- (indistinct), there is no better place that rewards their creators
with money than YouTube. And in this video, we're gonna be sharing some
new monetization updates that you need to know, including new requirements to be eligible for monetization here on YouTube. What exactly does 4,000
hours of watch time mean, and what does that include? We're gonna be talking about a new way. YouTube is always adding new features that can give you income and there's a super cool
new way to stick around for. And there's some new
updates to the mobile app that you need to know about. There's a brand new report
on the creator economy that's giving us insight about
how much creators are earning and so much more to come on this video. So if you're fired up to be
here today on Think Media, my name is Sean Cannell,
smash the like button, check out resources in the description as well as time codes
if you're on the replay, and I'm excited because today I am joined by Rob Wilson from vidIQ. Rob you're back on the
channel, how's it going? - Hello, everybody. Thank you for having
me on as always, Sean. Welcome Think Media audience. And yes, this is somewhat
of a small face reveal. I am getting old. I now need to wear glasses. Does this improve the look or not? Do let me know in the comments. - I think that's an improved look. I think it's that helpful. I'm ready to learn all about monetization. You've got five tips for us today and so let's just dive right
into it and we'll share your slides and what are we learning? - Sure. Absolutely. So the YouTube Partner Program, as it is known to us,
monetization to most people, there have been a lot of requirements that have been in place
for a long time now; 1,000 subscribers, 4,000
hours of watch time, but YouTube have now added
an extra two, I guess, requirements that were probably
there in the background or are now being introduced
to improve security, and you need to make
sure that you meet these, and they're relatively simple to follow, but things that you do
need to be aware of. So the first one of course
is two-step verification. This might be where you
put in your password when you're logging into YouTube, and then it asks you to
confirm your password through a mobile device or a physical tightened key for example. Now, the strict rules on this,
according to what YouTube are gonna do is that,
starting November 1st, so very soon, so while
we're recording this, maybe four days beforehand, monetizing creators must
turn on two-step verification on their Google accounts. If they don't, I was
watching a creator inside a video yesterday, they
said that if you don't, then you may not be able to
view edits, upload videos. So this is really crucial. If you are monetizing your channel, do make sure to turn on
two-step verification. I'm sure you've already received some notifications (indistinct). If you are going to monetize
your content in the future, when you reach these requirements, then you need to turn on
two-step verification. As for Community Guidelines, well, I think this is
pretty straightforward, but YouTube just haven't officially had these requirements in monetization. Now, you must not have any
Community Guidelines strikes on your channel at the
points of application. If you do have a Community
Guidelines strike, it will expire 90 days after
the date of the offense. So you will just have to wait for that guideline strike to end. But interestingly, in the
wording for this new requirement, it says here, copyright strikes
do not impart eligibility, which I thought was really interesting. What it doesn't go on to say,
is whether or not copyright claims will impact your eligibility. And I've always been of the opinion, but this is just my personal opinion. I don't work for YouTube,
so I can't confirm this. I think the more copyright
claims you have on your videos, the less likely you may be accepted into YouTube Partner Program because effectively a
content has already been monetized by the copyright owner, but that's just something to bear in mind. The important thing here
is that copyright strikes do not impact your eligibility. So that's point number one, really, the major requirements that
have been coming in for YouTube over the last couple of months. - And Rob, a question from Earth Central, how do you check to see if you have two-step verification active? - Great question. So with all of these requirements, if you go to a YouTube Studio
on the desktop browser, you'll see the monetization screen. If you click there, it will
show you your current state, how many subscribers you've got, how many hours of watch time you've got, and then whether or not you
have these two things enabled. And I've actually taken
the screenshots here from the YouTube Studio. So this is what it would look
like with the green ticks. - Excellent. What's the next point? - So the next point it's an old point, but something that is one of
the most popular questions and it's tweaked often by YouTube is the question of 4,000 watch hours. What does that actually mean? And I've taken the wording
here directly from YouTube to make sure it's 100% accurate. And they talk about
4,000 public watch hours. So that is essentially anything
that is on your channel, but it's currently set to public should count towards your 4,000 hours for YouTube Partner Program requirements. What it doesn't include is private videos, unlisted videos, deleted videos, any videos that you've put ads up against, any video that's watched in
the Shorts or Stories shelf. Now, if a YouTube Short is watched in the normal YouTube
player, that would count, and then also live
streams that are unlisted, deleted or not converted
into video on demand. For example, when Sean and
I finish this live stream, it will be converted into video on demand. So watch time would count from there. But if it never gets converted,
then it wouldn't count and we'll touch on that
a little bit later. And then finally, another question that
people often ask about, 4,000 hours of watch time is, what does it mean by the last 12 months? So basically, look at it
from this point of view, whatever today's date is
for example, as we recall, this is October 27th, go back 365 days and all of the watch time
in that period counts. Even if the video was
published years and years ago, if it's watched in the last 365 days, then that watch time will count, but I'm sure, Sean, we'll
get lots more questions about that in the Q&A section. - Yeah, absolutely. And that's interesting to me. So YouTube Shorts shelf views, like we just had Nolan
on the Think Media team had a Short go viral. I think 2.4 million
views or more than that. So it got like a ton of watch time because even though it's a short amount, it's so many views, but
none of that counts? - None of that counts, but there's a very good reason for that, which we'll come onto later. - And then this live stream does not count unless it's converted to video on demand and then watched as a replay? - Yeah. So an example of this
maybe, let's say you, I wanna reach channels that
puts on relaxation music or, and the live stream
for, say, 16 hours, just because you want
something that's really long and it's gonna help people
fall asleep, for example. But then once that live stream finishes, because it's a certain length, it may not get converted into a video and that means that the
watch time wouldn't count. So I've kind of, I wanted
to tease this later on, but effectively, if your live stream is longer than 12 hours, then YouTube will not be able to... They call it archiving, but essentially means putting
it into video on demand. And so that may be
relevant to some channels who are doing long live streams. - Awesome. And then a question came in here about, should I unlist private videos that have copyright claims before I apply? - Let me see. So should I unlist private... I guess, because the content already has copyright claims
on it, probably it's... I think as long as it's on your channel, regardless of whether or not
it has a copyright claim on it, when YouTube reviews your channel, human reviewers are
gonna take a look at it. So they're probably gonna
be able go into a backend and notice whether or
not there are copyright to videos on there. I'm not telling anybody
to do anything radical with content that has a copyright claim on it like delete it. It's just something to be aware of, because sometimes a lot
of channels get rejected for the reason of reuse content. That's not to say that
it's copyrighted content, but it already exists
somewhere on YouTube. And so that might be a reason. But I don't wanna give
you any hard answers because I'm not a YouTube employee. - Awesome. And so we are gonna get
into point three, four, and five here in just a second. But if you're getting value
so far, smash the like button, and we've got some big announcements in terms of cool new ways to earn money. But today's video is
brought to you by vidIQ, super grateful to be
partnering with vidIQ. And if you haven't got your
free month of vidIQ Boost yet, vidIQ.com/think, of course,
you can use the link in the description down
below to get over there. That'll get you 30 days free on vidIQ and you can use tools like
the Channel audit tool. One of my favorite things to
use when it comes to vidIQ is a quick snapshot to see
what content's doing well, that I should double down on, what content is underperforming,
that I should stop making, and what are some quick insights that can inform my next video. We also, the new Daily Ideas tool is out and we'll talk a little bit
more about that as well later. But Rob, what is the
next tip we need to know and update with YouTube monetization? - So as you're watching
this live stream right now, what you may be able to do is give this live stream a Super Chat, which is an awesome way of acknowledging the creator and supporting
them in a financial way. However, with video on demand content, there hasn't been a
similar solution until now. And if you've been watching any of Think Media's videos recently, you may have noticed,
certainly on the desktop and mobile experience, where the likes and dislikes
are on the share button, you may have see this new
feature called thanks, and this is called YouTube's Super Thanks, where you can donate money to the creator, be it $2, $50. And I like to think of
it as a digital tip jar. Now currently, YouTube is
still experimenting with this. It's not freely available to all creators, but I have seen many
creators of different shapes and sizes get this feature. And so over to you, Sean,
at this point really. Think Media, I mean, you have it, are you trying to actively incorporate it into your consent right now, or you're just testing to
see what happens with it? What's been your experience so far? - Yes. So this is what it looks like. And you could see this
video is playing here, and we've got our likes, dislike, share, and then the thanks button. And if someone clicks on that, then they could kick
over $2, $5, $10 or 50. And then that shows up in the comments and we are always super grateful. We can reply back. We can put a heart on
that comment and say, thanks so much for supporting the channel. You know, Rob, you bringing it up is
just a good reminder. A, I know that let us know, in fact, tell us in the comments, have you got the thanks
button on your videos yet? I know it's beta, it's kind of rolling out
to different channels. We have never done an
intentional call to action. We've never educated about it, but we've probably
received 10 or 20 thanks, a lot of times $2 here or there, which also just kind of
reinforces that point that if you've clearly defined the value you're trying to add to
the view on your videos or adding value, it is that tip jar. And I know that if you've gotten value out of Think Media, thank you. If you've supported the channel that way or with Super Chat
during this live stream. And so I actually think it's
gonna be a really cool thing that'll be eventually available
I'm sure to all creators depending on their monetization status, and you just reminded
me to start educating about it because people don't
know what they don't know. And I know there's a lot of gratitude and people that wanna
help support the channel. - I have been wondering
how creators can use these inventive ways. In the past, we've had
creators encouraging their viewers to, oh, if this
video gets up to 500 likes, I will shave my head next video. Now you can almost monetize that and say, look, if I get enough Super Thanks here, if it can go up to $500, I can afford to do this in my next video. I think there is one caveat here and I'm a bit, not disappointed, but I think YouTube should
be a bit more transparent with the Super Thanks in that there is quite a
significant split, 70, 30. So even now let's say you donate $50, not all $50 goes to the creator. 30% of that is going to YouTube. So that is something to bear in mind. And I just wish YouTube it
would be a bit more clear that, yes, a creator is getting some money, but also we're gonna take
a bit of a cut of it. But, they're experimenting with it, maybe they're gonna
improve that in the future. So that was the super tip jar. And if you're okay, Sean, I can move on to the
next one straight away. - Yeah. Before that, I want to just
clarify a couple things. "You need to be monetized," Crafty Recycler is asking, "You need to be monetized
to even be eligible for the tip jar, correct?" - Correct. Yeah. It isn't of a branch of
a YouTube Partner Program in terms of Super Chats memberships. If you go to the monetization
screen in a Studio and you're monetized,
you should maybe see, I think it's under the Supers tab. You will see whether
or not you're eligible and whether or not you can turn it on. - Yeah, so that's it. If you may have it in the backend, but you haven't turned on Supers, we on Think Media once we
qualified for Super Chat, our Think Media Podcast channel, we were on there for a couple months and I was like, shoot, all
of our coffee with candles. People didn't even have
the option to Super Chat 'cause we just had not
turned it on on the backend. So that's definitely a huge ship. You wanna make sure you go
into your backend monetization, see what's there and
make sure it's turned on. But the second question from Dan asks, "Is it expected on..." A question asks, when is
it gonna be rolled out? And we do not know, correct? - Correct. Yeah. This first surfaced, I'd
say about two years ago. I seem to remember making a video about it at the beginning
of 2020 when I... It was called something different, but I can't remember what it was called. And then it started to
become a bit more public three or four months ago, and I'm just looking at the eligibility and it still says that Super Thanks is in beta and available to
group of monetizing creators. So it doesn't even say anything
about how many subscribers you need, what country you need to be in. It's just fingers crossed, maybe y'all gonna be
invited into the program. - And next question from Jason, thanks so much for the Super Chat. I know another question
came in to be clear. Super Chat is what Jason just did $5. Thank you so much. That is during the live stream. If you're watching this
video on the replay, you could actually do a $5 Thanks. And so Thanks is on a video
on demand of a live stream, which will be the replay of this video, or just any video you have uploaded. So this is just a normal upload
and people are able to put, do a Thanks, a Super Thanks
on this Think Media upload. But Jason asks, Rob, "Does it matter if my
watch time comes mostly from external views
compared to YouTube search when I go for monetization in
terms of those 4,000 hours?" - I would say, as long as
that watch time is public, it doesn't matter where the traffic source is from unless it's Shorts. That's the one exception. If you get most of your
views from external, that still counts. - All right, Rob. Well, let's dive into the next update. - Yeah. So this is just a quickie one really. I don't know if you remember
when YouTube was transitioning from a Classic Studio to the new Studio. Hands up anybody who can
remember the Classic Studio. I remember taking tons of screenshots in case I wanna do like some nostalgic piece for vidIQ sometime. Dan had wrote about how it used to look. But one of the things that
it prevented the YouTube engineering team from doing was
really plowing a lot of time into the mobile app. I don't know about you, Sean, but in the last, I'd say six to 12 months, the mobile Studio app has
changed beyond recognition and it looks absolutely phenomenal now. And it feels as if it's
almost a carbon copy of the desktop experience
to the point now, where as you can see on the little GIF that's playing in the background, it's showing you all of the little cards of your revenue and you just didn't get that
sort of detail in the past. So, as long with lots of other analytics, if you are monetized and
you haven't been using the YouTube Studio app, the mobile app, then it's definitely
something worth checking out. - Yeah. And so here's your action item. If you're on Android or Apple, you wanna go to your App Store and make sure you've downloaded
the YouTube Studio app. So let us know in the
comments, is that been an app? Did you even know it existed? Is that an app you're using? It's different than the
YouTube app on your phone and it's for creators and
it gives you analytics. Secondly, though, you might not auto update your apps. I don't, I'd like to
manually update my apps. I pick which ones I wanna update. If you haven't updated it, your mind is gonna be blown
by all of the updates. And I definitely agree, Rob, not only, if I head up top and I
go into my analytics, I love looking at real-time views and even the ability to
click on the specific video, click on the specific videos analytics, and go into that deeper, swipe over on the
revenue of the analytics. And I know, this isn't really
meant to be a tutorial, but it's hard to see here,
and it's just amazing. And so get your YouTube Studio app and get the YouTube Studio app updated. And now when you're
standing in line for coffee or you're in your car getting gas, or you're in your Tesla
charging your battery, you can get really clear insights. The YouTube Studio app
was actually kind of weak. It was sort of frustrating
'cause you just didn't get that good of data. They overhauled the whole thing, and it looks like they're
putting a lot more energy into it and the updates
are rolling out frequently. - Definitely. And who else, a confession,
when they launch a video, do they spend the next 60 minutes refreshing the dashboard to see what your video's
going to be ranked? I really need to stop doing
that, but I just can't. - Refresher's anonymous. Just the cycle, like, how's it going? How's it going? Is it all right? Should I pivot the title? What did I do wrong? What's going on? (indistinct) Are notifications going out? Am I gonna be okay? Like, yeah, no. Every new upload. Why is it... Oh, nine out of 10? (Sean groans) And then it starts rising or going down. The journey is real. Thanks, Bret, for the Super Sticker. And let's head to that next tip. - So, let's have a little
quiz with all of you here. I'm gonna ask you two questions. And want you to answer
as quickly as possible. They come from this new
reports that YouTube released, about the creator economy on YouTube. And it is absolutely fascinating
and both stunning as well. So my two questions to you are, how much do you think the
YouTube creator economy is worth from 2020? So just think about that. Think of a number, let us know what it is. And also, how many full time jobs do you think YouTube
supports in the U.S. alone? So, Sean, I'm gonna ask
that question to you. What do you think the
answer is before I reveal? Unless you know the answers. - A YouTube creator economy
in the U.S. in one year, 26 billion. Nope, nope. Yeah. They had $27 billion. - $27 billion and how many full-time jobs do you think that accounts for? - 30,000. - All right. So you were close, with one, but all the way off with the other one. Here are your answers. So it's contributed in
2020, 20 and a half billion. Now I had a little fun with this. I equated this to GDP and I tried to put it
into a country context. And I think YouTube by
itself came 116th in GDP, in terms of the value of it. But that is an astonishing number there, nearly 400 files and full-time jobs it supports in the U.S. alone, and I think it's about 1.5 million jobs in the world at large, which is more employees
than Amazon worldwide, which I think is phenomenon. As you can see, 78% of
creative entrepreneurs report that YouTube has
had a positive impact on our professional goal. Those are just three of
the thousands of metrics this report includes. It not only looks at a U.S., I know it looks at the UK, Canada. There's PDF so you can download. It also has stories of how
creators have leveraged YouTube to turn it into businesses. Much like Sean has done with Think Media. I think for any creator who
thinks it's either too late to start a YouTube channel or doesn't understand how they
can turn a YouTube channel into a business, needs
to read this report. 'Cause I've been digesting
it for weeks at this point. - So to be clear, and I just... You may have to refresh the video. I just updated the YouTube description, and I'm also gonna drop
it in the comments. And that is a new report on the state of the creator economy. You may have heard of one a
while back from SignalFire. This is brand new, super fresh
done by Oxford Economics. I think it'll inspire a lot of things as Rob kind of mentioned, it's not too late to
start a YouTube channel. This next decade is gonna be
the best decade on YouTube. The creator economy is maturing, there's a lot of money flowing in. The equivalent of people
making this their full-time job is just more of a clear
reality than ever before. We're not trying to overhype
that it's gonna be easy. We're not trying to insinuate
that it's not gonna take work. You'd need the right strategies. You got to put in the work. It's definitely, I
think it takes sacrifice to start a YouTube channel. And I know so many here in
the Think Media community, you're putting in the work. You know what it means
to have a full-time job. And then after taking care of the kids, and once the kids go to sleep,
work on your YouTube channel, post your videos. But I do want you to be
encouraged that this is so real, and this is not our opinion. So check out the YouTube description and you could just read the report. It's a PDF. And there's a lot of nuances. You might have a family
member that's like, is YouTube like a real job? Like, come on why don't you get serious? And you're like, no, this is a real job. Like, let's talk about the economic, societal and cultural impact
that YouTube is having. Let's look at the data and let's make a game plan for turning, going to the next step
with our YouTube game plan. So I'm excited about this and definitely check out that report. All right, Rob, where are we going next? - Well, here is the insane thing. All of what you see in
this report is for 2020, and it doesn't include
something that has taken YouTube by storm in the last 12 months. Whether you like it or
not, it is here to stay and that is YouTube Shorts. Oh, yeah. There are some amazing numbers that are coming out about YouTube Shorts. Apparently, I think the latest view count is that there are 15 billion
Shorts views every single day, which accounts to
trillions of views a year, which I still just cannot
get my head around. But here's a really important thing, everything we've spoken about so far in terms of requirements and Super Thanks, et cetera, et cetera, forget
all of that when it comes to YouTube Shorts. It is not part of a YouTube
Partner Program whatsoever. That's the bad news, but the good news is, it now has its own new revenue system and it's called the YouTube Shorts Fund. And it's amazing to think
that this time last year, nobody knew what a YouTube Short was. And now 12 months later, YouTube has been able to
monetize that platform. And this is just the beginning. And the way they want to
encourage more creators to make YouTube Shorts, is to
have this $100 million fund where they're gonna
distribute out to creators over the next year. And as a creator, you could earn either $100 or $10,000, that's the maximum. Now there is no way to really track this. There isn't a target of millions of views or billions of views to
reach these requirements. Essentially, what's gonna
happen is if you're creating Shorts and you do well over
the course of the month, YouTube are basically gonna contact you. If you're getting a lot
of monthly Shorts views for the right audience in the right areas, then this is what's gonna happen, YouTube is gonna send you an email saying that you're eligible for
the YouTube Shorts bonus, and we're gonna send
you x amount of dollars, claim this bonus. And you'll receive an email between the 8th and
the 10th of each month. You've got until the 25th of
each month to claim that bonus. But here again is a
really intriguing thing about all of this. It's not part of a
YouTube Partner Program. So you don't already have
to be monetized on YouTube. If you start a channel today and you get millions of views
over the course of November, YouTube could send you
an email in December welcoming you to this fund. The only things that you need
to do once you receive a bonus is accept terms and conditions and link your YouTube channel
to your AdSense account if you're not already monetized and then you can start
earning that revenue. Just to give you a few examples of money that's been done so far, I've been seeing creators reporting that if they get like five million or seven million Shorts views in a month, they're getting a couple of 100 bucks. As for Jake Fellman, a 3D animator, who gets in the region of 300
to 500 million Shorts views a month, he hasn't got $10,000. He's come close to that ceiling,
but even he hasn't made it. So I couldn't tell you how
much you are going to earn, but the fact that people can earn revenue from these Shorts in such a short space of time is incredible. And then going forward, who knows how else
YouTube is gonna be able to monetize this platform? - Yeah. And our friend, Pat Flynn,
with his Pokemon card channel, Deep Pocket Monster, I believe, reported that with around
four million Shorts views, he earned around $250. Let us know in the comments, have you started creating Shorts? Do you like YouTube Shorts? Are you planning on
creating YouTube Shorts? And one insight that
we've kind of learned, at Think Media, we've been
experimenting with them. We may be are between 20 and 30 posted. And we actually can now
share that there is a lot of opportunity there. A lot of those Shorts, if
they're on brand for us, which they are, we want
them to still just add value even if you're watching on desktop. They don't seem to bother
anybody if you still add value, even though it's vertical,
we get those desktop views. 'Cause that's where our
kind of subscriber base is, and we've had videos get a
few views on the Shorts feed, which is kind of a new traffic source. But just in the last few days, we did have a Short breakout
and this can illustrate just the power of what it could look like with one Short that could
really produce for you. So Nolan created this and you
can see that in the first, even 14 days, basically,
it just kinda stayed flat and did descent with about 28,000 views. But then you could start
seeing the algorithm started to test it and then it just shot up. In fact, there was a million view day. In one day, the Short was
viewed by a million people, and then it's also
actually continued to grow. And you could see on the
right side of the screen here, it says Shorts feed, 36% of the traffic, and then browse features
that'd be homepage views, I suppose. And people are still clicking
on enjoying the video, but that massive growth in the middle, this revenue right here
is from desktop viewers. Correct, Rob? - Correct, yeah. - And we are waiting and
nothing has happened yet that I know of as far as the notification, if we will earn anything from
the Shorts fund for this video and we still may, or we may not, I don't know if you need
more than one Shorts producing the views. This one, certainly, this
has done 2.8 million views, but what's also kinda
cool because people say, why what's the point? Is this video has generated
7,400 new subscribers. And my friend, Chris Do, in fact, if you haven't actually
subscribed to our other channel, it's called the Think
Media Podcast channel. We go into deeper dive
conversations and YouTube strategy. And Chris Do at the future has been doing a lot of Shorts like nine a week with one longer video. And he said some of his
Shorts that have broken out have brought new people into the world of his longer content. So that's not the topic of today's video, but that gives you... It's pretty powerful. And 7,400 new people
discovered Think Media because of one break out Short. Well, we have more information to go into, and if you have a question, throw up four question marks
before and after your question related to YouTube monetization. But today's video, if you're just joining, is all about new monetization updates and it's brought to you by vidIQ. And so if you have not got
your free month long plan, 30 day plan of vidIQ Boost, head to VidIQ.com/think, and you can sign up for that. The cool thing about vidIQ
is it gives you a suite of tools that will give you an advantage and an edge over other creators. And so right here, once
you have vidIQ installed and on your Boost plan, you can get to tools like
the Channel Audit tool. And you can see here at a snapshot, it's a very cool kind of dashboard where I can see how's the channel doing with nice upper down. But what I love is it's
content to double down on. What types of content,
whether it's views per hour, should we make more of? Okay, maybe some more home
office desk accessories type videos, but also what kinds of videos are getting the highest engagement rate. Maybe that's building community more. What about most subscriber
gain versus most views? What also are happening
amongst our competitors? And I create a list of competitors so I can watch what they're doing, and then I can pull up videos from them, which I might pull an idea out of here. There's, Rob, This Insane
Subscriber Hack is INSANE! and well, we're both making
the same face right there. And this is our Think
Media Podcast channel, which we also study. So I can look around and say, okay, are we gonna be talking about the A74? Should we talk about the M1 MacBook? Should we order one of those up? What are maybe some other videos? So that is really just
scratching the surface of how quickly you can
start getting insights and video ideas. The new Daily Ideas tool is incredible, and there's some great
videos we have on Think Media training you on that. So anyways, it's vidIQ.com/think if you haven't got that Boost plan yet. And let me know if you're
here and you love vidIQ, and some of the things
that you use it for. Rob, we're talking all about
new monetization updates that we need to know,
and what's the next one? - Hey, quick. Congratulations on the all of the numbers being on the green arrow
on the Channel Audit. 79% open views. It's definitely a Techtober, isn't it? For a channel such as yourself
for all of these new things-- - And it was that Short though. That Short disproportionately
blew up our numbers, but hey, I mean, we're here for it. - I just got my fingers. I just wanna mention a really quick, super hark because you
saw on the channel the way we have my face doing that. That was from actually a Shorts hack that we learned from Jake Fellman, who what he's doing is
he's repurposing his Shorts as YouTube Stories. And I can't quite believe what
he's been able to do here, Sean, but his YouTube
Partner manager told him, yeah, just release some of these Shorts that you made six months ago with Stories if they're within 15 seconds. And he started doing that. And within two weeks, his Stories had got him a
quarter of a billion views and 300,000 subscribers by repurposing his Shorts or Stories. Now, I know that's only gonna apply to certain creators
with 10,000 subscribers, but what an astonishing
kind of little backdoor hack that is for subscribers. I can't believe it. Unbelievable. - Well Rob, you can't understand the guilt you're making me feel right now. And I'm kind of offended
because, man, YouTube Stories, once you have 10,000 subscribers, it's just one of those things
that like has opportunity. You might as well do it. You might as well do one
to two Stories a week. So you can re promote a
video or you can even point to another channel, or maybe
somebody wanna collab with, you shout them out just to
kind of start that relationship because of the tags. Today, YouTube Stories is not
the topic of today's video, but every... I look at it and I'm in my boxers, and my hair's all messed
up, and I'm on the couch, and I'm like, ah, I need to do
at least one Story this week. And every day I look at
it, I forget every day. And now I'm personally offended because I feel like you're shaming me. And so... And now I wanna redo Shorts there though. That's super smart. (both indistinctly chattering) - You have that one viral camera once, if you can somehow squeeze
that into 15 seconds in a couple of months, just put it on Stories
and see what happens. - I mean, it's in the queue. I'm I'm doing it now. That's why we're here. I'm here to learn from Rob and be reminded of leveling up my channel,
taking things to the next level. Okay, let's talk about the next tip. - So there's just a few any
of the business questions to talk about in terms of monetization. This top one happened
actually earlier on the year. Creators who weren't yet
monetized were suddenly realizing that YouTube was putting
ads on their videos. And they're saying, "Hey,
what's up with that?" And simple as this,
it's YouTube's platform, they can do whatever they want. If you want to make content
on YouTube platform, they can monetize those videos, even if you're not yet in
the YouTube Partner Program. But that is good news because
it means that YouTube values your content enough to
put adverts against it. And once you're monetized, then hopefully YouTube
is gonna be monetizing all of your content and then you can share
the revenue with them. So don't get too despondent
if that's happening. This is the thing that
I mentioned earlier, in terms of live streams, if they're longer than 12 hours, then YouTube may not be
able to archive them. So the hours from those live streams may not count towards
monetization requirements. And finally, people are always asking, once I apply for the
YouTube Partner Program, how long does it take to get accepted? YouTube's official line on
this is typically a month, but we often see that channels
get accepted within 48 hours, 72 hours, but it can
take as long as a month. And if you are rejected from
a YouTube Partner Program, YouTube will give you a vague
answer as to why that is. It's often not that helpful, but it means that you can fix your channel over the next 30 days
and then able to reapply. And then one final thing that's
kind of about monetization and kind of not is that, it
used to be that you needed to get to 1,000 subscribers to monetize and to get access to the Community tab to start doing social posts. But the good news is, that requirement has being
lowered to 500 subscribers. So that was introduced, I think, in the beginning of October. So do check how many
subscribers you've got, do check whether you're using
the Community post tool, because it can be a really valuable way of reaching a wide audience when you can't post a
video every single day. I guess, similar to Stories,
if you have 10,000 subscribers. - Yeah. And I think Community tab is one of the most, call it, slept on tools that especially now you might have 500 subscribers. Now, if you hit 500
subscribers, it does take, they say about a week. It might take longer, but you should know you're in the queue. Let us know if you see Community tab posts here on Think Media, but
some of our best practices, we upload a square
version of the thumbnail or you can drag, you can
actually upload a rectangle, but square is kind of
the best format image for the Community tab. We ask questions, we promote... We actually have a live
class that I'm doing tonight. And so, if we do special
monetization classes or YouTube web classes,
we'll promote those. It's a great place where we engage. We ask questions, we will promote videos, we'll cross promote channels 'cause we have our Think
Media Podcast channel. And so we premiered a video
over there and used Think Media to send traffic over to the other page. And so this is what our Community tab is. And one of the things we love, and vidIQ does these really
well, they do them a lot is, is you could do these cool surveys and you could get audience feedback. This one's more inspirational, but a lot of times I'll ask,
we get different insights about maybe where you are in your journey. So utilize the Community tab. I know it seems like a lot, but there's so many tools
inside of YouTube now. Not only so many monetization tools here. Eventually, get your channel monetized, Super Thanks, Super Chat, Super Stickers. Plus you can use Community
tab, Stories and Shorts. And so, I know there's a lot going on, but the more that you
build up that momentum and that connection with your Community here utilizing all those tools, you can kind of get into
a rhythm and a cadence to where you just make your rounds to all these little features and leverage them 'cause
it'll help you grow. Rob, we have a couple
of questions coming in. - All right. - Anything else that we need to know about monetization though right now? - Nothing, strictly speaking, regarding updates other
than to say, as always, when you monetize your channel, I think the dynamic and the relationship between you and YouTube
changes because it now becomes a business relationship. And so you have to realize
that there are standards that you must follow in terms
of Community Guidelines, monetization policies. There are a lot, make sure you read them before you apply for the
YouTube Partner Program because that's when it
starts to get serious. But on top of that, I'm sure if you continue
to subscribe to Think Media and watch all of their videos, monetization just on
YouTube is, I would say, often the icing on the cake. When you can start to put
together affiliate deals, selling your own products
and services, courses, things that YouTube has used as a funnel to direct those viewers to, then it's an entirely
different business game. - Great advice. Thank you, On the Tap
Sports for the Super Chat, really appreciate it. Congratulations, almost
to 10,000 subscribers. That's the unlock of Stories. And-- - And memberships.
- Awesome to have you. - I think. Do you guys get memberships
at 10,000 as well? - You would know. It's a lot to keep up with. - They have a change in the requirements on that as well, I think. - 'Cause it was (indistinct)
reducing it to 10? - Yeah. And I think gamers can get it even less. But I think it's time, I'll
check in the background, but I'm pretty sure it's
10,000 at the moment. - Meanwhile, good power
tip from Professor Nez. I agree this is one of our favorite uses of the Community tab, which
you should have access to if you have 500 subscribers now. And he said, "Schedule your Community tab "with older videos to give
them a boost with new viewers. "Works like a charm." Because if you think about it, how many new subscribers
are you getting a month? 10, 50, 100, thousands,
new people meet you. And of course algorithmically, some of your videos might
be being suggested to them, some of your past library. But maybe there's some videos, we think about it here at Think Media, this number might shock you, but we get over 20,000
new subscribers a month or sometimes closer to 30,000. So that's a lot of new
people that are meeting me, Omar, Nolan, Heather, for the first time. And we have tried to add so
much value in our back library. So the Community tab is one of the ways to point people to, they
have present questions that maybe you've already answered or content you've created in the past. You could share some of your
greatest hits of the past, or maybe you need to
share that slept on video that was like, it was so good, but people didn't even really know and it could reactivate it. So you're sending... It's just a great way to have
kind of a current conversation with your Community and
maybe you wanna repromote some old videos. Great tip, Professor Nez. And thank you for sharing that. Hey, if you're getting value, smash the like button and
then, Rob, what'd you discover? - So, according to
YouTube's latest information on memberships, it's now
available to channels of 1,000 subscribers. So that is something I didn't
even realize in my research. However, I don't think
it's just being released to all creators all at once. I still feel as if
there's a bit of a rollout going out there, that
the testing a little bit, and it's only available in
certain countries as well. So yeah, maybe the channel
who's about to reach 10k, they may already have channel memberships. But that's an entirely different question about when you wanna start
to open up memberships and whether it's the right thing. Wherever you wanna do
on YouTube or Patreon. Again, Sean, I'm sure you've
done videos on that topic in the past. - And check this out, LEGOdanibob says, "Yeah, memberships are available at 1,000. "I just got it." (Sean claps) So, let us know if you go into the backend of your YouTube Studio, if you
can see channel memberships, if you can switch it on, if it was just immediately an option, you do have to set it up. Like we actually have not
started channel memberships here at Think Media. Our, preferred... Our membership Community
is just off platform, but let us know in the
comments if you're there. Awesome, Super Chat. Thank you so much. Almost 10,000 subscribers,
and I've quit my six figure, nine to five job. It's real. My gosh! Arjay.
- Sweet, wow. - That's a killer story. Super inspiring. I'm sure to a lot of people
here in the Community, not only that at under 10,000 subscribers, that you've got that many subscribers, but you quit a six figure job
and nine to five to go all in. And so, man, that's super inspiring and I wanna encourage you
Think Media Community, again, I know that the grind is real and I know that the
mountain can seem large and there's a lot of pain and
sweat and editing and work. And whoops, I didn't turn on my microphone and I just lost two hours of footage and I have to reshoot the whole thing. It is a struggle. And that's one thing that any
real YouTube creator knows, that this isn't easy. It takes a lot of work, but it's so cool to be here live with
you and have you sharing how real this is. And if you are just joining, there's a brand new report
on the creator economy we linked it in the description
down below, it's just a PDF. You just click the link. It'll open up, read it. Study that. This is real data. And I think it's kinda
powerful to be able to make, when you have friends and family members, you gotta be practical about this. Of course you need faith, probably even a little bit of delusion, a little bit of just wild
courage to run out there, and really go after making
YouTube your full-time thing. But it also has a whole data
back side of practicality. And that's why reading
that creator economy report will show you, this is the fastest growing
small business type. Like this is a real job. There's real step-by-step process to this. And so, Arjay, thanks so much for sharing that report for your results. And I'm really, really grateful for you. Stocking My Pantry says, "Do you recommend going
all in with YouTube "or also posting content on your blog?" My take on that is, it's
hard if you're a solo creator to potentially do too many things at once, but I think that's the best practice. If you can write good blog posts, there's a Google SEO relevancy
to creating blog posts and embedding your video. There's a blog post I'd
recommend you checking out, Stocking My Pantry, or a blogger who also makes YouTube videos and the channel, backlinko.com, right? Brian Dean. And when Brian Dean does like blog posts, he's got images in them. He's got text in them. He adds massive value. He goes on, he's got videos embedded that are not YouTube videos, that are just little playable videos uploaded with like a WordPress player. I assume that's his hosting. And I know this looks like a lot of work, but I would call this, not my
term, the skyscraper method. It's making really, really rich content that's gonna rank on Google. When you pair that with making a really quality YouTube video and embed that YouTube video as well, you potentially could kinda
create a circle of traffic. And so with saying all that
you might've been like, dear God, Sean. I mean, I was just gonna
like throw the blog post up. That might have some
value, but yes, absolutely. If you could combine
quality YouTube content with really quality blog posts, the search based traffic you
could get kind of from both, could be absolutely incredible. Rob, you guys have a blog over vidIQ and you have incredible value too. That's I think the thing, they're really well-written
blog posts that educate and they're not kind of thrown together. How often do you guys post? - So we have an in-house
blog writer, and I think... Her name is Lydia. And I think she tries to aim for about two or three blog posts a week. And we do sometimes have
some cross collaboration in that I'll make a video and she'll turn that video into a blog. Or very recently, she
made a video about 14 ways to avoid demonetization. I thought that's a good blog. I'm gonna turn this into a YouTube video. So it's almost like I have
the script there for me. And so that was really helpful. I guess, if I was gonna add
something to this conversation, it's always a balance
between time and money and maybe if you don't
necessarily have the time, but you can afford to outsource
this maybe to somebody who can write the blogs for you, I guess that could be an option as well. But yeah, it's much easier
for us because we have a team who aware of this, but we're
really working together all the time in that sense. And yeah, quick shout out to Brian Dean. He makes one YouTube video a year and it's always the best one. And I always try and steal as many ideas as I come from it for my videos. - No doubt. And Rob to reinforce what you said, Book of AlphaRonomy, Dr.BoA just dropped this $25 Super Chat. I appreciate that, but he's
dropped a lot of wisdom here and he said this, he said, "Be careful you don't overestimate "your content output capacity. "I've lost hundreds of channel
members due to inability "to deliver content perks. "Learned lesson and shared. "#FulltimeCreator." Thanks so much for the Super Chat. And that is a great summary
of what we should be... Whether you're trying
to also write blog posts or also do channel memberships and maintain your YouTube
schedule, notice what Rob said. They have a dedicated team member that's helping them write blog posts. So if you're gonna make that
a part of your strategy, think about the big picture and think about if you have
really the time to sustain it. It also could just be using
the "skyscraper method." It could just be every once
in a while 'cause Brian Dean's strategy, I believe, is not
to write as many blog posts as he can, as many
YouTube videos as he can, is to create something
that's so high-value. One video a year, as Rob said, that it just keeps getting viewed. So maybe here and there you go,
man, this is a hero concept. This is a hero, big idea. This is a skyscraper. It's a big... I wanna dominate this topic. So I'm gonna make a really rich blog post. Maybe even try to rank it on medium.com or something like that, and I'm gonna make a
really strong YouTube video to connect it all together. If I've got one really big question about, should you have a business license or anything like that
when getting monetized that I wanna answer, but if
you happen to just be joining, catch the replay, it will be posted here and let us know in the comments. Have you got monetized yet? How many subscribers do you have? What's your watch time clock at? How full is your watch time meter? Let us know and also check
out a bunch of resources in the description down below,
including a brand new report that every single creator needs to read on the state of the creator
economy just dropped from Oxford Economics. So Kelsey K asks or says, asks, "Is it wise to have a business
license from the start "or wait until," excuse me,
"You apply for monetization? "I'm nervous about starting
on the wrong foot." So I think it's important to
give a disclaimer and say, I'm not a CPA, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not an attorney, and
this is not business advice. This advice is for
entertainment purposes only. But Kelsey, probably the
business license you would get, and I'm also speaking to the U.S., would be an LLC, a
limited liability company. And actually the purpose of an LLC really is to protect you as far as liability. Some people say there's tax advantages. There are not necessarily many because you can still take tax
advantages here in the U.S. as a sole proprietor, which you already are if you just use your
social security number as your kind of business number
and you itemize your taxes, which a good bookkeeper
could help you with. Meaning, if you didn't
know Think Media Community, you should be writing off your cameras, your software, your computers, if you join one of our programs
like Video Ranking Academy, that's education, that's a write-off. If you're buying books, you should write off
your vidIQ membership. These are all tools and
legitimate write-offs check with your CPA or ACPA, but you can write all those off. And when you start to think this way, this is how you want to be thinking as not just a content creator, but as a content entrepreneur,
or a YouTube entrepreneur. So I asked once from a CPA friend, where I had a full-time job, I was working at a church
and I asked her, I said, we're making money on the side. We had affiliate money coming
in, YouTube money coming in, even some freelance work. And I said, hey, do I need to incorporate? Do I need to start an LLC? And she asked me two questions. She said, "Do you think
you're gonna get sued? "Do you think that... "Are you doing construction? "Is someone gonna break
their leg on your property? "Are you doing something
really controversial?" And I said, no, I don't think I am facing much legal ramifications. She said, "Well, that's the
separate, the liability." Furthermore, you're probably not a target unless you're a target. Apple gets sued every day. You know, the company,
multiple times a day, because the bigger you get, of course the more of a target you get. So I don't need protection liability-wise. And then secondly, she said, "Are you earning six figures a year?" And I said, no, I'm not earning at this
time six figures a year, I was probably earning 10
or 20 or 30k on the side while I had a full-time job. And so she said... In my opinion, Kelsey,
kind of a long answer, I think that a mistake
new entrepreneurs can make is trying to get all the wrong... Focusing on all the wrong things. They try to get a website
ready, a business card ready, their business set up. They try to get a plaque on the wall that they're in business, to me, none of that has to do
with being in business. To me, getting your first sale, getting approved for
monetization, getting some income, getting some cash flowing,
is the first step. In a way, create a little bit of chaos, create a little bit of momentum first and then organize it later. Again, this is just my humble opinion, but I think that worrying about a .... I do not think you need a
business license nor does Google. So what's gonna happen in the U.S. is you're gonna get 1099 income, which is separate from your W-2 income and it's just gonna come to you that way. So from Amazon Affiliates, that's how you'll be paid as well. From Google, that's how
you'll be paid as well. And that's also why you
should reduce your 1099 income by having write-offs. 'Cause maybe you earn 10
or 20 grand from YouTube. You could probably zero that out and not pay taxes on it because
you write off your camera, you write off your education, you write off the plane
tickets to go to the conference growwithvideolive.com 2022,
Gary Vaynerchuk speaking here in Las Vegas. It's a business trip. And you zero out your 1099 income. My gosh, is this deep? Do you like this kinda content? And if there are any CPAs here, definitely let me know your
thoughts in the comments and your advice for that. But, Kelsey, I'd say go make some money, focus on making your next best video and then once it starts actually coming in on a consistent basis, you could put some organization around it. Not that you are gonna do business cards, but it illustrates a point. You don't need a business card. You don't need a photo shoot
for branding yet, maybe you do. But whatever your brand is, like, sometimes we focus on
every single other thing that we think is entrepreneurship, as opposed to going straight
to generating income. What is the shortest path to making money? How do I make the best video possible to get the most watch time possible, to get monetized as soon as possible? And then I'll build a
business around that. Rob, what do you think? - I always feel after when somebody says this is for education, this is entertainment purposes only. At the end of it, I feel
as if a gift should appear where Russell Crowe in "Gladiator" says, "Are you not entertained?" Just to confirm that it
wasn't professional advice. It does raise an interesting point though, in terms of going back to
YouTube and monetization. We talked earlier about
once you monetize it, you get into a business
relationship with YouTube, and something that's very,
very important is honesty. And when you're signing
those terms and conditions for YouTube, you actually
have to state your country of residence as part of that, because there are tax implications. And depending on whether
you're in the U.S. or you're outside of the U.S., you need to fill out forms in AdSense to make sure that you're taxed the right amounts on your ad revenue. So it goes back to the
idea of just being honest and truthful in what you say, and then going all the
way back to the person who is talking about memberships
and the mistake he made. I think the one rule of thumb
there is, make sure anything you do is scalable. 'Cause imagine if you
start a membership thing and when people spend join it for $5, I'll do a custom drawing of
you because I'm an art channel. And then you have 500 members who are joining every
single month and you realize that you can't draw 500
pictures every single month. There's always those lessons to be learned in terms of when your relationship changes with your audience,
because then you're making, they're making a financial
commitment to you and there are certain expectations
that if they're not met, then you kinda breaking
down that relationship that before was just easy,
fast, free, and friendly. - Man, I hope you're getting value. If you're enjoying content
like this, let us know. Drop a Super Thanks or
hit that like button. And I would also say, we do have a program called Inner Circle. I would encourage you. It's not for beginners, it's for once you start getting into things like tax advantages, structuring your online business. We just know that you will get a 10x, 20x, 100x return on your investment in our monthly coaching program, because you can save
money on things like taxes and make sure things are set up right. So Monica, correct. Speaking from the U.S., you don't need an LLC to write things off. You can itemize your deductions
as a sole proprietor, which you can be instantly with just your social security number. The moment you start a business is not when you start an entity, the moment you start a business
is the moment you get money. A business starts when a sale is made. When your seven-year-old
is selling lemonade, the moment that they
get handed that $5 bill, they're in business. The IRS probably won't hear about that, and that's between you and them. Obviously, but it's... But technically the moment
there's an exchange of funds, and that's also what would be called like 1099 income versus W-2 income. And so, without getting too
deep into all of that stuff, if you wanna learn more
about Inner Circle, we'll link that up in the
description down below. And, in that program, Monica and others, there's also opportunities. And please go research
this info for yourself. If you're earning $40,000 a
year in your online business as an entrepreneur, you
should start an S-corp and you could start saving
when you set things up right with a good CPA. You could probably save as much as $5,000 kept in your pocket by having an S-corp and avoiding some self-employment taxes. That's the kind of
thinking, come on think, think that we wanna help
you, think different here, at Think Media. So, I mean, we're here to help you win in the creator economy, to
help you build a real business that's also not based on
trends and some viral hit, but that's based on you
really adding value, building your personal brand, being super clear on who you help, being super clear on
what problem you solve, and being full-time doing what you love while making a difference with YouTube. So if you're not subscribed
yet, definitely subscribe. Check out short notes and links in the description down below. Smash like if you've got video today. Smash like if you've got value today. And if you wanna check out another video, click or tap the screen, you got to learn about
vidIQ's Daily Ideas tool. This thing is amazing. Click or tap the screen
to go watch that video. You're gonna love it. Thank you, Rob, for
coming on the show today and we'll see you at Think
Media in the next video.
