Can You Make Money From Youtube Shorts?

12 min readOct 25, 2022

Can you make money from youtube shorts?: Snapchat and TikTok made it blow up the short-form vertical video have been everywhere. Instagram jumped on the vertical video bandwagon with its Stories and Reels features, and Facebook cloned the format as Facebook Stories. During the pandemic, vertical video exploded, with the average teen watching 80 minutes of TikTok per day.

Original Article: Can You Make Money From Youtube Shorts?

Now, YouTube is getting in on the action too Earlier this month, the company launched Shorts, a new feature that allows creators to upload short-form vertical videos to the platform, adding many TikTok-like enhancements, from music to colorful text to images. Shorts display on YouTube channels along with a creator’s existing videos, and YouTube surfaces them in dedicated areas in the YouTube app.

YouTube has signaled its attention to helping creators monetize Shorts and transform them into a solid, new revenue stream. To that end, the company has committed to paying creators at least $100 million for their Shorts. You can monetize Shorts even if you are not in the YouTube Partner Program, which means that Shorts monetization is available even to small or brand-new channels.

YouTube is a video and advertising behemoth, with over $15 billion per year in advertising revenue, billions of which get passed directly on to creators. I already make thousands per year from my YouTube channel. Given the platform clout, reach and revenue, it makes a ton of sense to get involved with Shorts especially since you can get in on the ground floor.

Can You Make Money From Youtube Shorts? What Kinds of Shorts Content Do Best?

How To Make YouTube Shorts

Making a Short is simple If you have a YouTube channel already, the feature is already available to you if you live in the US or India. If you don’t have a channel yet, you can easily start one for free.

Once your channel is live, download the YouTube app to your phone, open it, and press the large sign at the bottom of the app to create a new piece of content. You should see a button to Create a Short.

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Press the button, and the Shorts camera will open. You can hold down the red button and take a 15-second vertical video right away. You can also click the gallery at the lower left to open your phone’s gallery and select a video you shot before. You can switch to selfie mode, adjust the recording speed, or add music.

Music, in particular, is an area where YouTube should have a strong advantage. TikTok allows creators to embed clips, but YouTube works directly with artists or agencies in many cases, which likely gives it the potential to negotiate better terms with artists and to include a broader range of songs in the future. You can also remix audio from a variety of YouTube videos.

Once you have shot or selected your video, you can add several features, including block-letter text which appears over your video. You can also trim your video, removing either the beginning or end and adding filters. These are standard features across nearly all short-form vertical video apps. At launch, Shorts has far fewer features than industry-leader TikTok, but you can expect YouTube to add more quickly.

Finally, you provide a caption for your Short and publish it. Your Short will go live and appear alongside the other videos on your channel.

What to Create, What Does Best YouTube Shorts

What kind of content should you create for your Shorts? YouTube has a detailed guide that gives some ideas and inspiration. Firstly, the guide says that one goal of shorts is to enable the next generation of creators. That is a big clue TikTok’s biggest audience is the under-20 set, and YouTube is likely trying to engage this same audience. Youth-culture-oriented Shorts, therefore, are likely to do well.

The guide also describes Shorts as “bite-sized storytelling” and talks about the “joy of short-form video”. Again, there are several clues there. Storytelling is a key vertical video in general, and TikTok, in particular, thrives on mini-narratives that you can consume in 30 to 60 seconds. Maybe that is a dance-off, a pet getting dressed in its Halloween costume, a person receiving and unboxing a product, or you learning something important about your industry. Either way, storytelling is key.

TikTok has a dark side too but the most popular videos are often silly, well-meaning, and light-hearted. Joyfulness in the form of dancing, funny stunts, exciting new products, and the like is a big theme on TikTok, and it appears that Shorts is focusing on the idea of joyful content, too. As a creator, that suggests that you should focus Shorts on upbeat, easily-shareable topics related to your channel’s overall topic area.

Shorts also focus on mobile-first creation. As the guide points out, the first YouTube video was a short clip with a mobile aesthetic, taken at a zoo. Since then, YouTube videos have become increasingly polished and produced. That makes for great content in some contexts, but it can also alienate low-budget or brand-new creators, who worry that if they don’t have the perfect thumbnail or a professionally edited video, they can not succeed on YouTube.

Shorts appear to be intentionally challenging those assumptions, encouraging creators to make content quickly and to keep things raw. The guide says that “random, real, and unfiltered videos are celebrated” on the new platform. I love this, as I have always avoided creating YouTube content that looks overly produced.

YouTube suggests adding metadata to your Shorts after you upload them, including a full description. They also encourage you to add the hashtag to your video’s title. And they say not to add a custom thumbnail to your Shorts, since it will not appear anywhere that Shorts are shown. None of this is obvious from the Shorts interface.

Where Do Shorts Appear?

YouTube’s guide says they will show up in the new, dedicated Shorts tab in the YouTube mobile app, on the YouTube home screen and in YouTube searches, and on creators’ channel pages. Since YouTube is sinking at least $100 million into the program, they are very likely to promote Shorts elsewhere, or even create a dedicated Shorts app down the line.

The guide provides some additional best practices for Shorts. If your channel is not a fit for short-form content, YouTube encourages you to create a dedicated, new channel for Shorts instead. They say you can publish Shorts as often as you like but imply that daily Shorts content would be nice, saying frequent publishing can be beneficial. Subscribers who elect to receive notifications from your channel will not get notifications when you publish a Short, so there are no concerns about overwhelming them with new content.

The guide also says to spice it up by adding enhancements like creative lighting, costumes, or locations to your Shorts. Again, the emphasis is on mobile video, so going on location and shooting with your phone is very much encouraged. The guide also encourages creators to grab the attention of viewers while they scroll, hooking them within the first few seconds of your video. If you are used to conventional YouTube, where a 5 to10 second intro is OK, then change your strategy. Drop the intro and dive right into your Short, or do something dramatic upfront and then introduce yourself after you have your viewer’s attention.

Difference Between Normal YouTube And Shorts?

Normal YouTube is very relational many people keep coming back to the same creators and develop a relationship with them over time. Shorts are different most people who view your Shorts will not have seen your other videos.

For that reason, YouTube says you should create standalone pieces of content, without the need for context on your brand. If a new visitor can understand and enjoy your Short within 5 seconds of viewing it, you are on the right track.

YouTube plans to publish a Shorts Report each month sharing additional insights. So far, popular Shorts appear similar to popular TikTok videos.

They feature things like people cliff-jumping, performing pranks, dancing, or demonstrating products in creative ways. One popular product-focused clip shows a person using a knife sharpener to sharpen a rusty knife, and then using it to slice a tomato. Another, which has millions of views, shows a person painting a wall in under 1 minute by aggressively applying a paint roller.

Again, as with TikTok, all of these are visually appealing and have an element of storytelling to them. Even for a successful product clip, there is a clear beginning, middle, and end.

We see an incredibly rusty knife that can’t cut anything. A person’s hand uses the company’s knife sharpener on it.

How To Make Money With YouTube Shorts

Longform YouTube videos provide lots of opportunities for monetization through ads there are pre-roll ads that can be several minutes long, popover ads that display over a video, mid-roll ads that show up in the middle of very long videos, and post-roll ads that segue from one video to another.

With Shorts, the goal is to encourage viewers to jump rapidly from one video to the next. That leaves precious little room for advertising. TikTok has done reasonably well with promoted videos, bringing in an estimated $1 billion of revenue in 2020. But attributing ad revenue to specific creators is harder with promoted videos since they appear between creators’ videos, rather than displaying on the same page as the video itself, as with normal YouTube ads.

New Platform YouTube Created The Shorts Fund

For that reason and to encourage the adoption of the new platform YouTube created the Shorts Fund. Again, the fund will distribute $100 million to Shorts creators in 2021 and 2022. YouTube gives some indications of how this will work.

As with TikTok, this encourages new creators to join the platform. As YouTube says, anyone is eligible to participate in the fund simply by creating unique Shorts that delight the YouTube community.

Each month, YouTube says, they will reach out to thousands of creators whose Shorts received the most engagement and views, rewarding them with payouts from the Shorts Fund and asking for their feedback about the platform. Elsewhere, YouTube says that creators can qualify for between $100 and $10,000 per month depending on their Shorts performance if they are selected for a payout from the fund in a given month.

Payments YouTube Shorts

If you qualify, you will get an email and YouTube app notification during the first week of the month and will have to claim your reward by setting up an Adsense account by the 25th of the month. Payments will go out between the 21st and 26th of each month. There is some indication that content must be original to qualify for reposted videos from TikTok with watermarks that may not apply, or might even disqualify your channel from rewards.

If the specifics of qualifications seem vague, that is because they are. YouTube is refreshingly honest about two aspects of the Shorts program, they intend to monetize it for the long term, and they are not yet sure how this will happen.

In their blog post about the Shorts Fund, YouTube says that Shorts Fund is the first step in our journey to build a monetization model for Shorts on YouTube. This is a top priority for us and will take us some time to get it right. If only other platforms in the Creator Economy were so candid.

YouTube says they will develop a long-term program specifically designed for YouTube Shorts monetization, and also expand our Shorts player across more surfaces on YouTube to increase the audience for Shorts.

YouTube appears to be saying that they will ultimately sell ads via Shorts, but that they are still working on that. Likely, they need to attract advertisers to the platform first. Until there is a robust ad economy built up around Shorts, YouTube is seeding the pot by throwing in $100 million of parent company Google’s money, to ensure that creating Shorts is worth creators’ while.

Again, that is a refreshing stance, given that many platforms launch new features and expect creators to develop content for free, in the hopes that monetization opportunities will appear down the line. YouTube is making it clear that if you try out Shorts as a creator and do well, you will get paid via the Fund now, and will hopefully have a chance to monetize more sustainably down the line.

YouTube Creator Awards Make Money From Youtube Shorts

There is one more benefit to Shorts if you have an existing channel. People who see your Short and subscribe to your channel will count towards your total subscribers for monetizing your channel, winning Creator Awards, and the like.

If you are planning to launch a new channel, creating successful Shorts could be a fast way to hit the 1k subscriber threshold required for monetization on YouTube, even if you will still need to build your way to the 4k watch hours which are also required of monetized channels. For established creators, Shorts could be a great way to bring in new subscribers, who will then go on to watch your fully-monetized long-form videos.

If any other company launched a new short-form vertical video platform, most people probably will not bat an eye. But because Shorts comes from YouTube which has a long history of creator-friendly monetization, a massive audience, and the power of Google backing it up the new platform is a must-try for any video creator. The addition of $100 million in financial support.

Create YouTube Short-Form Verticals and Videos Make Money From YouTube Shorts

If you create short-form vertical videos already or you already have a YouTube channel try Shorts out. It could be a great way to further monetize your content or to build a new subscriber and income stream for your channel.

If you have never used YouTube before, that is an even better reason to give Shorts a try. Breaking into YouTube can sometimes be hard with day-one monetization and a potentially broad reach, YouTube is offering unheard-of perks to new Shorts creators.

TikTok may be the dominant vertical video platform for now. But with YouTube, they are about to get a serious run for their money.

How To Make Money From Youtube Shorts

Reply To Comments

In a feature similar to TikTok’s video replies, YouTube Shorts creators will soon be able to reply to individual comments by creating a Short.

Livestreams

YouTube plans to introduce collaborative live streaming, which will allow multiple creators to go live together.

YouTube Studio

Creators will soon have access to new insights in YouTube Studio to help guide their content creation strategy. The insights will utilize YouTube and Google’s data sets to allow creators to better understand viewer demand so they can generate ideas for upcoming videos.

Metaverse

Without revealing anything specific, YouTube is working on creating immersive experiences for users in the metaverse. This initiative will be focused on gaming content to start with, as YouTube works on ways to turn virtual worlds into reality.

YouTube Premium

You can prepare some engaging and informative videos exclusively available for YouTube Premium members. Because these subscribers have purchased YouTube Premium membership, the streaming platform shares the profit it gets from such users with you.

The approaches discussed above can help you earn money with YouTube. Now that YouTube has rolled out the plan for YouTube Shorts monetization, we can anticipate more YouTube Shorts monetization in the future.

You can also publish your YouTube Shorts video on your channel and the Shorts Shelf. YouTube then suggests these clips to others with similar interests. When such users watch your short videos, the chances are that they would subscribe to your YouTube channel and watch the regular videos that you have already posted, thus helping you make money using any of the methods listed above.

Another positive aspect of this approach is, that the number of views your short videos affects the overall analytics of your YouTube channel and therefore plays a vital role in meeting the minimum requirements as per YouTube policies to get your other, regular YouTube clips monetized.

Make Money From Youtube Shorts

Conclusion

YouTube Shorts is still in the Beta phase at the time of this writing, the short videos don’t directly contribute to the monetization process. Every time your short clips are viewed, your channel’s analytics are affected as per the view count and the playback time.

With interesting short videos, your channel is likely to get more subscribers, thus resulting in meeting the minimum gateway for becoming eligible and applying for YouTube’s Partnership Program.

Even though the revenue may seem to deteriorate in contrast with the number of views and playtime of the videos, the increment in the number of subscribers and paid members would significantly appreciate your income.

Google is still working on and exploring YouTube Shorts. With that, the chances are, that even short videos could be monetized in the future.

The bottom line is, no matter what the current scenario of YouTube Shorts is, you must ensure to create engaging videos for YouTube Shorts using any of the tools like Wondershare Filmora to attract more subscribers to increase your earnings.