Hey guys, Are you trying to figure out if your channel can monetize yet? Or maybe you’re planning to start a YouTube channel, and you want to know what goals to target. Perhaps you’re in the same boat as me – you were monetizing but had that taken away earlier in 2018 (doh!). Let’s talk about How to Know if You Qualify for YouTube Monetization.
YouTube Monetization Rules 2018
According to YouTube:
On January 16, 2018, we announced new eligibility requirements for the YouTube Partner Program. Once a channel reaches 4,000 watch hours in the previous 12 months and 1,000 subscribers it will be reviewed to join the program.
This is part of an effort to strengthen our requirements for monetization so spammers, impersonators, and other bad actors can’t hurt our ecosystem or take advantage of creators, while continuing to reward those who make our platform great. Get more details on the YouTube Creator Blog.
You can read more about this on YouTube’s article, “How to earn money from your videos.”
2 Monetization Eligibility Requirements
So, the eligibility requirements for monetization on YouTube via the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) are:
- 1,000 subscribers
- 4,000 watch hours over the last 12 months
You will need to meet both of these requirements. It’s not one or the other. Nice try.
Subscriber Requirement: 1k
You can easily check how many YouTube subscribers you have from your YouTube channel page or from your YouTube admin dashboard, though you must be logged in for the latter.
Watch Time Requirement: 4,000 Hours
The watch time is a little harder to get. You’ll need 4,000 watch hours (not minutes!) over the last 12 months.
How to Calculate YouTube Watch Hours
You’ll need to be logged in to access your YouTube analytics.
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Here’s how to calculate your YouTube watch hours:
- Go to your YouTube Analytics and click on Watch Time in the left navigation panel
- Select “Last 365 days” in the upper right date selection drop-down
- Get your Watch Time (Minutes) in the upper left section above your watch time chart
- Divide your Watch Time (Minutes) by 60 to get your Watch Time (Hours) aka Watch Hours
Currently, YouTube Analytics only displays your watch time in minutes. So, you must do your own calculation to get your Watch Hours.
And that’s it! It’s pretty simple once you know where to look.
Now, actually getting people to watch your videos…that can be a bit more challenging.
So yea, let’s hit 1k and make it rainnnnnn!
Approval for Monetization Process
Once you’ve met the minimum YPP eligibility requirements, there is still a separate approval process you must go through before your channel can monetize. To truly cover this would require a separate blog post, but you can read about how to apply to the program on this YouTube help article.
Side Note on Monetization – There Are Other Options
While there’s no single path to success with monetization, I seem to hear the same messages from the influencers I follow: diversify your income streams.
Most of them even say that ads are only a small fraction of their actual income.
So while you’re waiting on hitting your eligibility requirements or for your channel to be approved for the YPP, take a look at affiliate marketing, creating your own products, and building an email list. The latter being not profitable directly but a key to future monetization and community growth.
Not starting an email list sooner cost me hundreds of thousands of my community. If you haven’t started one already, there’s no time like now to do so. Get on it! 😉
Further Reading
I’ve only started blogging here on Diana Starts, so I don’t have a lot of YouTube content created just yet. But don’t worry, it’s coming! If you have any requests, please leave a comment below so I know which posts to write first!
For now, I’ll share some blogging-related posts.
Even if you only want to start a YouTube channel, you should consider starting a blog to promote your channel and have another way to build SEO and share your content.
Click here for my How to Start a Blog in 3 Steps page
Click here for my other Blogging-related posts
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Thank you so much for reading this post on How to Know if You Qualify for YouTube Monetization! Good luck to all of your working towards monetization. It’s a tough goal when you’re just getting started, but you can do it!
Not that simple anymore. Lots of creators who’ve already met the threshold of 1000 subscribes and 4000 hours watch time are still waiting for months now to get approved for monetization. Some have been not approved for other reasons. Please do a more detailed research on the topic.
Thanks for your feedback. The intent of this post is to share the ‘qualification’ requirements for YouTube monetization and how to find the related numbers, since Watch Hours isn’t an easy thing to look up in Analytics at this time. I’ve updated the post to clarify this.
Did you submit your request for channel review prior to June 1, 2018? YouTube posted a note on July 3 saying they’ve reviewed all channels submitted before June 1, and that everyone should have been contacted or should receive an email soon.