prepare your channel for the review process if you want to start earning ad revenue as soon as possible:
– Create videos that encourage prolonged watch times. This is, videos that are entertaining and that keep the viewer watching until the end. In general, you have to make videos that are between 6 to 25 minutes long, depending on the topic.
– If you’re using stock footage and audio, make sure to have your licenses up to date, and to know exactly where you are getting your stock assets from. This will help you avoid duplication claims as a reason for non-approval.
– Your channel needs to have at least 4,000 combined view hours and a minimum of 1,000 subscribers to get monetized. These numbers aren’t difficult to achieve if you produce quality content. It is also necessary to do an SEO audit on your published videos so you can optimize your content for maximum visibility, which will help you reach those numbers more easily.
– Avoid encouraging viewers to do a “sub for sub”. YouTube will deny your application if you use “sub for sub” as an engagement strategy. Instead, call viewers to subscribe, like, and turn on notifications.
– Make sure to review all guidelines on the “YouTube channel monetization policies document” that you’ll find here: YouTube channel monetization policies.
Enabling Monetization
Alright folks, now that you’ve prepared to apply for monetization, here is what you’ll do, step by step:
– Set up an AdSense account if you haven’t already. AdSense is the ad revenue share program for publishers and creators, and that’s the platform where YouTube will process your payments. You can create an AdSense account at Google AdSense.
– Sign in to your YouTube account and channel that you want to monetize, click on the profile menu button, and then click on the “creator studio” button.
– Click on the “monetization” tab, which you’ll find on the left sidebar menu.
– If you’re eligible to apply for the monetization program, click on the “start” button inside the “review partner program terms” card, then confirm that you agree to the terms and conditions.
– Click on the “start” button inside the “sign up for Google AdSense” card and sign in to your approved AdSense account.
Now all you have to do is to wait for approval, which can take 30 days or less. In that time, keep uploading awesome content and engaging with your audience.
What If I’m Not Approved?
There’s a certain number of applications that don’t get approved for one reason or another, but you don’t have to worry!
If you’re not approved at first, simply examine the reasons the company gives you for non-approval, take the necessary steps to fix them, and wait for an additional 30 days from the day of non-approval to submit a new application.
Once You Get Approved
Celebrate! Post a “thank you” video and give a shout out to your most active and most engaged viewers, and keep creating awesome videos!