3 Things I Learned From Earning My first $5 on YouTube
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On January 20th, I finally became monetized on YouTube after 16 months of work. It could have happened faster if I had published more videos, but I recently passed 100 uploads to the channel.
Since then, I monetized some of the videos I published in the past and started monitoring earnings. Now that I crossed $5 after a couple of weeks, here are some lessons from the journey. Let’s begin!
Short Content Longer than 1 Min Can Work Well
One of the interesting things I noticed on my channel’s Analytics was that short videos that were not classified as YouTube shorts (like 1–3 minutes long videos) were still gaining a lot of traction.
The more of your video people watch, the more YouTube will distribute it to other people — and if the video is short, to begin with, then it’s a win-win situation.
You Should Use Your Community Tab
Even before I got monetized, I was given access to the community tab a week after crossing 500 subs.
Having that direct communication line with your audience is great and allowed me to gauge their opinion and even gather questions for my interviews.
If you’re not using your community tab — you’re missing out!
Repurpose Your Long-Form Content To Digestible Pieces
One type of video I published a lot these past 16 months was interviews. And those videos are long — usually in the realm of 40 to 60 minutes. And many people can’t or won’t watch the whole thing. So, why not break it up into smaller bits like a video per question + answer and publish that with a link to the full video?
That way, you could enjoy the benefits of the algorithm on shorter videos, and your original video could also get more views from people watching those videos.
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