Conditions for YouTube Channel Monetization

Running a YouTube channel has become a viable career option for many people. Internet has given us several unconventional career paths — for example, blogging has been a great money maker since long. Earning from YouTube is relatively new phenomenon. And because everyone wants money, many people began to upload low quality videos on YouTube. To tackle this trend and to improve the quality of videos, YouTube has now imposed certain conditions for monetization of videos. This means that you can still freely upload videos on YouTube — but you can not make money from them unless you fulfill certain conditions. Today, we will discuss these very criteria.

Following are the conditions for YouTube Channel monetization:

1. Channel must have at least 4000 hours of watch-time in last 12 months.
2. Overall, at least 1000 subscribers (no time limit in this case)

Besides these two primary conditions, of course, your channel must follow the YouTube Community Guidelines. Any violation of these guidelines could hamper monetization or get it cancelled.

First Condition: 4000 Watch Hours

The first condition is the difficult one. You would need to clock 4000 hours (or 2,40,000 minutes) of watch-time. If your target is to monetize your YouTube channel in one year — then your channel must be watched for around 658 minutes every day. When we say “channel”, it includes all your public videos.

YouTube is World’s Largest Online Video Sharing Website

YouTube provides really good Analytics data for you to know what’s going on in your channel. Recently we discussed the importance of Audience Retention measure in context of YouTube channel monetization. Your videos must be good and interesting enough to retain your audience for as long as possible.

Please note that you must clock 4000 hours within a rolling window of 365 days. So, only last 365 days data will be considered to decide whether to switch on monetization for your channel or not.

Second Condition: 1000 Subscribers

This condition is relatively easier. If you keep on making good videos — it is not really difficult to get your first 1000 subscribers. Unlike the first condition, there is no time limit associated with this condition. You do not need to acquire 1000 subscribers in last 365 days or something like that.

Remember, all the channels make a slow start. You should not get disheartened if you’re not getting quick subscribers or if your videos are not being watched for enough time. All you need to do is to assess whether your videos are useful / interesting enough for a niche of people. If so, just keep on producing good quality stuff. Soon your channel usage will rocket towards sky! And, in no time, your channel will be monetized!

All the best! Let us know if you have any questions!