How to Monetize Your YouTube Videos in 2026 - 3 Easy Steps

In this video, I'm gonna be going over how to monetize your YouTube videos step by step. And the first thing we need to do is make sure that we hit the requirements for monetization. And in order to do that, we can jump on the computer right here and I can show you exactly what to do. All you need to do is go to your YouTube channel by clicking your profile picture, clicking View Your Channel, and then go down here to Manage Videos. From here, we're gonna wanna go to our analytics. So if we go to the left-hand side, we just click our Analytics tab right there. And then from here, we want to select the last 365 days to see the stats for the past year on your channel. And what we're looking for specifically is watch time. We need 4,000 hours of watch time in the past 365 days in order to get in the YouTube Partner Program and monetize our channel. And as you can see, this channel right here has 8,000 hours of watch time in the past year, so it hits our requirement number 1. But now we need to make sure that we hit requirement number 2, which is having 1,000 subscribers on your channel. And that is very easy to check. Just go to your YouTube channel, see how many subscribers the channel has. For example, this one has 5,000, so we are all set and ready to monetize. Now, in order to actually get your channel within the YouTube Partner Program and monetize, you need to go to the left-hand side of your Creator Studio and then go down here and select this Earn button right here. And as you can see, now the Apply button is ready to be clicked. So we just click Apply Now, and from here it's going to bring us to the steps to actually sign up to earn money from YouTube. Now all you have to do first and foremost is review the base terms, and you can click Start to begin that process. And they require that you actually scroll through and read all of these terms right here, and upon doing that, then you can click I accept base terms and click Accept Terms, and then scroll down to step number 2, which is to sign up for Google AdSense. And if you don't already have an AdSense account, that's totally fine. AdSense is how you're going to actually get paid from YouTube when you make your money. It's going to be deposited into an AdSense account which is a company owned by Google, and then that money will be sent to you on a monthly basis depending on how much money you make, and I'll get into that in just a second. But let's begin this process of connecting an AdSense account to our channel by clicking Start. And if you don't already have an existing account, just click No, I don't have an account, and then on the next screen it will prompt you to create your AdSense account. You can use the same exact Gmail that you made for your YouTube channel, it's totally fine. Now I already have an AdSense account since I run over a dozen different YouTube channels and I've been making money from YouTube back since I was a teenager. So I'm gonna click yes, I have an existing account. And all I had to do was select a Google account associated with my AdSense account. And then from here, once you have that set up, you can scroll down and then click accept association. And then you'll be brought back to your YouTube Studio where you can start the next step. So now that you have an AdSense account, as you can see, it says this step is done. Now it's time for step number 3, which is to get reviewed and get within the monetization program. And as you can see down here, it says that we'll email you a decision usually within a month. I found that it usually takes much faster than this, literally only a couple days in order to get into the YouTube Partner Program. So this channel should be set and monetized very soon. So what I'm gonna do right now is log into one of my channels that is already monetized and making money, which is my main personal channel, Make Money Matt, right here. As you can see, this channel makes a lot of money every single month just from the YouTube Partner Program and being monetized. But our next step to do is to enable ads on all of your videos once you're accepted in the monetization program. So you'll get an email notifying you that you've been accepted. Then our next step is to go to your videos manager within your YouTube Creator Studio, and then you'll see a brand new tab added to your YouTube Studio where it says if monetization is on, on individual videos on your channel. Now in order to make this faster so you don't have to go video by video, you might have 100 videos on your channel to monetize, you can just go to the left-hand side, click this select all button right there, and then click edit, and then go to monetization, and then select on right there, and then click update videos. Now in order to make as much money as you possibly can from YouTube, there's a few crucial settings that I recommend enabling, which I'm gonna show you right now. So once you monetize your videos, boom, you're making money now from your YouTube videos every single time somebody views them and sees an ad on your video. But in order to make the most amount of money, you need to go into individual videos and edit a few settings. —what I recommend doing is sorting your videos by the highest view to the lowest so that you're doing the videos that are getting the most amount of views first, especially if you have a lot of videos on your channel so this doesn't take too long. Then just select your videos one by one and then go edit these settings. Go to the left-hand side and then go down to the monetization tab and make sure that you have all ad types selected. So make sure you have before video pre-roll ads, during video mid-rolls, and after video post-rolls. And select all types of ads so you can make as much money as you possibly can. And then for your videos that are longer than 8 minutes, you can make even more money from them by putting what are called mid-roll ads throughout your video. And in order to do that, go down here and click Manage Mid-Rolls. And what I recommend doing is placing ads about every 2 minutes throughout your video, tapering them off towards the end of the video. So as you can see, this 11-minute video right here has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ads throughout the video, that'll help you make a lot more money. In fact, multiple times in many circumstances than your videos that are shorter than 8 minutes. So go do that with all of your most viewed videos. Then the next setting I recommend doing to make sure you make as much money as possible is go to the left-hand side right here and go down and click this gear icon that says Settings. From here, then go on up to Upload Defaults and then select Monetization. And from here you can select all ad types. Make sure all of these boxes are checked, and that will enable all of your new videos that you're uploading to be fully monetized to their maximum potential, so you don't have to remember to do that every time you upload a YouTube video. And there's something I wanted to mention about Google AdSense now, once you're monetized, which is that there is a $100 threshold before you get paid out your earnings. So in most circumstances, you'll get paid out every single month from your Google AdSense account to your bank account, and you'll connect your bank account to Google AdSense during that signup process, and they will require some information, for example, verifying your address in many cases. Totally normal. I had to do the same exact thing when I was setting this all up myself. But once you do that and you start making money from your channel, then that money will be stored in your AdSense account. And if we jump on my computer right here and go into my AdSense account, as you can see, it might sometimes be confusing because you might log into AdSense right here and see that it says $0. You might say, wait, I've made a lot of money on my channel. If I go into my analytics right here, it's saying that I'm making all this money, but where is it in my AdSense account? So this is very important so you don't get too confused. Make sure when you're clicking Payments Account that you click this dropdown and select YouTube. And that's because AdSense on websites, where you put ads on websites in order to make money, is a separate branch of AdSense. So you wanna make sure that you specify YouTube. And now, as you can see, your last payment was issued right here for this much money. And it says paid monthly if the total is at least $100, AKA your payout threshold. So you do need to build up $100, but don't worry, that money will be stored for you and it's your money. As soon as you hit that threshold, threshold, you'll start getting paid that amount monthly. Now I've made millions of dollars from YouTube at a very young age. And at this point you're probably wondering, how many views do I realistically need in order to make $100 from YouTube? Or how much money can I make on YouTube in general, even just from 1,000 views? Well, I'd love to invite you to check out this video next to me right here, which answers that question in a very short timeframe. Within 3 minutes, you'll know exactly how much money you'll make from YouTube from 1,000 views and how much money you'll realistically be making from your channel once you're monetized. Check that out next to me right there, and I'll hopefully see you there. My name is Matt Parr. See you there.