How I Got Monetized on YouTube in 27 Days

My record for uploading videos on a brand new channel and meeting the requirements for monetization from scratch is just 2 weeks. And by the 4th week, the channel was accepted into the YouTube Partner Program and monetized. So that's only 1 month to go from having no uploads on a channel to having a monetized channel. Imagine if 1 month from now you could be monetized and making money on YouTube. Now let's do some math and see how it's even possible to potentially get monetized on YouTube in just a month. Now, quick disclaimer, this is a hypothetical situation. In no way does this guarantee if you upload videos for a month that you're going to get monetized, but I do truly believe this is gonna help you a ton. You need 4,000 hours of watch time and 1,000 subscribers to meet the requirements for the monetization program. Now, you might be saying, "Matt, that's a ton and that's gonna take forever." Well, it can actually happen faster than you probably think, and let me introduce you to the 30-Day YouTube Monetization Challenge. Say you were to take me up on this challenge and upload a new video on your channel every single day for 30 days. Let's say each of your videos is an average of 12 minutes long, and let's say that each of your videos gets an average of a 50% audience view duration, meaning for every person who watches your video, they watch about half of your video. That's 6 minutes of watch time per view. Now remember, we have to get that 4,000 hours of watch time, and if we break it down, 4,000 hours is 240,000 minutes. Now if our videos are getting 6 minutes of average watch time per view, then we would need 40,000 total views in order to hit those 4,000 hours of watch time. Now that sounds like a lot until we break it down and we see that the average view count per video that we would have to aim for is only 1,333 views per video. And if you upload more than 30 videos, then you have to get even less views. Now this is just an average view count per video. Now from running tons of channels myself, what I've noticed is that about 80% of the views come from only 20 people. Of the videos. What's more likely to happen is that you'll upload a ton of videos with very little to no traction, and then you'll upload one or a couple videos that get a ton of traction. Now you might be saying, Matt, what about 1,000 subscribers? How can I hit that fast within 30 days? Now my channels get about an average of a 3% view to subscriber ratio, meaning if I get 100 views, I typically like to see 3 new subscribers on the channel. If we were to get 40,000 total views, and 3% of those views subscribe, that's 1,200 new subscribers, which would meet the requirements for monetization. Now you might be saying, Matt, is this actually possible and can I actually do this? Now realistically, it's probably going to take longer than 30 days to get monetized. This is a hypothetical situation where this would be possible, and I've gotten channels monetized in under a month. I've had tons of students get their channels monetized in just a couple months. But you're probably wondering, how long is this realistically going to take? Well, the average YouTube channel with 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers on it has about 150 videos on the channel. And if you uploaded 3 videos every single week, it would take about a year to get those 150 videos that will hopefully then translate into at least 1,000 subscribers so you can get monetized. But this is the average channel with 1,000 to 10,000 subscribers. Now most channels on YouTube have no idea what they're doing. They don't have any strategy in place, and I wanna give you an actual strategy so you can hopefully hit these requirements sooner. Just look at the first videos of any of your favorite YouTubers, and you'll probably see that they weren't the best videos in the world, but they improved over time. And most YouTubers, including myself in the beginning, learned the slow way, through trial and error, what works and what doesn't. Well, we can actually shortcut this process by a lot and potentially get monetized way sooner with these secrets. I really wish I had someone tell me these secrets in the beginning when I was starting my channels. And realistically, I would probably have over 10 million subscribers between my channels instead of the only couple million that I have right now. Now you're probably saying, "Matt, give me the secrets." And I'm going to give them to you, but just promise me that you're actually going to implement this because it could potentially change your channel and it could potentially change your entire life if you start making money from your channel and build this up into a real business. Well, without further ado, Secret number 1 is to upload 30 to 60 videos on your channel to start. Now you're not gonna get any views, subscribers, or anything. You're not gonna get monetized if you don't upload any videos on your channel. And I try to see at least some type of traction within those first 30 to 60 videos that I upload on a channel. And if you take me up on this 30-day YouTube challenge and upload videos to your channel on a regular basis over the course of a 30-day period, I truly believe that your channel's gonna be way better off than it was before. And leave a comment down below if you're going to do this. Now you might be saying, Matt, how How often should I upload? And that brings me into secret number 2, which is to keep a consistent upload schedule. I recommend aiming to upload at least 1 video every single week. Now, if you can do more, then do 3 videos a week, and if you can do more than that, then do a video every single day. But I recommend starting at 1 video a week, seeing how much you can upload. You can always increase the frequency, which is typically better than decreasing it. And be realistic about this and think about a schedule that you can actually keep long-term with your channel. Secret number 3, and this one is so big, do not guess. This is a mistake that I made in the beginning, and this is a mistake that most YouTubers make. They guess what type of content they should make, and they guess how they should make the content, how they should optimize it, and everything else, when really they should be looking at what has already worked on YouTube. Do not go into a niche that hasn't been proven to work on YouTube. Do not upload video ideas that haven't been proven to already get a ton of views. I recommend making sure there are at least a couple of videos with over 100,000 100,000 views within your niche, and if there is, then you're good. Then I recommend modeling what has already worked— video ideas that have already worked, title ideas that have worked, thumbnails that have worked. For example, if you see that every single thumbnail within your niche has a red circle in it, this is a pretty good sign to include red circles within your thumbnails. Now, this doesn't mean copy everybody directly, but use these channels as inspiration and model what has already worked. Now, you might be saying, Matt, why would they watch my videos instead of the competition? Especially if there's better videos out there on YouTube, why would they watch mine? And how can I get views and subscribers and watch time and get monetized? Well, YouTube is huge. There's more viewers now than there ever have been on the platform, and competition to a very large degree can actually be a really good thing. I know this sounds absurd, but if there's a lot of competition within your niche, these are more opportunities for your videos to get recommended in the suggested video feed of those competitors' videos. You just need to make sure that your videos are just as good as the competition, meaning that if you go watch one of your competitors' videos and then one of your videos and you watch it in an unbiased way and ask yourself, "If I was a viewer looking for a video, which one would I get the most value from?" Now value can be educational or entertainment value. And you don't have to be the absolute best videos within your niche to potentially get millions of views and subscribers. You just have to be pretty good. And I've done this myself and I've gotten millions of subscribers doing so. Secret number 4, and this one sounds really strange, but hang with me on this one. Get monetized before getting monetized. Now you might be saying, "Matt, what in the world do you mean by getting monetized before getting monetized?" Well, it sounds crazy, but you can actually get monetized before hitting 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. This is by first of all making sure that you're in a good niche related to health, wealth, happiness, and relationships. Now you might be saying, "Matt, why do these niches potentially get monetized sooner? It's because there's a ton of demand for buying products within these niches, and you can become an affiliate for these products from places like digistore24.com or clickbank.com. And there's a ton of products you can promote to potentially make money way sooner. You can even create your own product or online course and sell it with your channel. That's what I do with this channel, Make Money Matt. I have a YouTube course where I teach people how to succeed on YouTube, and I make over $100,000 per month from that course. Meanwhile, ad revenue-wise, I make anywhere from $6,000 to $12,000 a month. And someone in my program made over $70,000 with less than 2,000 subscribers by selling his own course. And again, it's best to be in a niche related to health, wealth, happiness, or relationships because there's a ton of demand for buying products within these niches. Not to say you can't make courses, you can't promote products outside these niches, But typically I like to look for some sort of sub-niche within these main categories. Secret number 5 is making sure that your videos can get monetized. Imagine how bad it would be if you got 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time and you didn't get monetized. You'd probably throw your computer against the wall, and I wouldn't blame you. But there's a few key things that we can do to make sure that our content is good and that we can get monetized. Number 1, don't re-upload other people's videos. Don't just make TikTok compilations and re-upload them to your channel. You probably won't get monetized doing this. And even if you do, it's gonna be very short-lived. And if you do use other people's content within your videos, which is possible, a lot of my top channels that have gotten millions of subscribers do exactly this. And I have tons of students doing the same thing. And I teach how to do this within my course Tube Mastery and Monetization. But you need to make sure that you're doing it the correct way. This is by following fair use. Making sure you have an original human voiceover on the video, and making sure you follow YouTube's policies and making sure your content is transformative. And I talk about that way more in depth in my YouTube course Tube Mastery. Number 2, make sure that you have a human voiceover. Now some channels have gotten monetized with robot text-to-speech voiceovers, but a lot have not. So I wouldn't recommend risking it, plus your videos are probably going to do way better with a human voiceover anyways. And number 3, make family-friendly content. I don't recommend swearing in your videos too much or showing anything violent or explicit and making sure you follow all the rules in the YouTube monetization policies. Remember, there's going to be a human from YouTube reviewing your channel, so it's best to follow these rules. Even if you do get monetized and you're breaking a rule, it's gonna be short-lived, so might as well follow the rules, get monetized, and build a long-term business with your channel. Trust me, it's worth it to start getting those monthly paychecks from YouTube. And secret number 6, if nothing else, implement this action checklist. Make sure your niche has worked on YouTube, you see other example channels within your niche doing very well. Post at least 30 videos modeling what has already worked within your niche. Analyze your analytics and plan out your next batch of 33 videos based on the data from the first. Follow the monetization rules. Think about alternative monetization strategies. And whatever you do, do not give up early. That's really the biggest thing. If you don't give up, you're gonna be improving your channel over time. But we can really shortcut that process by implementing some of the things within this video. Now check out this video to discover how to get a ton of subscribers fast with a few key secrets. This video right here will help you fly past the monetization requirements of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. See you there.