How To Make Money On YouTube – Partner Program

The first revenue stream for how to make money off YouTube you’ll likely explore is ads. Whether you want to earn money on YouTube without creating videos or as a content creator, joining the YouTube Partner Program and setting up monetization is a vital step.

You’ll have to agree to follow all of YouTube’s monetization policies and live in a country or region where the YouTube Partner Program is available. Then you can apply for monetization once you’ve hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year.

Here’s how to get paid on YouTube by enabling monetization:

1. Sign in to the YouTube account you want to monetize.
2. Click the icon for your account in the top right corner.
3. Click YouTube Studio.
4. In the left menu, select Other Features > Monetization.
5. Read and agree to the YouTuber Partner Program terms.
6. Create a new Google AdSense account, or connect an existing one to your channel. (You need an AdSense account to get paid.)
7. Set your monetization preferences.

Once that’s done, head back to the dashboard and click the Analytics tab on the left side. From there, you’ll need to choose Revenue from the tabs at the top, then scroll down to the chart Monthly Estimated Revenue to get an idea of your predicted YouTube revenue.

How many views do you need to get paid on YouTube?

The number of views you get doesn’t correlate to revenue earned. If your video gets thousands of views but no one watches or clicks the ad, you won’t make any money. This is because of YouTube’s criteria for billing advertisers: a viewer must click an ad or watch the ad in full (10, 15, or 30 seconds) for you to get paid.

However, with the release of YouTube Premium, you no longer need to rely on advertisers to create engaging or enticing ads to earn revenue.

What is YouTube Premium?

YouTube Premium is a paid membership program that allows fans to watch and support their favorite content creators without ads. For creators, not much changes, as they will get paid for content consumed by non-members on YouTube along with content on YouTube Premium.

Creators are paid for YouTube Premium based on how much members watch their content. Consider revenue earned from YouTube Premium as a secondary revenue stream in addition to what you’re already earning through ads.

While it’s easy to set up, earning money through advertising as a YouTube Partner is far from the most lucrative revenue stream you can create for yourself.

Why you should look beyond ads for revenue

YouTube recently received a lot of backlash due to its decision to be more transparent about advertising on the platform and what qualifies as “advertiser friendly” content.

Essentially, many creators feared that, due to the nature of their content, they would lose out on the ad revenue that helps support their channel.

According to YouTube, your content could get excluded from ad revenue if it includes:

• Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor
• Violence, including displays of serious injury and events related to violent extremism
• Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity, and vulgar language
• Promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use, and abuse of such items
• Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters, and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown

But the reality is that YouTube has been demonetizing content that it doesn’t deem advertiser friendly since 2012 via an automated process, without warning and without the content creator’s knowledge.

Now, the situation is actually better, as creators are notified when their content is flagged and can contest any time they feel a video was mistakenly excluded from YouTube’s advertising network.

Advertising might be a common means of generating passive income for creators, but the trade-off is that YouTube’s parent company, Google, gets to keep around a 45% share of ad revenue.

In short, YouTubers should explore other revenue streams to sustain their creative hobby—and avoid just zeroing in on how to start a YouTube channel and make money that way.