How to Monetize a YouTube Channel in 2022?

YouTube is the second most visited website in the world 😱 and creators are more popular than ever. If you have made the leap to create your own YouTube channel, congratulations, you’re joining a community of millions of creators sharing content every day to entertain, educate, and inspire! ✨

In 2021, YouTube celebrated reaching the milestone of 2 million creators in its monetization program. You may wonder, “when am I going to make money from YouTube”? Let’s dig into YouTube monetization options for creators in 2022 👷

YouTube Partners Program

What is the YouTube Partners Program?

Launched in 2007, YouTube Partners Program is a selective monetization program allowing creators to get a share of YouTube ad revenues. Based on the number of ad views you’re getting on your content and your RPM (revenue per thousand impressions), you will receive regular payments from the platform. There are ways to boost your RPM, which is influenced by a large number of factors: content category, videos average length, watch time, audience characteristics, engagement, etc. For now, let’s focus on what are the criteria to get selected in the program 💪

Criteria for Eligibility to Apply to the YouTube Partners Program

• Eligible country of residence 
• 1,000 subscribers acquired in any amount of time
• 4,000 hours of watched time in the last 12 months (excluding YouTube shorts and deleted/private/unlisted videos)
• 2-step verification turned on the Google Account associated with your YouTube channel for security purposes
• No active Community Guidelines strikes
• Compliance with YouTube channel monetization policies
• Get a Google AdSense account linked to your YouTube channel (you should definitely start creating an account before hitting the thresholds above to save time)

Strikes: Checklist to Avoid Community Guidelines Strikes and Copyright Strikes

Most conditions to apply to the YouTube Partners Program are pretty straightforward. Only, when it comes to avoiding strikes, things get a bit trickier. We’ve summarized YouTube’s main reasons to strike content so you can avoid them at all costs!

Community Guidelines Strikes

• No spam, deceptive practices, and scams (inconsistencies between description, thumbnails and content, fake engagement like sub4sub content, impersonation, etc.)
• No content aiming at selling illegal or regulated goods
• No sensitive content
• No nudity and sexual content unless purpose is educational, documentary, scientific or artistic 
• No self-harm content
• No thumbnails with pornographic, disturbing, or vulgar visuals
• Ensure child safety – no content that endangers the emotional and physical well-being of minors
• No harmful or dangerous content
• No hate speech
• No harassment and cyberbullying
• No misinformation

Copyright Strikes

YouTube introduces their copyrights policy as follows: 

“Creators should only upload videos that they have made or that they’re authorized to use. That means they should not upload videos they didn’t make or use content in their videos that someone else owns the copyright to, such as music tracks, snippets of copyrighted programs, or videos made by other users, without necessary authorizations” 

In order to avoid copyright infringement strikes, follow these simple rules:

• No use of copyrighted images, videos or visuals unless you have permission (giving credit is NOT sufficient)
• No use of copyrighted music or lyrics without permission

What happens when you get a strike?

If you get a copyright strike from YouTube, you will be notified. It is important that you resolve it as soon as you can. If you get 3 active copyright strikes, YouTube can decide to terminate your channel, delete all your videos and forbid you from creating any channel in the future ❌

Community Guidelines strikes will also be notified to you, YouTube will tell you what content was removed, which policies it violated, how it affects your channel and what you can do next. First violation of community guidelines should result in a simple warning, but YouTube reserves the right to terminate your channel directly in case of severe abuse. 

The following strikes will be associated with temporarily restricted use of YouTube, and 3 strikes within a 90-day period will lead to permanent removal of your channel 😵

Applying to the YouTube Partners Program

Once you’ve hit the thresholds, you will be eligible to apply to the YouTube Partners Program! We strongly encourage you to set up your Google AdSense account before being eligible to speed up the process. 

Application will be reviewed by YouTube within a 30-day period. If you’re accepted, you will need to manually turn on the ads and you’re ready to roll! 👩‍🚀

What to do if my application is rejected?

Don’t beat yourself up! You can reapply after 30 days, and you can use this time to review your channel to ensure your next application is successful. A few pieces of advice here:

• Review your content (videos, titles, descriptions, thumbnails and tags) against  YouTube monetisation policies and Community Guidelines
• Delete or edit videos and thumbnails which may violate YouTube’s policies
• Amend your titles, descriptions and tags accordingly

Maintain your YouTube Partner status

To maintain your YouTube Partner status, stay away from strikes and keep your channel active! 🏃‍♂️YouTube may turn off monetization on channels that haven’t uploaded a video or posted to the Community tab for 6 months or more.

YouTube Shorts

In 2021, YouTube introduced its first Creator Funds, the YouTube Short Fund, aiming at boosting short-form content on their platform. YouTube pledged $100M for creators. Let’s look at how to get a piece of it! 💰

How does the YouTube Shorts Fund work?

Every month, YouTube directly reaches out to creators which are eligible for a bonus based on their channel’s Shorts’ performance in the previous month. 

YouTube doesn’t disclose a formula to figure out how much you can make, calculations are constantly changing so it is quite difficult to get accurate data. YouTube states that the level of performance needed is based on various factors, including the location of your viewers and the overall growth of Shorts.

How to be eligible for a bonus from the YouTube Shorts Fund?

YouTube Shorts bonuses are available to all content creators, no need to be a part of the YouTube Partner Program. Here’s the list of criteria:

• Eligible country of residence 
• Get a Google AdSense account linked to your YouTube channel
• Minimum age is 13 for U.S. citizens, majority is required in all other countries
• Compliance with Community Guidelines, YouTube channel monetization policies, and Copyright Policy
• Video should not have a watermark or logo from another social media platform
• Video should be original, videos from other channels or media (TV shows, movies) will be ineligible
• Channel needs to have uploaded at least one eligible Short in the last 180 days

YouTube Channel Membership

YouTube Channel Memberships are monthly paid subscriptions to your channel. It is a way for your fans to reward you and get access to exclusive perks. You can enable different levels of memberships which will give your members access to different perks depending on the pricing, such as exclusive content, custom emojis, badges or live chat access. Pricing will vary depending on the creator and the country, in all cases, YouTube gets a 30% share.

How to be eligible?

To access this feature, your channel must meet certain requirements. You need to be over 18, live in an eligible country of residence, make content that is not “made for kids” and have at least 1,000 subscribers.

YouTube Super Features

If you’re doing livestreams on YouTube and are part of the YouTube Partners Program, Super Features can be an extra revenue stream for you and a way for you and your community to connect. Your fans can simply buy these Super Chats and Super Stickers. 

Super Chats allows your audience to get their message featured in the livestream chat, and Super Stickers are fun stickers that are pinned to the top of the chat so the creator can notice them.

In order to activate these Super Features, you just have to turn them on in your Monetization tab. And of course, get on with your livestreams!

YouTube Premium

Wait, if there are no ads, how are creators getting paid? No worries, revenue from YouTube Premium membership fees is distributed to YouTube Partner Program video Creators, based on how much members watch their content.

YouTube BrandConnect

Another YouTube invention, with yet another way to monetize. YouTube BrandConnect connects brands with YouTube creators for their branded content campaigns. The advantage for creators is that they can choose who they are working with and retain creative control!

At the moment, YouTube BrandConnect is only available in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. Only creators monetizing with the YouTube Partners Program are eligible. Unfortunately, YouTube BrandConnect is invite-only and will select channels, let’s hope it gets more accessible soon! 🙏

We hope you enjoyed this article and got some useful information out of it! If you want to learn more about ways to make money as a creator, read our article on the topic here!