I can’t believe this!
My YouTube channel is FINALLY monetized!
I reached the 4,000 watch hours.
While I’ve had this channel for many years, it was a complete struggle to grow it.
No matter how much I put YouTube first in my to-do list, that task just never came to fruition.
I would make excuses and just not film or edit a video that day.
But, this year something changed in me.
This year I decided I wanted to challenge myself.
And I did and it resulted in my channel being eligible for Youtube ads!
*happy dance*
So, if you have a YouTube channel and are looking to monetize it – get 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours – then learn how I did this in one month!
How to Monetize a YouTube Channel – My Story
Before I go into my story, let’s look at the different tiers you can get monetized on Youtube.
There are three ways Youtube offers content creators to earn income:
Ad Revenue: This is where it all started for me. Once you hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, you can apply for the YouTube Partner Program and start earning money from ads displayed on your videos. It’s an incredible feeling when you see those first few cents rolling in!
Channel Memberships: Once you have a loyal fanbase – minimum of 500 subscribers and 3,000 watch hours – you can offer channel memberships. Your subscribers can pay a monthly fee for exclusive perks like badges, emojis, and access to members-only content. It’s a great way to build a community and provide extra value to your most dedicated viewers.
Super Chat and Super Stickers: If you’re into live streaming, Super Chat and Super Stickers are fantastic ways to monetize. Viewers can pay to highlight their messages or send cool stickers during your live streams, making their interactions stand out and adding a fun element to your streams.
I enabled these for my channel but haven’t done a live yet!
Are there other ways to make money on Youtube?
Yes!
- Affiliate marketing
- Sell your digital products
- Sponsored content
- Merch
- Market your discord or Pateron channel
In March of this year, I decided to challenge myself to daily videos.
This was piggybacking on my other challenge I was doing for my course students.
I was hosting the updated Book Clients in 30 Days Challenge and for that challenge I wanted to come into the private Facebook group and go Live.
And because I was showing my face, I had to set up my room for filming and get ready too (nice outfit and makeup).
So, with all that taken care of, it was easy for me to film more videos after I went Live on Facebook.
I was good for the first week and a half.
I batched my videos and still had time to blog and write for my clients!
But then the weekend hit and my twins got sick the following two weeks.
Because of all of that, I didn’t have time to batch my videos, and I even missed upload days.
In total, I missed two or three days and all of them were on the weekend.
I told myself I would film a YouTube Short but, for some reason, I couldn’t even do that consistently.
The weekends are quite busy at my house with hockey tournaments, dancing, skiing, play dates, chores and grocery shopping.
I really had no time to myself on the weekends and that resulted in me not being able to film or batch videos.
But, all in all, I posted daily for 30 days!
This dramatically increased my watch hours and pushed me to the 4,000 watch hours! ?
It took a few days to show this but it did and, so far I’ve made $.88!
How exciting!
I can’t wait to see how profitable this channel will be when compared to my other Youtube channel for freelancers.
That channel has fluctuated in income so want to see if my Twins Mommy channel is more stable!
And this is the PERFECT timing to get monetized too!
Why?
Because of the terrible Google Core Update.
People’s sites are tanking and they are losing money.
Some of my sites are losing traffic too and it sucks, but with this new income stream, I’m hopeful that things are looking good.
Couple that with digital products and marketing on Pinterest and I will have a thriving business again!
What You Can Do To Get Your Channel Monetized
Okay!
So if you have a YouTube channel and you’re struggling to monetize it, let’s go through what you can do.
I will focus mostly on achieving 4,000 watch hours (and not on getting 1,000 subscribers).
The method I used helped a lot and is a viable option for sure.
1. Post Long Form Videos Daily
I would focus on creating long form videos and not shorts for this methods, since, with shorts, you need like 10 million views to get monetized.
The best ways to do this consistently is to batch as many videos you can that first week.
Try to record 3-4 videos per day so that you can edit one video a day until you have time to edit two videos at a time.
I won’t lie – editing will take you the longest but I hear CapCut can speed it up by using AI to cut dead space and reduncies.
I have used CapCut but find it harder than working with Final Cut Pro.
You can also try doing a YouTube short for the weekends if you find that you’re busy on those days like me!
Now, something I haven’t really discussed is what to publish.
Well, there are many YouTube niche ideas out there, but try to think of three content pillars that align with your blog.
For example, if you blog about motherhood and parenting your video content pillars can be:
- Vlog style Day in the Life
- Heart-to-heart conversations about raising children
- How you stay organized/home decor
For my channel, I have several different options:
- Blog topics
- YouTube topics
- Make money topics (digital products)
- Tech tutorials
- AI
I can tap into any of those ideas to create a video or blend them together like doing an AI tech tutorial on using ChatGPT!
And from there, it’s just developing a habit to stay consistent.
For me, I use my bedroom to record videos so I just make my bed every day and get dressed and all that every day and have my topic already ready.
2. Go Live Every Day
A strategy I’ve been seeing is to go Live every day. It’s also called live streaming too.
Nala Wright is a new YouTuber (and new mom) and she decided to go Live every day for the month of March.
Each of her lives are over an hour long and she would do them late at night – sometimes at midnight!
And guess what?
One of her hour long lives went ‘viral!’ She currently has 23k views on that.
During this live she generated 1,000 subscribers (when she started she has around 400 subscribers) and for hours she NOW has close to 4,000 watch hours (around 3,000).
Amazing!
While you may feel that’s a lot of time for a video and talking, you don’t have to do any editing!
Editing can take 3-5 hours at a time (especially if you add text and graphics).
With this method it’s just an hour a day instead of 3-5 hours a day for batching and editing.
So, that’s a quick option to reach 4,000 watch hours on YouTube!
But, before you jump on this easy YouTube strategy for more watch hours, know that you should also have a library of some ‘regular’ videos as most people won’t go directly to your Live tab on your Channel.
So, you do need some videos to populate when someone goes to your Channel.
3. Be Consistent and Stick to It
Before I did my daily posting for a month challenge, I was posting around 3 videos a week.
It was sort of consistent, meaning, I would do that for a few weeks and then stop and then try again.
This is a MUCH slower approach but it’s a much DOABLE one.
Opt for publishing 1 video a week.
You can do it on the weekends.
Once you have a plan to do this, try recording two videos and publishing one a week so you can start creating a backlog of videos to publish.
From there, you can start to publish 2x or 3x a week.
What I do is batch record 2-3 videos on Monday, publish on Monday and schedule for Wednesday or Friday.
But I have two channels so I end up filming 4 videos and publishing 2x a week.
I’ll have to play around with that.
Are You on YouTube?
Getting monetized on YouTube gave me more excitement to create videos for my channel and get all my income streams in order!
Are you on YouTube? Share you channel with me and let’s grow together.
