How to Get Monetized on YouTube (Complete Guide)

In this video, we're gonna be going over a full guide on how to get monetized on YouTube. To get monetized on YouTube, you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. And this video is going to basically be a free course and a complete guide for getting monetized as fast as possible. And it's going to be broken up into 3 parts. In part 1, I'm gonna go over how to get 1,000 subscribers on YouTube fast. Within part 2, I'm gonna reveal how to get 4,000 hours of watch time as fast as possible. And in part 3, we're gonna go over how I've gotten monetized in just 27 days and how you can implement these same exact tactics that I've used to get monetized as fast as possible. And then we're going to have a bonus section later within the video that's going to reveal to you how to get monetized without even being monetized. Now you're probably wondering what I mean by that right now, but rest assured that it's going to be incredibly valuable to you and I can't wait to share it. And without further ado, let's start with part number 1, which is how to get 1,000 subscribers on YouTube as fast as possible right now. So how do you get your first 1,000 subscribers on YouTube? See, a lot of people think that getting their first 1,000 subscribers has to be this super hard and complicated process, but it's really not if you know what you're doing. I've been able to get over a million subscribers on a YouTube channel and over 100,000 subscribers on multiple other channels using the tactics that I'm going to show you in this video. And I'm talking about getting your first 1,000 subscribers in just the next couple months. You probably know that in order to monetize your channel and start making money from YouTube ads, that you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. Well, in this video, I'm gonna be showing you how you can get that first 1,000 subscribers so you can monetize your channel and start making money. Now before we get into this video, make sure to hit that subscribe button and leave a comment below saying, "I subscribed." I'll try my best to reply to as many comments as possible. And this brings us into secret number 1, which is asking people to subscribe. Now here's where most people go wrong. They typically say something like, "Make sure to smash that subscribe button." Now, the problem with this is that you're not telling the viewer what they're gonna be getting in return. And one of the best things that you can give them in return is some one-on-one attention. And how can you do this? By having them leave a comment below the video saying, "I subscribed." So saying something along the lines of, make sure to subscribe and leave a comment down below saying that I subscribed, and we'll try our best to reply to your comment. If you say something along the lines of this and just a couple people comment, I subscribed, and then every single new viewer who watches your video will likely see those comments and see the social proof of everybody subscribing. And all you need is just a couple people to comment, I subscribed, and then it's like a snowball effect and you'll get a lot more subscribers to views. Now, if you don't want to do this on every single video that you upload, make sure to give a value proposition of what you're giving in return for them subscribing. For example, you could say, be sure to hit that subscribe button for regular videos on how to make money online, or whatever your channel is about. Secret number 2 is to model proven content. And you might be saying, well, where do I find proven content? Now, the way you can do this is by going to YouTube, putting your channel niche in the search bar. For example, let's say you wanted to make technology videos. Put tech in the search bar of YouTube and then filter the results on YouTube by uploaded in the past week, and then sort those videos by the highest view count to the lowest view count. This will show you proven videos that were uploaded recently that are getting a lot of views. But you are gonna wanna make sure that the topic is somewhat evergreen, meaning that there's some kind of consistency so your video won't just die out. So it's not just a topic that'll fade out. And then what you wanna do is make your own version of that already popular video, but make sure to make it a 10-minute version that's better than the original. Oftentimes you can take like a 3 to 8 minute video and make it into a better 10 minute or longer video and do a lot better in terms of both views and subscribers. Secret number 3 is to keep people on YouTube. Think about it this way: you want views and subscribers from YouTube, and YouTube has all the views and subscribers that you could ever want. So how can you get those views and subscribers onto your videos and onto your channels. That first 1,000 subscribers that you're looking for is tiny in comparison to the billions of people on YouTube. Now, YouTube is a business, meaning one of their prime objectives is to make money. Now, the way that YouTube makes money is by keeping people on YouTube, and this is because the more people are on YouTube, the more ads they'll encounter, therefore making YouTube more money, and the more they'll do things like leave Super Chats on livestreams and all the other ways that YouTube makes money, subscribe to YouTube Premium, and so on. Now, if you can keep people on YouTube, meaning having a high audience retention on your videos, YouTube will give you all the views and rankings that you want. So how do you practically do this? One of the best ways of doing this is to take one of the most suspenseful parts of your video and put it in the beginning of your video. This will hook the viewer early on so that they watch throughout the video and don't have that final payoff of right what the viewer actually wants to see until near the end of the video. You can also do some type of curiosity thing as well, like, "You will not believe the number one fastest car in this top 10 fastest cars list," and then go through all the cars, and then when you get to the number one, that's what people will be watching for. Therefore increasing your audience retention and keeping people on YouTube further. And a great way to see how you're doing is to go into your YouTube analytics and take a look at your audience retention percentage for specific videos. You want a 75% audience retention at the first minute, and then 50% throughout the rest of the video. If you hit those numbers, it's very likely that your channel's gonna blow up and you'll pass those first 1,000 subscribers with ease. Now, most people's intros on YouTube are way too long, way too drawn out, and a lot of people are just gonna click off your video before watching throughout your video. So it's really imperative that you hook the people in the beginning of your video so that they watch more of your videos, and ideally they stay on YouTube and watch more YouTube videos. And that brings us into tip number 4, which is increasing your session time. Now session time is the total amount of time that a viewer spends on YouTube. And if YouTube sees that people go to watch your videos and then they watch a bunch of more videos on YouTube, regardless if it's on your channel or someone else's channel, that's an incredibly good factor within the YouTube algorithm. And it means that you're keeping people on the platform. That's ultimately gonna make you and YouTube the most amount of money. So you might be saying, Matt, I don't have any control on how long people actually watch my videos. How in the world am I supposed to keep people on YouTube? Now, one of the best ways of doing this is to have specific categories of content that you upload on your channel. For example, on the channel that you're watching right now, I post videos on how to make money on YouTube without making videos, and I also post videos about how to grow on YouTube. And in turn I make playlists for each of these types of content. Now when you can get a viewer into a playlist environment, they're much, much, much more likely to watch more and more and more videos because the next video that automatically plays after they watch the first video is another one of your videos. So this will not only increase the session time on YouTube, but it will also increase your own watch time because you're keeping people on your videos. Another thing you can do is to have all the metadata, meaning your titles, descriptions, and tags on your videos in a specific category of content as similar as possible. This will make sure that your own videos are in the recommended feed and in the suggested feed of other ones of your videos. So when someone watches one of your videos and then they go to watch another one in the suggested feed, ideally that first video in the suggested video feed will be another one of your videos. And if you can get people in these viewer feedback loops, meaning they watch one of your videos and then they watch another and another, this will increase the session time on your channel drastically, and it'll give you so many extra points within the YouTube algorithm and therefore make it a lot easier to get to your first 1,000 subscribers. Secret number 5 is to get people watching your videos and your channel. See, it doesn't matter if you have the best content in the world if you don't get people watching that content, and you're not gonna get any subscribers whatsoever unless people come to your channel and they come to your channel page and they hit that subscribe button. So where do your videos actually surface on YouTube, and how can you get people to watch those videos? Well, your videos surface in a few different places. First of all, they'll appear in search results, which is very straightforward. when someone searches for the title of your video or something related to your video, ideally one of your videos will show up in the search results. They'll also show up in something called the suggested video feed. This is to the right of your video if you're watching videos on desktop, and it's right below your video if you're watching videos on a mobile device. And these will be suggested videos related to either your video or to the watch history of the person watching YouTube. And the third place that videos show up is in something called Browse Features. This includes the homepage of YouTube. When you go on YouTube, you see a conglomeration of videos and channels recommended to you based off of channels that you've already watched and based off of who you're subscribed to. Now, it's not enough to just show up in all of these different places, but the key is to make sure that someone doesn't just look at your video, but they actually watch it. And the way that you actually have power to increase the amount of people that watch your video after seeing them in all of these different places is to increase your click-through rate. Now, click-through rate is the percentage of people who see your video and your thumbnail in browse features, in search results, in the suggested video feed, and then they actually watch that video. Now, YouTube tells us that 80% of videos on YouTube have less than a 5% click-through rate. So if you wanna do better than 80% of the competition, all you have to do is get a 6% click-through rate. That's why I recommend aiming for 6%, and that's what I try to do across all of my YouTube channels. Now, this can differ greatly depending on the type of content that you produce, depending on the niche that you're in. So on average, you really just want to do better than your channel average and always aim to be doing better than your channel average. If you can get a 60% average view duration on a 10-minute video along with a 6% click-through rate, it's very likely that your video is going to blow up. And another thing you can do is if you go into your YouTube analytics and you look at your click-through rates for videos that you've uploaded in the past, if your videos aren't getting a very good click-through rate, you can replace those thumbnails and put a new thumbnail on your video, and it will in no way affect your video negatively if you do this, unless of course you put a worse thumbnail. But if your thumbnail does better and the click-through rate goes up, then you can keep that thumbnail going forward, and you can do split tests on different videos and always be improving your channel. Now before we get into secret number 6, make sure to hit that like button and hit the subscribe button if you feel like you've gotten value so far. Secret number 6 is to post at least 33 videos. Now you can't expect to get 1,000 subscribers on YouTube if you just post one video, or if you don't even post any content whatsoever. I get so many people who come to me and say, "Matt, I've uploaded 12 videos. Why am I not getting any views?" And my response is always, that you haven't uploaded enough content to have enough data to make an informed decision. I recommend posting at least 33 videos and then analyzing and optimizing based off the data that those videos provide. I also call this the 33 rule, and it's the average amount of videos that you need to upload to YouTube until one of them takes off. And I'm always aiming to have at least one of my videos takes off before those first 33 videos. Now you don't just want to go crazy and upload all kinds of random content to get your first 33 videos. Make sure that you're only uploading in a specific niche. Don't just upload all these random videos just hoping one sticks. Only upload videos in a single niche, and then this will further implement similar metadata on your channel, which I talked about earlier in this video, and get people in those viewer feedback loops. And remember what I said, if you can keep people on YouTube you're gonna get all the views and rankings that you want. So bottom line, make sure you stick to a single niche and upload at least 33 videos before you can make an informed decision about where to go with your content strategy from there, cuz then you can analyze and optimize based off the data. Always be trying to get at least a 6% click-through rate and a 60% average view duration on videos that are at least 10 minutes long. And like I said, you'll get all the views and rankings that you want if you do this. Now since you watched this far in the video, I wanna give you one extra bonus tip, and this bonus tip is what not to do. Do not under any circumstances do sub for sub. Sub for sub are where people subscribe to each other's channels in order to game the YouTube algorithm to get more subscribers, will only hurt your channel, and on top of that, it breaks the YouTube terms of service and you could be banned as a result. And in all honesty, sub for sub is not going to help you at all. This is because every single subscriber that you accumulate by doing sub for sub isn't gonna actually watch any of your content, and if they do, it's gonna be an incredibly small amount, meaning you'll have a super small engagement rate for those subscribers as compared to how many subscribers that you have. It will literally ruin your life. Okay, maybe it won't ruin your life, but bottom line, don't do it. I'm just trying to look out for everybody out there who's watching this video and make sure that you have the best chance for success. And the best chance of getting those first 1,000 subscribers the proper way so that you can monetize your channel and start making money on YouTube. I hope you got a ton of value from that first part, and in part 2 right here, we're gonna go over the next essential step for getting monetized, which is hitting 4,000 hours of watch time on your channel. This simply means that people spend a total of 4,000 hours watching your videos. And just as a reminder, you need to hit these 4,000 hours of watch time with in the past 365 days, and they must be on public videos. And I know that sounds like a lot if you're just starting out on YouTube, but trust me, you can achieve it much faster than you probably think. And I can't wait for section number 3, where I'm gonna show you how I got monetized within just 27 days. But right now, it's really essential that we get those first 4,000 hours of watch time, which we're gonna be going over right now. In order to understand how to get 4,000 hours of watch time, let's first take a look mathematically on how we can get those first 4,000 watch hours. So in your YouTube analytics, you'll probably notice that watch time is displayed typically in minutes, and this might make it kind of confusing. You're wondering, well, if I have this many watch minutes, then how many watch hours do I have? So let me break it down for you so you can understand how much you need to actually get and so you can monitor your progress along the way. 4,000 watch hours is 240,000 watch minutes. Now, if you make 10-minute videos on your YouTube channel and you get on average a 50% average view duration on your videos, then that is 5 minutes of average watch time per video on your channel. 240,000 total watch minutes, which is needed to get monetized on YouTube, divided by 5 minutes of average watch time per video equals 48,000. So in this case, you only need 48,000 views across all of your YouTube videos on your channels in order to get those first 4,000 hours of watch time and get monetized on your channel. So let's break it down even further. If you upload 33 different YouTube videos, you only need an average of 1,455 views per video. And if you upload 100 videos, you only need an average of 480 views per video. And you might be saying, well, that's a lot of views, how in the world am I supposed to actually get 48,000 views on my videos? Well, the good news is that it's not as hard as you probably think, and I'm doing this on new channels all the time from complete scratch. And I'm gonna lay out the blueprint for you right now in these 9 tips. Tip number 9: make videos that are longer than 10 minutes. And the reason I say this is because longer videos typically have a longer average view duration and in turn more watch time on those videos. To put this in perspective, if someone watches 30% of a 10-minute video, that's 3 minutes of watch time, whereas if someone watches 30% of a 1-minute video, that's only 18 seconds of watch time. So now you can start to see the benefits of producing longer videos because you're gonna get more watch time per view on those videos, meaning that you have to get less views overall on your channel in order to get those first 4,000 watch hours. And also another benefit of producing videos that are longer than 10 minutes is that once you do get monetized, you'll be able to put multiple ad breaks on your videos and make a lot more money as a result. And I know YouTube recently changed this as well, and YouTube recently released a policy saying that you can put multiple ads on videos that are longer than 8 minutes. So I would just make sure that you're producing videos that are at least 8 minutes long, but longer than 10 minutes would be ideal. Tip #8: Make list videos. So you might be wondering how you can actually produce videos that are longer than 10 minutes. What are you gonna say in the videos, and how can your videos actually be structured? Well, list videos are an amazing structure to apply to videos on your channel, and it makes it a lot easier to produce these 10-minute long videos and in turn get more watch time. And I'm sure you've seen list videos out there on YouTube, for example, the top 10 fastest cars, the top 10 biggest dogs in the world, and videos of this nature. And you could apply list videos to almost any different niche and any different subject out there on YouTube that you're talking about. To demonstrate why list videos are so good, for example, if you make a 10-minute video about the top 10 biggest dogs, then you only have to talk about each different dog for 1 minute each, and just like that, you have a 10-minute video. So whatever you're talking about, if you make top 10 videos, then all you have to do is talk about each subject for only 1 minute each, and then at the end, you'll have that 10-minute video. And another benefit of list videos is that they typically perform very well in terms of audience retention and watch time because they typically keep the viewers' attention by covering lots of things in the video. And the more cuts that you have throughout the video, the better you'll be able to hook the viewer in and keep them watching as long as possible, therefore giving you more watch time and getting you closer to those 4,000 watch hours. Tip number 7 is to use playlists correctly. So if you run a YouTube channel that talks about multiple different subjects, maybe just a single subject, but you have multiple different categories of videos— let's say for example you run an animal channel and you do top 10 dog videos talking about the top 10 biggest dogs, the top 10 smallest dogs, That would be a category of content. And then, for example, you could have another category of content comparing different dog breeds. For example, you might upload videos like German Shepherds versus Siberian Huskies. Now, the reason you want to make playlists for each of these different subjects is that every time you link to one of these videos, or you leave links in the description of one of your videos, or people go to your channel and they look at your playlist, every time you get a viewer in the playlist environment you'll get a lot more watch time as a result. And you might be saying, well, how's that possible? That's because when someone clicks to watch a video from a playlist link and you get them in a playlist environment, they will automatically, after they're done watching that video, be prompted to watch another one of your videos and another one of your videos and another one. And that in turn is going to get you a lot more watch time and get you a higher session time on YouTube, meaning that every single person who watches one of your videos on average will watch more of your videos if you can get them into a playlist environment. So it's really imperative that you use playlists correctly on your YouTube videos, and you'll get a lot more watch time as a result. And places you can put these playlists are in the end screens of your videos, in the cards of your videos, and directly on your channel page. You can actually feature playlists. Tip number 6 is to incorporate a popular upload section on your YouTube channel. So when you go to customize your YouTube channel, you'll notice that you can actually add a popular upload section to your channel. Now, your most popular videos are probably your most popular for a reason, and typically, on average, they'll also get more watch time as well. So it can be really beneficial to feature some of your most popular videos on your main YouTube channel page. And as you can see on my YouTube channel right here, we have the most popular upload section listed right here. And the way that you do that is you click Customize Channel directly on your channel page, and then all you have to do is scroll down and click Add Section, select from content, just select Popular Uploads. Now I already have it right there, and then just click Done, and then you'll have that section on your channel. And this makes it so that every single person who comes onto your channel, they'll see that Popular Uploads section, and you wanna get them watching those videos because they're already proven to do good. They're already proven to most likely get you more watch time as well, therefore getting you closer to 4,000 watch hours. Tip number 5 is to feature a playlist of high watch time videos. So rather than just hoping that your most popular videos have a high amount of watch time, which they most likely do, but just to be sure, what you can additionally do is go into your YouTube Analytics, and you can do that by going to your YouTube Creator Studio and then clicking Analytics right here. And then what you're gonna wanna do is go to Engagement right here, and then as you can see, you can see your top videos right here in terms of watch time. And another thing you'll wanna do is select for the lifetime of your channel right there from that dropdown. And then you can see the videos of yours that have gotten the most amount of watch hours. And they'll be shown right here. So then what you're gonna wanna do is make a playlist ordering these videos from the first one having the most amount of watch time, second one having the second most amount of watch time, third one, and so on, listing your videos in chronological order from your top watch time to the least amount of watch time. And then you can simply add that playlist on your channel page by clicking Add Section and then you're just gonna wanna select Single Playlist, and then you can select that playlist right there. Tip number 4 is to do livestreams. Doing livestreams is one of the most underlooked ways on how you can get 4,000 hours of watch time on your YouTube channel. And the reason that is, is because livestreams typically have a very high average view duration due to the fact that people who join livestreams typically watch them a lot longer than watching, like, traditional videos. So all you really need if you're doing livestreams is for a couple of people to join those livestreams, and this can add up very fast. For example, all of my biggest videos with the biggest average view durations on this channel that you're watching right now have been livestreams. Let me show you just how powerful livestreams are. So if we hop into my analytics right here, as you can see, on most of my videos, there's anywhere from like a 4 to 6 minute average view duration on most of my videos, and most of my videos are around 10 minutes long. Now if we take a look at this right here, you'll notice that this video right here has a 13-minute average view duration, over double the average for my channel. And if we take a look at this video right here, it's a livestream. So livestreams can be incredibly powerful, and this one was just under 2 hours long. So if you can go even longer than 2 hours, you can really start to add up the watch time fast. Tip number 3 is to upload 33 different YouTube videos. Now, if you don't have any videos up on YouTube, you're not gonna get any watch time. And I know that seems self-explanatory, but I see so many people out there give up uploading on YouTube after they've uploaded only 10 videos. And I really urge you to really give it a shot and upload at least 33 different YouTube videos, and then go in and analyze the analytics of those videos, see which videos of yours are getting the highest watch time, the highest average view durations, and then make more videos like that. And the reason I say 33 is because that's what I've observed to be the average amount of videos on YouTube channels. Channels that I've ran until one of them does take off. And you could get lucky right off the bat, and within your first 33 videos, one of them might even take off and you might get those 4,000 hours of watch time. And in these first 33 different videos, don't worry too much about making the best content in the entire world. Just focus on getting those videos up, and then you can go and analyze your analytics, improve, double down on what's working, improve based off of what you're seeing. And then this is gonna make getting those first 4,000 hours of watch time a lot easier. Now that's not to say that you just upload a bunch of random videos and random niches and everything. You wanna only upload videos in a single niche. Don't just upload all these random videos so you can hit those 33 videos. You wanna only upload videos in as specific of a niche as possible. Tip number 2 is to double down on what's working on your channel. So once you have your first 33 videos up on your YouTube channel It's time to go investigate and see what's working and what's not so you can cut out what's not working and double down on what is working. And the way you can do this is to go into your analytics and take a look at the audience retention graphs for different videos on your channel. When you see that graph spike, it means that people are watching more at that point on your video, and you wanna do more things like what's happening at that point. When it goes down, you wanna cut out whatever you're doing at that point of the video in future videos that you produce and upload on your channel. And the specific benchmarks that I like to look for in terms of audience retention watch time are at least a 60% average view duration on videos that are about 10 minutes long. Now, if you can hit 60%, you're doing incredibly good, and most videos on YouTube don't have anywhere near those analytics, and it's very likely you're gonna go viral as a result. Another thing you're gonna wanna look at is click-through rate on your YouTube videos. Now if you're not familiar, click-through rate is a percentage of people who click to watch your videos after seeing your videos and things like search results, browse features, the suggested video tab. Now ideally you want to hit at least a 6% click-through rate. Now there are certain niches where click-through rate will be lower than others, so this is just on all of YouTube across a big broad spectrum of niches. And YouTube actually tells us that 80% of videos on YouTube are within a 2% and 5% click-through rate. So if you can hit 6%, you're doing better than most videos. But really, you just want to look at your channel average across your entire channel and always try to be doing better than your channel average. Tip number 1 is to put a proper channel trailer. So as the channel trailer on your YouTube channel, you're gonna want to put one of your highest watch time videos in that spot. And this is gonna really help jumpstart you to get those first 4,000 hours of watch time, because then new potential subscribers who take a look at that video on your channel trailer are likely to watch more of that trailer, and in turn, as an added bonus, you'll get a bunch of more subscribers as well. And now let me give you 3 extra bonus tips that if you take away anything from this YouTube video, it's these 3 things. One, growth on YouTube is usually exponential, meaning that when you upload a bunch of videos on YouTube and you don't see any traction, oftentimes— and I've noticed this on so many of the different channels that I've ran— Oftentimes the graph on your YouTube channel in terms of watch time looks something like this, and then all of a sudden it shoots up like this. And typically this happens around the 33 video mark, and if it doesn't, then you can double down on what's working, get rid of what's not working, and then optimize based off your analytics so you can get that exponential growth on your YouTube channel. So remember that growth on YouTube is usually exponential, so don't give up if you're not seeing any results. You could literally just be one video away from everything taking off. Two, the longer your videos are, the easier it is to get 4,000 watch hours on YouTube. So remember this, try to produce videos that are at least 10 minutes long, and if you can, at least 8 minutes long is really the minimum that I recommend when you're starting out if you want to get those first 4,000 watch hours as fast as possible. And another great way to produce long videos that a lot of people will watch a lot of is to do live streams on your channel. And number 3, don't stop uploading no matter what. This is the most important rule. Do not stop uploading. Don't give up if you don't see any results in the first 33 videos that you upload or in the first 10 videos that you upload. I see so many people give up after they upload 5 videos on YouTube. So at least give it a fair shot. Upload a lot of videos on your channel, the more the better. I generally recommend uploading one video a day, but I also did a video on my YouTube channel that you guys can check out where I go over how often you should be uploading on YouTube because there are some exceptions to that, and I show you exactly what you should be doing in that video if you're interested. All right, awesome job making it through that segment right there, and now you know how to hit the monetization requirements on YouTube. But if you're watching this video right here, you probably want to do it fast, right? You don't want this to take years and you want to hit the requirements in the next couple months to which is 100% possible, and in fact, I've done it in just 27 days. And in our next segment, number 3, we're gonna be going over how exactly I did that and how you can implement the same exact tactics. We're gonna be going over that right now. 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 going to 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% 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 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 want to 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. 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 is gonna be way better off than it was before. And leave a comment down below if you're going to do this. They might be saying, "Matt, 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. 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 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. 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 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 TubeBastery. 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. 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. And now, as I promised, we're gonna be going over some bonus tips on how to get monetized before getting monetized. But before I do, I first want to give you another bonus for sticking with me this long within the video, which is going to be a list of some of the highest CPM niches from my personal experience. Now, CPM simply means how much money that your channel makes from ad revenue. Per 1,000 views on your channel. And certain niches have more advertisers spending money within those niches, therefore meaning they are higher CPM and you make more money. And to demonstrate to you how powerful CPM is, if you get 100,000 views at only a $2 CPM, which is very low by the way, then you only make $200. But if you get that same 100,000 views but hit a $20 CPM, then you make $2,000. Now with CPM, sometimes the higher CPM niches don't get as many views, so sometimes it is beneficial to choose a lower CPM niche if there's more demand within that niche. And basically what I'm trying to say is that high CPM niches and low CPM niches can both definitely work, and there's pros and cons for each. But maybe if I share this list from my experience of some of the most high CPM niches, it'll spark some ideas off in your mind on a channel that you might have already wanted to do anyways. And as a bonus, you can make a ton of money per 1,000 views with your channel. And without further ado, a list of the highest CPM niches are finance, make money online, technology, health, investing, travel, legal, insurance, makeup, marketing, cars, real estate, and movies. And by the way, if you're ever curious about finding more high CPM niches on YouTube, a little trick you can do is to go on Google and look up which advertisers are spending the most most amount of money on YouTube. And when I was doing research on this, one of the top advertisers I found on YouTube was Apple. Now Apple is obviously a smartphone manufacturer, and in my opinion it makes sense to assume that if you create videos about technology and cell phone reviews, these are likely to be keywords that Apple would be advertising on, meaning the CPMs within those niches would typically be higher by my estimation. And also if we go down the list of some of the top advertisers, we have TurboTax, which goes into tax software. We have Expedia, which ties into travel. Travel videos are huge on YouTube. We have GEICO for insurance. We have Disney for movies and entertainment and everything like that. We have Bloomberg, which relates to finance. Then we have Starz Entertainment, which is related to movies and entertainment. We have The Motley Fool, which is related to finance and investing. And we have Carvana, which is related to cars and automotive videos. And now I must say that this also depends on the amount of videos in a certain niche. Compared to the amount of advertiser spend, but this can be a good way at least to get an idea of how much advertisers are spending on YouTube and which niches are likely to be higher CPM. Now I know I mentioned it briefly in the last segment that you just watched that you can get monetized without even being monetized, and that is 100% true. And I make way more with these methods that I'm about to show you than from just YouTube ad revenue alone. Specifically, I'm gonna be going over 6 different ways on how to get monetized before getting monetized in this segment right now. I'm gonna reveal 6 ways that you can make money on YouTube without being monetized and without ads. My name is Matt Parr. I run 9 different YouTube channels, and I've been lucky enough to get a channel to get over a million subscribers. And you probably know that you need at least 4,000 hours of watch time time and 1,000 subscribers to be able to join the YouTube Partner Program to start making money on YouTube from ads. But what if I were to tell you that you can actually make money on YouTube without ads? So that means you don't have to wait to get 4,000 hours of watch time and 1,000 subscribers, and you can potentially start making money very soon. And that's not to say that you can't make a ton of money with YouTube ads, In fact, I make over $30,000 per month just from YouTube ads across my 9 different YouTube channels. However, I make over $100,000 per month from different monetization sources, and we're going to be going over some of those sources in this video today. So in this video today, I'm going to be going over 6 free ways to make money on YouTube without ads, and I've ranked these from number 6 to number 1 from what I would consider the worst ways to make money on YouTube without ads to the absolute best way to make money on YouTube without ads. So make sure to watch until number 1 to see my number 1 recommended strategy, but I'm gonna be giving you some super valuable information in this video. So without further ado, let's get straight into the video. So for each of these 6 methods, I'm gonna be going over the good, the bad, and how you can get started doing the particular method. So let's start with method number 6, which is sponsorships. I'm sure you've seen big YouTube channels that have done sponsorships on their channel in which they say something along the lines of, "This video was sponsored by this company." This is where companies will pay to get an integrated brand sponsorship on a particular YouTube video. Good thing about sponsorships is you don't have to have your own product. However, the bad thing about sponsorships and why I ranked it as number 6 is because you typically need a lot of subscribers to make a brand deal that would get you any substantial income from YouTube. So sponsorships aren't something that's gonna happen right away the next day after you start your YouTube channel, but once you build up an audience, you could do sponsorships every now and then. However, I personally have never done a sponsorship on this Make Money Matt channel, and typically when you do sponsorships, a lot of them are done on personal channels, and I haven't done one sponsorship on this channel yet because I personally would rather want to sell something that I had control over instead of a company telling me what to say. Now, if I really believed in a product and it was something that I regularly used myself, I would consider doing a sponsorship for that. But typically I don't like what's associated with doing sponsorships, and that's why I ranked it as number 6. Now let's go to method number 5, which is merch. I'm sure you've seen YouTubers out there plugging their merch every 10 seconds in their videos. And by merch, I mean clothing, accessories, t-shirts, hoodies, hats. There's so many different pieces of merch that you could potentially sell that could be branded with your channel logo or things from your YouTube channel that your fans could connect with. Now, if you wanted to make money from your YouTube channel with merch, the two main platforms are Teespring and Shopify. Now, the good thing about selling your merch through a platform like Shopify, and then maybe also an extension like Printful that'll allow you to fulfill orders, is that you'll make a lot more profit per sale on your merch. And then the good thing about Teespring is that it integrates directly in with YouTube. So you'll see your merch below your YouTube videos popping up, and that just gives viewers one more chance to buy your merch. And also Teespring will do a lot of advertising for you as well. If they find customers that they think are a good fit, they'll advertise in a variety of different platforms and on a ton of different places. Now the good thing about merch is that it promotes brand awareness and it builds a sense of community with all of your subscribers and the ones that buy the merch. However, the bad thing about merch is the fact that you only make a tiny amount of income per sale. So that means you have to sell a lot of merch to actually make any sizable amount of money. And this can be great if you have a huge following, but if you don't, merch may not be the best option to make money on YouTube without ads. Method number 4 is memberships. And by memberships, we mean having people pay a recurring monthly fee whether it's $1 a month, $5 a month, $10 a month, every single month to get access to either community exclusive content, exclusive live streams. And this is something that you can offer and potentially make money on YouTube without ads. Now, if you wanted to release a membership, there's a couple of different ways of going about doing it, and there's a couple different things that you could offer in return for that recurring monthly fee that you'll charge your members. Now, One thing that you could offer is a private community, whether that be a Facebook group, a Discord group, or anything like that. So you could offer exclusive content in which you post content to YouTube as unlisted and then share the links only with your members. And then lastly, you could do exclusive live streams with your members and answer people's questions, maybe give some behind-the-scenes looks at your YouTube operation as well. And in terms of platforms, you can do memberships directly on YouTube. Now YouTube has memberships, so if you've seen that join button next to the subscribe Subscribe button on any big YouTube channel pages. That is actually for memberships in which you can get access to memberships for a particular YouTube channel. Now the second option in terms of offering memberships would be to offer it through a platform like Patreon. So with Patreon, it's just like YouTube memberships. However, I personally would do it on YouTube since YouTube's gonna push that more since it's integrated directly on the platform. Plus, people don't typically like to leave the platform either. However, there are platforms like Patreon as well. Now, the good thing about memberships is that you can make monthly recurring revenue, and if, say, you have a bunch of people subscribed to your membership, you can kind of get an idea of what you're going to be making every single month, obviously depending on the churn and how many people unsubscribe every single month. However, as long as you're getting more subscribers to your membership, your monthly recurring revenue will continue to grow. Now, the bad thing about memberships is that you typically only make a very very small amount of money per month per customer. And a lot of people who offer memberships offer it at price points like $1 a month, $5 a month, and that's not much money per customer. Typically you want to make more money per customer, and the way to do that is to be selling higher priced items, not doing a $1 or $5 a month membership. And plus, at that price point, it can be really difficult to fulfill promises on things like if you're going to be giving people who subscribe free stuff it can become a lot to manage, especially if you get a lot of members. And it can be really hard managing things like your groups, whether it be on a Facebook group or a Discord group. It can get to be a lot to manage. Method number 3 is affiliate marketing. Now, affiliate marketing is where you put a link to a product or a service or a digital product in the description of your YouTube videos, and every single person who watches your video, clicks the link, and then buys that product, you'll get a commission for every single sale that you make. Now, the commissions on different products obviously differ. However, if you do choose to do affiliate marketing, I recommend promoting what are called digital products. Now, these are products where there's no overhead to actually sell the product. And some of the best places you can find digital products to promote are platforms like digistore24.com and clickbank.com. There's so many different products that you can promote and get a commission on every single sale that you get. Now, another option is to sign up for the Amazon affiliate program. Now, the bad thing about the Amazon affiliate program is that unless you're selling really expensive items on Amazon, and even those will cost a lot of money to fulfill, typically you'll only make a little bit of money per sale that you get on Amazon. And really, in my experience, it hasn't been worth it. But if you were to do the Amazon affiliate program, you could promote things like your camera gear or the equipment that you're using to film your video. You could always just put the links down in the description of your YouTube videos, so if people go to those links and buy a camera, which is typically a pretty high-priced item, you could potentially make more money per sale. Now, the good thing about affiliate marketing is that you don't have to have your own product. Having your own product can take a lot of time to make, and if it's a physical product, you have to deal with fulfillment and orders and refunds and all that kind of stuff. So the great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don't even have to have your own product. And on marketplaces like Digistore24 or ClickBank It can be really easy to just sign up to those marketplaces and promote different products on them. Now, the bad thing about affiliate marketing is that you're not actually growing your own customer base. Every single person who purchases, even though you are getting a split of the money— and again, that split can differ— but every single person who purchases, they're technically a customer for the person that you're promoting this product. And the good thing about building a customer base is that if you ever release more products down the line, you can potentially sell those products to your current customers because your current customers are gonna be the people who wanna buy future products that you make the absolute most. Now if you were to do affiliate marketing, I recommend what's called a bridge page. This means bridging you with the product that you're selling. So instead of just linking to the affiliate link directly in your description, instead link to a bridge page with a video of you on it and an email capture box. That way you can actually collect the emails from the potential customers who will buy that product later on. That way, at least you're also building an email list as well. Still not as good as having your own product in some ways. However, in other ways it's better because you don't actually have to create your own product. And that's why I put affiliate marketing at method number 3. Method number 2 is services or consulting. So if you teach things on your YouTube channel, you could potentially offer consulting going more in depth about what you're teaching. And this can be anything from cooking to how to build a business to how to grow a YouTube channel to how to get better at video games. And if you choose to go the consulting route, you can do so on platforms like clarity.fm, in which people will pay by the minute to get consulting services and get on the phone with you. Now, another variation of this is selling services, and you can do that by— if you edit your videos yourself, you could potentially put a link in the description of your YouTube videos to you offering editing services or thumbnail services or whatever it is that you want to offer. And if you do this, you can put your service up on platforms like Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, and put the links in the description of your YouTube videos and say something along the lines of, if you like the editing in this video, I can actually edit your video. If you want to do YouTube or anything like that, just check out the link in the description. Now, the good thing about consulting or services And really, the great thing about consulting is that you can potentially make a lot of money consulting, especially if you're teaching things that a lot of people want to know. Now, the bad thing about consulting is that you're trading your time for money. And when you trade your time for money, you can make a lot of money short-term, but if you ever stop doing that consulting, you won't continue to make money in the future. And that's why I ranked it as number 2 on our list. But now let's go to method number 1, my personal favorite way to make money on YouTube without ads. And before we go to method number 1, leave a like on this video and subscribe to the channel if you feel like I've gotten you any value so far. Now let's get straight into method number 1, and method number 1 is digital products. Now I'm sure you've seen digital products out there. These can be things like courses or ebooks, anything that's digital that you can sell to people. And a huge misconception out there is that you have to be an absolute expert in the field that you're teaching about if you were to, for example, sell an online course. But really, you just need to be better at whatever you're teaching or doing than the people that you're selling that course to. And if you were to sell online courses, you can do so very easily on platforms like Kajabi or Teachable or Udemy. Now, the good thing about digital products is that you can potentially make a lot of money per sale. Also, every single time that you sell one of your digital products, it doesn't cost you anything to ship it out, to box it, for any of the fulfillment aspects that go into selling that online course. Using automated tools like Teachable or Kajabi or automation softwares like Zapier, you can automatically fulfill the sales of your digital products. So every single time someone buys a digital product, they get it automatically without you having to do any work. And because of this, selling online courses and doing digital products are incredibly scalable. Now the bad thing about selling digital products is that it takes a lot of upfront time to make. For example, I have a course and community called Tube Mastery and Monetization. It's not really a course, but it's more of a coaching community in which I answer questions that people have as well, if they're in the community, about how I run 9 different YouTube channels without ever showing my face. And the first version of that course took me over 3 months to put together. Now obviously you could make a digital product or an online course faster than that, but that was just for the first variation of the course. And then after that, a year later now, I'm working on the second version of the course that's gonna be updated and go way more in depth on exactly how to do this. So leave a comment below as to which monetization method that you're gonna be doing on your YouTube channel. Is your primary monetization method gonna be YouTube ads, or any of the methods that I listed in this video, be sure to leave a comment below. Also, one thing to mention as well is that you can make a lot of money by combining different monetization methods together. And I always recommend having one primary monetization method that you go into as much as you can on a particular YouTube channel that you're running, because I see each YouTube channel that I run as independently operating businesses. So I try to go all in on one monetization method as much as possible However, you can combine different monetization methods. For example, on this YouTube channel Make Money Matt, not only do I sell my digital program, but also I make money through AdSense through ads on the channel. So you can potentially make money through ads and any of the other monetization methods that I listed in this video. Now that you know how to get monetized on YouTube fast, do you want to discover how to make money on YouTube without even making videos? If so, feel free to check out this video right here. It's going to walk you through the exact method and blueprint that I've used to make millions of dollars on YouTube, and you can check that out in this video right here, and I will see you there.