Can You Make Money from YouTube Shorts?

If you create videos for your brand or business and you’re not leveraging the power of YouTube Shorts yet, then you’re missing out. Shorts has quickly become of the hottest, most popular features of YouTube. That’s because it’s basically the platform’s answer to TikTok. Currently clocking in at more than 30 billion daily views, Shorts offers a fantastic chance to get discovered more easily on YouTube. But can you make money from YouTube Shorts?

Let’s talk about what monetizing your content on YouTube Shorts looks like. 

Can You Make Money from YouTube Shorts?

YouTube Shorts Monetization

Until recently, YouTube’s monetization offers for YouTube Shorts was managed through something called the YouTube Shorts Fund. Between 2021-2022, the YouTube Shorts Fund paid out $100 million to content creators.

The official line from YouTube was that creators could make anywhere between $100-$10,000 per month. But the actual amount you would receive was based on engagement and views. Which essentially meant that you were in direct competition with other creators. Plus, you also had to take into account the growing popularity of YouTube Shorts. The more creators who joined the YouTube Shorts Fund, the less money there was to go around.

But, at the beginning of 2023, YouTube changed things up. Not only did they announce that they would be making some adjustments to the YouTube Shorts algorithm… they also replaced the YouTube Shorts Fund with the YouTube Partner Program. 

If you’re already in the Partner Program, then that’s good news for you — you can start making money with YouTube Shorts right away! If you’re not in the Partner Program, then here’s everything you need to know about becoming eligible. 

How to Join the YouTube Partner Program

There are essentially two ways to become eligible to join the Partner Program. Here’s the first way: you can apply to the program if you have at least 1,000 subscribers and have had 4,000 valid public watch hours during the past 12 months. Or, you can have at least 1,000 subscribers and 10 million public Shorts views over the past 90 days. 

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Ways to Make Money From YouTube Shorts

Making money directly through YouTube

Once you join the YouTube Partner Program, you’ll have multiple ways to earn money directly through the YouTube platform. First, you can earn a share of advertising revenue on any eligible Shorts. But the YouTube Partner Program also gives you ways to make money outside of ads.

Because YouTube is motivated to keep fans on their platform, instead of losing them to the host of other tipping platforms that are now available, they’ve introduced features that allow members of the YouTube Partner Program to make money directly from their fans. With options like Super Chat, Super Stickers, and Super Thanks, creators can now earn more money from their content.

The YouTube Partner Program also allows creators to take advantage of channel memberships, which allows you to offer the option for your subscribers to join as a paid, monthly member. In return, they get exclusive benefits like members-only content, custom loyalty badges, etc.

Making money from YouTube Shorts through brand deals

Fortunately, options directly from YouTube aren’t your only opportunities to make money from your YouTube Shorts. If you want to start making money without a huge audience or make more money than you may be able to from YouTube, then the best option is brand deals or partnerships.

When you get a brand deal, you’ll be paid directly from a company in return for advertising their products or services in your YouTube Shorts videos. One of the biggest benefit of brand deals is that you don’t necessarily have to build up a huge audience — certainly not as much as you need to join the YouTube Partner Program. You just need to connect to the right companies and have the right audience for those companies. Plus, you could make way more money from brand deals than you ever could from the YouTube Partner Program.

Of course, the best way to maximize the monetization of your YouTube Shorts is to do both! If you have the numbers, apply for the YouTube Partner Program. If you don’t, try to get your numbers up — that’s only going to help you long-term and get more eyes on your content, which is exactly what you want. And, at the same time, try to find brands who could potentially sponsor you. 

What are your favorite ways to make money from YouTube Shorts? Tell us in the comments!

And don’t forget to use Zubtitle to optimize all of your YouTube Shorts with automated captioning, eye-catching titles, full branding with custom colors/logos, and more.

You can also use our AI tools to automatically generate video headlines, social media posts, video summaries, hashtags, and video timelines. 

‍Sign up for a free account and start creating today! 

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