Do you want to make money on YouTube? Millions of creators are earning a very good living from the platform by uploading content that drives huge views and engagements. Whether that income is from advertising revenue, merch sales, or brand deals, we keep you updated with best practises and ideas.

How To Make Money on YouTube

Do you know how to do keyword research so you understand what videos people are actually searching for on YouTube? Do you know how to create a custom YouTube thumbnail? Do you know how to create a Playlist on YouTube?

vidIQ has a ton of tips that will help every creator maximise their video content. We publish content every week to keep you up to date with all the best practices.

YouTube Tips & Tricks

YouTube Shorts content is set to explode! 

All the latest tips, tricks, and rock-solid advice you need for this new feature.

YouTube Shorts

Ask any YouTuber and they will tell you that generating significant views and subscribers isn't easy. But with the right strategy and tools, any video creator can build an engaged subscriber base when they understand what those subscribers want to watch.

Appealing to an audience to watch content you are passionate about making is just the first step, you need to know how to reach them and get your videos discovered. Our guides to how to guide more views on YouTube will give you the best tips to succeed on the platform.

How To Get More Views on YouTube

This post is all about how you can monetize your content on YouTube to start generating revenie. The are four golden rules to making money on YouTube, and they are:

You need to have 1,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel

Your videos have generated 4,000 Watch Time hours over the last 12 months

You comply with all YouTube's policies and guidelines

#1 The YouTube Partner Program Requirements

Commonly known as the YouTube Partner Program, or YPP for short, you'll need to hit all four requirements before your channel will be accepted.

Let's start with the 1,000 subscribers. This one is pretty straightforward, it doesn't matter how long it takes you to get to 1,000 subscribers, once you hit that milestone, you've reached that requirement.

As well as 1,000 subscribers, you also need 4,000 hours of Watch Time on your videos over the last 12 months. There is some confusion with this one, so let me try and clarify that. First of all, this is not about how much video content you, the YouTube creator watch. This is all about how much video content is watched on your channel from people all across the world. It’s all those hours of video that people have watched on your channel in the last 12 months (from any given date). You could well have well 4,000 hours of Watch Time over the lifetime of your channel, but it's only the last 12 months that count for YouTube Partner Program requirements.

Another couple of things to tell you about Watch Time. Live streams do count towards that total. Unlisted videos also count towards that total. But if you delete any videos, that Watch Time will be removed from your channel Watch Time hours. And one more final thing, if you are already in the YouTube Partner Program, and if your channel falls below 4,000 hours of Watch Time, YouTube won't automatically remove you from the partner program, but they can do it at their discretion. If you want a much more detailed video on the topic of 4,000 hours specifically, check out this video:

If you want to check the progress of above requirements, you can do so by clicking on your logo in the top right-hand corner of most YouTube pages, and then clicking on YouTube Studio Beta. You can view all of your analytics here, but to quickly check progress on monetization, hover your mouse over "Other features", and then click on "Status and Features". On this screen, you should see a monetization box, and if you click "Learn more", it will tell you exactly where you currently stand with subscribers and Watch Time hours.

But if all of that sounds like too much hard work, then we've got a free tool that will do all of this much quicker and more efficiently. If you 

 on pretty much every YouTube screen, you will see a collection of real-time stats all about your channel. It will show you your channel's views per hour, views over the last 48 hours, and your subscriber count. But the really cool thing is that it will track your progress to 4,000 hours of Watch Time too! Once you hit 4,000 hours, that number will turn green to show you you've reached that monetization requirement.

#2 Following YouTube Rules for Monetization

Next on the list is the rule book. If you want to monetize your content, you need to make sure you stick to it, as YouTube state:

When you apply for the YouTube Partner Program, you'll go through a standard review process to see whether your channel meets YouTube's policy and guidelines. Only channels that meet them will be accepted into the program.

YouTube also constantly check channels in the program to see whether they continue to meet YouTube's policies and guidelines. These policies and guidelines that are very comprehensive, given all of the growing pains YouTube have had of finding the right balance between creators, viewers, and advertisers. I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with these 

 if you want to monetize your content in the future.

However, if you are in a TLDR mood, to summarize, apply common sense. If you think a video might be inappropriate, chances are it is, and you make such content at your own risk.

#3 Copyright and Monetization Policies on YouTube

Among YouTube's policies and guidelines is the huge topic of copyrighted material. Essentially, if you use other people's work, then you could be using copyrighted material without their permission, and YouTube does not want you to do that. It will almost certainly get you demonetized or prevent you from entering the YouTube Partner Program. Let's look at this in a little more detail.

For most of you, this is the most important monetization policy. You have to make sure that you're adding value to any third party content you monetize, and that your content has significant original commentary, educational value, or editorialized statement. And let's be clear, that still might not be enough. This does not give you a license to use other people's content in your videos all the time, because if you do, YouTube may use this as an argument not to monetize your content.

YouTube confirms that if all or most of your channel is dedicated to reused content, and you're not transforming the original work by adding your own unique value, 

then your channel is not eligible for the YouTube Partner Program.

 The spirit of this policy is to make sure that YouTube are incentivizing unique and original content into the YouTube Partner Program, and that YouTube are protecting and rewarding the creators who work hard on original content.

Now, some may see YouTube's spirit of a policy as an excuse to demonetize channels they don't want in the monetization program, but let's have a look at it from this point of view. You spent days, hours creating a magnificent piece of content, and it goes viral on YouTube. And then a dozen random video creators steal that content, upload it, generate hundreds of thousands of views, and end up profiting handsomely from it. How would you feel if that happened? That's what YouTube is trying to protect - original content from video creators.

Admittedly, reused, duplicate content, and copyright content is a broad gray area on YouTube, and they don't always get it right. And you may look at some channels on YouTube and see that they're clearly flaunting these rules. Well, you don't know what their individual circumstances are, they may have permission to use that content, or they may get caught in the future, and you don't want to follow the examples of channels that are doing this. It's not a road to success.

Ultimately YouTube is the gatekeeper. They hold all of the keys. You are on rented ground, and if you flaunt these rules, and break them, then don't be surprised when YouTube comes after you.

#4 Linking a Google Adsense Account with a YouTube Channel

If you are going to earn money from your videos, YouTube needs a way to pay you, and at least to begin with, this will be done through an AdSense account. A few things you need to know about this, if you already have an AdSense account, you can use that. You can connect multiple channels to one AdSense account, and if you haven't got an AdSense account, you can set one up during the YouTube Partner Program application process.

#5 Applying to the YouTube Partner Program

Let's remind ourselves of those requirements one more time: You need:

1,000 subscribers on your YouTube channel

4,000 Watch Time hours on your videos over the last 12 months

To comply with all YouTube's policies and guidelines

When you've applied YouTube Partner Program, it may take up to a month for the platform to make a decision. That’s because actual humans will review your channel so it’s a manual process. Some channels have been approved in days, so it could be quicker. However, if it does take longer than a month, then your channel will usually be placed in further review. When this happens, unfortunately, the wait times can get very long. Three, six, possibly even 12 months. In some unfortunate cases, YouTube never seems to come to a decision, leaving the creator in monetization limbo.

We appreciate that this can be a very frustrating position to find yourself in as a video creator, as many of you have commented about this on our videos here at vidIQ. Unfortunately, we ourselves cannot help push the process forward for you, so what we recommend you do is to talk to TeamYouTube on Twitter, make sure that everybody knows that you have an issue with your monetization decision.

YouTube say that this will never speed up the process, but at least having some decision is something you should deserve as a video creator.

#6 Being Rejected from the YouTube Partner Program: Next Steps

Now let's say that you've applied for the YouTube Partner Program, but you've been rejected. What can you do?

When you are rejected from the YouTube Partner Program, YouTube will give you a general reason why. Unfortunately, they won't tell you specifically what video or content is causing the issue, so you may be left blindly adjusting your channel. However, the good news is you can reapply for the program in 30 days' time.

Again, this is where you will have to use your common sense. If you think there are videos that are walking the community guideline and policies tightrope, then they most likely are and you need to adjust them. If there are videos that have copyright content on them then those are probably causing a problem with YouTube as well, so you will need to delete them.

Creators have asked when they apply for the partner program, will having a community guideline strike or a copyright strike against my channel prevent me from getting into the program? The answer is probably no, it definitely won't prevent you, but it is going to have an impact.

There is a dedicated support page with advice on what you should do if you are rejected from the YouTube Partner Program, and 

Once you are in the Partner Program, and you want to take your monetization a step further by earning money from Super Chats, membership, and merchandise, take a look at this video on the subject:

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Want to know how to monetize your channel and start making money on YouTube? Take a look at our beginner's guide!

How to Monetize Your YouTube Channel - A Beginner's Guide

VidCon 2019 is over and it was another spectacular success for the online video community - creators, brands, influencers, publishers, and the community alike. I've been lucky enough to attend VidCon in a professional capacity for the last 7 years and here are 3 insane lessons I've learned from speaking and auditing YouTube channels at the event:

#1 Most Big Creators Make the Same Mistakes as Small Creators

Let's say you have two channels one with 100 subscribers and one with 100,000 subscribers. How is it they can both be bad at titles, thumbnails and still only one does well? (keep reading for the answer).

#2 The Difference Between Most Small Creators and Big Creators is Focus, Consistency and Time

If you don't know what your channels about, how will YouTube know whom to send to your channel and why would someone subscribe?

If you're not uploading every week how will you grow?

And if you have not consistently known whom your viewers are and uploaded every week for years why would you expect to be a big channel?

Confidence and mindset is the biggest factor in YouTuber & video creator success I've seen over the years. If you believe you will have 1 million subscribers, you're doing the work and putting in the time and nothing can stop you then you might just reach your goal.

If your studying, learning and thinking about what you want to create then you are failing every second your not uploading.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

VidCon 2019 is the biggest online video event to celebrate YouTube, and we've learned 3 invaluable lessons from auditing YouTube channels at the event.

3 Insane Lessons We've Learned from 7 Years of VidCon

More people watch YouTube on mobile than they do on desktop, and the way mobile works is becoming even more sophisticated. I'm sure you've seen this feature whereby it auto plays a video before you even tap on it. Now usually this is a good thing. I don't mind YouTube suggesting me new content because that's the way to discover new creators that you've never seen before on the platform.

However there are times when YouTube suggests something far too often, and there are times when they suggest something that's completely opposite to your preferences. And until now you've never been really able to tell YouTube, stop! I don't want to see this. Well YouTube has finally given you that sort of control. Here’s how:

As you browse through content on the Home Page of the YouTube Mobile App, tap the three dots button to the right, and you'll be presented with this new option, ‘Don't Recommend Channel.

If you change your mind, tap on the ‘Undo’ option

Now let's be clear what that means. YouTube say that once this option is selected that channel's video content will not be suggested to you. But it still means the channel and its contents will appear to you in the subscription feed, if you have subscribed to the channel. The channel's videos will also appear in search. You can still find the channel and watch the video content. And their content might still be visible if it is trending on YouTube.

So I think what this basically is, is a channel mute button. If you do say you're not interested in that channels content you're going to have to do the work to find it once again. Oh, and do me a favor, I know you like to test out these tutorials, just don't do it on our channel please. But, just in case you do tap the, Don't recommend channel option, by accident this can be rescued by immediately tapping the Undo option.

And while we're on the subject, YouTube has added more recommendation tools. As you browse through the app you may see at the top of the screen quick topic shortcuts. The options that you see here are based on your existing personalized suggestions and are meant to help you find what you are looking for faster.

That content could be, videos relating to the one your watching, videos published by the channel your watching, or other topics which may be of interest to you. And of course, as you browse through all of this weird and wonderful stuff you will always have the option to tell YouTube you're not interested in that channels content. Except for us. You're not allowed to tap this option when it comes to vidIQ. This is not reverse psychology. Don't press it, for us. I think, I think I got the message through, yeah?

You may also start to see information boxes appear under videos when YouTube is trying to suggest content to you that viewers with similar interest to you have watched. Yep, that is indeed how much YouTube knows about what you watch, and what they expect you to watch next.

Controlling YouTube Recommendations on Desktop

Now so far, we've exclusively looked at mobile, but what about desktop? Well you can click on the three dots next to a video and tell YouTube you're not interested in that video. But you can go even further by clicking on the ‘Tell us why?’, and from here you can say you're not interested in the channel itself. The chances are you will be using these tools a lot to tailor your YouTube preferences.

But what if you want to clear all of this and start all over again, without actually creating a new YouTube account? Well you can point your browser to myactivity.google.com/myactivity click on, Other Google activity, and scroll down to, YouTube 'Not interested' feedback, which you can reset.

What are your thoughts on the YouTube recommendation engine? Is it sending content you want to watch, or is it still as bad as it has been in the past?

Want to know how to control the content YouTube recommends to you? We have the complete guide for 2020!

How to Control YouTube Recommendations - Complete Guide!

Is this going to be another video about when PewDiePie reaches 100,000,000 subscribers? It's not, no. But he is getting close, and I'd thought I'd dust off the old cobwebs on this thing and get it up and running again. But what is interesting is the speed at which these subscribers are coming in to PewDiePie channel once again.

It's almost like that thing we were talking about for the first six months of the year. Just so happens we've got a cool VidIQ tool to show you what we mean. These are the weekly subscriber counts for PewDiePie's channel since he started the year, and during that 

 they were off the charts, pretty much a million subs per week.

Then PewDiePie himself asked the community to end the subscriber meme as he called it. T-Series overtook PewDiePie and he went back to his regular subscriber numbers. But in the last month, those subscriber number have risen once again. Going from around abut 25,000 subscribers a day to around 45,000 subscribers per day. But this time we're not just looking at subscribers, we're looking at something that's far more valuable to the video creator themselves. And that is views.

Our tool can show you that as well, the weekly number of views on PewDiePie's channel this year so far. And there is no consistency here, with the only spike representing PewDiePie's 

, which went viral. What's far more fascinating here, is the last month worth of views, that have accumulated into more than anything PewDiePie was getting during that great subscriber battle. Now, this sort of evidence leads me to two conclusions. Firstly, during the subscriber battle between T-Series and PewDiePie, people were just creating YouTube accounts and subscribing to PewDiePie, without watching any of his content. Almost as if they were sub-bots. Did I just say that out loud? And secondly, PewDiePie has more or less tripled his daily view count in a space of just two months. And that's what's got our attention. How can a YouTube channel that's already one of the biggest in the world, effectively double it's view count seemingly overnight.

PewDiePie & Minecraft: Generating New Wave of Subscribers

Yes, ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, children of all ages, especially nine year olds, PewDiePie has returned to his roots - the game that kick started his YouTube career. Minecraft. And this blast into the past has already proven to be very lucrative.

As we can see using another VidIQ tool. It shows the view performance of the PewDiePie video below verses the channel average. And after one day, the video performed worse than the average PewDiePie video. But it didn't take long to reverse that trend. By day seven it was performing above expectation, and after a month it was almost double what PewDiePie would usually expect from one of his videos on his channel.

And when you think about it, that makes total sense. Remember millions, potentially tens of millions of people subscribed to PewDiePie's channel for that original Minecraft content. And do you know what a lot of people still do on YouTube a decade later? They search for Minecraft. And who is at the top of that search term right now? Yeah, that's right. It's PewDiePie. And according to our VidIQ research tool, he is the top creator for the keyword right now. Meaning he has the most videos on the first page of Minecraft search for YouTube.

Now, PewDiePie isn't usually one to strategically go after keywords, or try to rank videos for certain topics. And that's not because he doesn't know how to, he just doesn't care and doesn't have to. These are the videos PewDiePie was making a month ago. Which are, well, whatever PewDiePie wants to make. And those videos range from anywhere between 4,000,000 views to 9,000,000 views. Yeah, exactly. Who cares about strategy when you're that successful with every single video that you make?

But, for the last month, PewDiePie has made nothing but Minecraft videos. And every single one of them is getting more than 10,000,000 views. Essentially PewDiePie has embraced the most basic principal in the YouTube playbook. Focus on a topic, and deliver that to your audience with every single video that you make. The double down concept. But again, I don't think PewDiePie is actively pursuing this strategy because he wants more subscribers, or more viewers, or indeed more money from the ad sales on the videos. I think he's just playing Minecraft because he wants to play Minecraft again.

Now in the last month, PewDiePie has made around about 25 videos on the topic of Minecraft. Each of them getting at least 10,000,000 views. So lets put that into perspective. At least 250,000,000 views being plowed into a topic. That has had quite a ripple effect on Minecraft as a search term.

Back to our VidIQ tools once again, where we can see what video tags creators are using. And in a very rare occurrence, for PewDiePie's return to Minecraft gaming, he actually used some tags. One of those tags was Minecraft, and when we click it, our keyword inspector is launched, showing you the trend of that keyword over time. And, right now, Minecraft is trending more than it ever has done, in the last 365 days.

The pivot point for this surge in popularity, was the second half of June. Any guesses for when PewDiePie's first Minecraft video was? Yeah, I'm afraid there's no prizes for this. I've told told you in the first 10 seconds of this video. It's the 21st of June. This is not a coincidence. This will also explain why some of your favorite YouTubers have suddenly returned to Minecraft, or started dabbling in it, jumping on the wave of a returning trend in this case. And I'm not going to lie to you, folks, that's exactly what we are doing right now. Jumping on a trend.

I think it's fair to say PewDiePie has had a very positive impact on the popularity of Minecraft this summer. And what makes all of this even more interesting, is the demise of YouTube's other great gaming institution. Fortnite. For the first time in 18 months, more people are searching for Minecraft than they are for Fortnite. And we're not just talking about search volume here. Fortnite has been in decline in terms of revenue and hours watched on streaming platforms, such as Twitch.

Now in the grand scheme of the gaming universe, this isn't too much of a surprise to me. Games have a limited lifecycle. And, for Fortnite to be at the top of the gaming universe for the last 18 months, two years, is testament to how well that game has done. After all, it did pretty much define the Battle Royale genre, and there are lots of competitors who want to muscle in on that piece of the pie. But when it comes to Minecraft, it has durability on a whole different level. It didn't just define it's genre, it created it in the first place, and is accessible to all ages.

Admittedly, this is a tiny sample size, but when PewDiePie jumped back into the Minecraft topic, he also did a Fortnite collaboration video with Jacksepticeye, a gaming channel with more than 22,000,000 subscribers. The Minecraft video you see next to it got nearly 8,000,000 more views. When two of YouTube's most prominent video creators with a combined subscriber base of more than 120,000,000 subscribers put together a video on Fortnite which performs three times worse than a video on Minecraft, then you know Fortnite's in a bit of trouble.

But terminal? Well, Minecraft has gone through similar trend recessions, and has been declining overall for years. But it still has a warm place in gamers hearts. None more so than PewDiePie's. As for when he hits 1000,000,000 subscribers, well if does carry on creating Minecraft videos, I'm going for August the 12th. What do you think?

PewDiePie has returned to making Minecraft videos on YouTube, and it’s having a dramatic effect on his channel as he nears the 100 million subscriber mark.

PewDiePie Nears 100M YouTube Subscribers with Minecraft Push

Video creator legends are not born - they're made. Most the creators I know that are famous now really sucked in the beginning, so how did they go from nothing to everything? It's all about mindset and I'm going to tell you the six secrets of the winning video creator mindset:

I've been a Youtube Strategist for over a decade, and my clients have billions of views so I'm going to let you into the secrets behind every successful video creator.

The first video creator mindset I want to talk about is knowing your superpower. You may love and have a lot of passion for something, but you really need to determine what you were put on this earth to do. Are you a great entertainer or an educator? In my case I love my family, I love fishing and I skateboard every day.

I absolutely LOVE skateboarding but I was put on this earth to educate people. I've been a teacher most of my life and this is what my superpower is - I love to help others succeed so based on that I'm leaning into that superpower and I'm helping people become better creators.

Once you know your superpower then you can create your messaging around it. You must focus your channel so that you become the perceived thought leader for what you do. This also helps your audience know what to expect from you and allows YouTube to know who to send to your channel based on watch history.

My messaging is video creator motivation. I got to that based on knowing my superpower. Now that I know that I'm a video creator who can help other video creators it was pretty easy to get to my message.

The third mindset rule I want you to think about is really knowing your audience. In my case my audience are people that want to become better creators, and who need to be motivated in video creation because it's such a hard process. Again because I know my superpower it was easy for me to get to my message, and then from my message it was pretty easy for me to really understand who my audience.

The fourth winning video creator mindset is 'belief'. I picked up this word from Evan Carmichael, and it really is the foundation for any video creator. When you believe in your superpower, and you believe that you can help or entertain an audience, unfortunately, you are immediately going to get opposition. You're going to get haters, and you're going to get family members and friends that don't believe in you. You're going to have to have a core belief that you're worth a million subscribers, that you're worthy of turning on the camera every single week showing up for the game and getting things done.

The difference between you and Gary Vee and Evan Carmichael is tenaciousness. Gary Vee has over 2100 videos on his channel with two million subscribers. In Fact, Gary Vee did over 1,000 episodes of Wine Library TV before anyone really knew him! Any creator that thinks they can replicate that success in just a few weeks or months is going to be disappointed.

I've really struggled with this for the last decade and in fact you guys probably haven't seen me on camera very much because of this, but Evan Carmichael really helped me. He said "hey Jeremy, how many times did it take you to 

" I said, I don't know, I probably tried about 10,000 times before I was able to ollie good on a skateboard. Then he asked, "how many takes do you do when you shoot a video," and I said one and he was like "then how can you expect to be good at something if you don't practice?". I actually started to do 15 or 20 takes every time I made a video so that I could get used to staring at a weird lens and a camera. That’s very foreign to introvert so believing yourself is a very true conviction that you must possess if you want to become a big creator.

You also have to create content every week. When Evan Carmichael recently broke his neck the dude created content that week he was in a neck brace and it looked a horrible injury, but he got it done.

Number six is never give up. I know this sounds cliche and common sense, but trust me, you're going to have so much opposition from your family and your friends and people you know and all the haters online you're going to want to give up when you put out a video that takes you 5 hours to make and edit and takes 2 hours to make an awesome thumbnail and you get 10 views or 200 views it's really deflating to a lot of people.

What it Takes to Be a Successful Video Creator

You just have to understand that your core beliefs, and your superpower, are the reason you were born and they are greater than numbers, greater than subscribers. You're part of a bigger picture.

Another thing you have to do is you have to get 1% better every week. Listen to your audience and really understand that you're the beginning of a journey. I don't think if you started boxing last week that next week you can go knock out Mike Tyson. I just don't think that's reality, but for some weird reason creators buy a camera, start editing and uploading videos, and then a lot of them get really upset when they don't get huge view counts. They blame the algorithm, they blame their family, they blame someone else all because they don't have a million subscribers and it just doesn't make a lot of sense.

If you look at business, most business people fail two or three times before they succeed in having a successful business. It takes a lot of failure to succeed so I know my six rules are common-sense. I know they're nothing that you didn't already know but I hope this video helped you and inspired you to remember what's really important in being the creator.

If you're not yet the YouTuber you were born to be, it might have more to do with your daily habits and mindset, not your thumbnails and titles. We bring you the 6 secrets of highly effective video creators.

The 6 Secrets of Highly Effective Video Creators - Ultimate YouTuber Hack

First off, let’s confirm how you access the ‘Notifications’ feature on YouTube:

When you are logged into YouTube, you should see your channel logo in the top right hand corner of most YouTube screens, if you click on that, you have the option to go to YouTube Studio.

Click on the ‘Videos’ tab, this will show you the video details.

Click on ‘Advanced’. Scroll down to the bottom of this screen, and you'll see the following option: ‘Publish to the Subscription feed and allow notifications to subscribers’. To clarify what that means, your subscribers will see this video in their Subscription feed and will receive notifications if eligible. This is always defaulted on, as you would expect, so if you want to stop this from happening when the video goes public, untick this box, and save the change.

Notifications have already been sent out for public videos, so for a private or unlisted videos.

The Difference Between Unlisted & Public Video YouTube Notifications

I know you've got a burning question you want to ask. What's the difference between a unlisted video and a public video that doesn't send out notifications? Good question.

Unlisted videos are those that are only designed to be found through a shared link, they don't appear in search results, and they don't appear on your channel page either. Public videos, on the other hand, are totally transparent and visible, they can be found through search and appear on your channel.

Some rare reasons why you might need to do this is for your channel trailer. You want it to be discoverable on YouTube, but you don't want to notify your subscribers because it's not required. Or, you might have some sort of Easter egg or secret game you're playing with your audience which they need to find, but obviously you don't want to notify them that the video exists.

And now let's go back to our question, what is the maximum number of notifications a viewer will see from a single channel in 24 hours?

So if you intend to upload multiple videos, maybe five or 10 a day, for whatever reason, and you only want to make sure that the most important videos reach your audience, then you can use that checkbox to untick the ones which you don't think are as valuable.

Did you know there is a limit to the number of video uploads and livestream notifications a viewer can receive from a single YouTube channel in a 24-hour period? Find out more.

How to Control YouTube Notifications YOU Send to Subscribers

There used to be a time where you could only make money through YouTube from AdSense, and you would have to generate any other income, such as affiliate links, brand deals, and merchandising, off-platform.

But YouTube has got a lot more sophisticated in the last couple of years, now giving you several options to make money officially through them. On top of that, YouTube have recently announced some upgrades, as well as some facts and figures about how you can make money on YouTube.

Now, just before we go into the details, there is something that you video creators do need to bear in mind. All of these tools are part of the 

, which means you need 1,000 subscribers, 4,000 hours of Watch Time, and have applied and been accepted into the program. If you haven't yet got there, please watch the following video which is full of tips, tricks, and advice to help you get there.

How to Make Money on YouTube through the Partner Program

If you have reached that target and you have been accepted into the YouTube Partner Program and you have monetized your content, congratulations, but at this point, you're probably feeling a little bit like this. Oh, is that all I get?

Now, don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with earning money from the adverts on your videos, but you don't earn that much compared to what you could potentially be earning from other income sources, and of all of the income sources you have control over, AdSense is probably the least reliable.

With changes in CPM, changes in season, and the demonetization of videos from YouTube, you have almost zero control over any of this, so by all means, have AdSense running in the background as a nice bit of extra cash, but start to think bigger with these YouTube tools.

Super chats allow viewers to make a financial donation to a channel and then have their message prioritized in their livestream chats and during YouTube Premier chats. The best thing about this feature is that it's pretty much available to all monetized channels as long as it's available in your country. To find out whether you're eligible for Super Chats and to turn them on:

Click on the Monetization link on the left hand navigation bar in the new Creator Studio

Click on the Live Chat tab at the top on the page

On this screen, if eligible, you should see a simple Super Chat toggle to turn this feature on.

Now, we here at vidIQ do live-streams every single week, and we occasionally get Super Chats from you, the awesome community. Thank you very much for that. And YouTube recently said this about Super Chats, and the numbers, to be honest, are mind-boggling:

There are now over 90,000 channels who have received Super Chats with some streams earning more than $400 per minute.

Super Chat is now the number one revenue stream on YouTube for nearly 20,000 channels - an increase of over 65% over last year!

The simplest way to explain this is that Super Chats come from your biggest fans because they feel involved in your journey. They are part of your community. They feel invested in you, and through the medium of the livestreams that they're watching, they want to give something back to you.

Now, live-streams may get a fraction of the views that your video on-demand content might get, but those people watching your live-streams are your most dedicated followers, and if I, the video creator, make sure that these livestreams are all about the audience, that's where Super Chats can really work.

And the funny thing is, here at vidIQ, we do live-streams every Tuesday where we audit your channels. It's all about you, but we actively discourage people from sending us Super Chats, because we don't want to favor people who have sent us money and audit their channels. We wanna do it for free, but people still send us Super Chats as a way of saying thank you. That's the power of the Super Chat.

Now, of course, there is a personal/content barrier to entry. In order to get Super Chats, you need to do livestreams. Now, if you're a gaming channel, this is very easy to do. You just start screen recording a game that you're playing on and livestream to your audience and talk to them as you're doing it, but if you're new to livestreaming and you're not a gamer, just be honest with your audience.

Post in your Community tab that you're gonna do a hangout session or a Q&A or you're gonna look at important questions that have been asked on your videos and try and answer them. Make sure that, when you go live, you're talking to your audience, so being a little unplanned is not a bad thing, and just enjoy the experience. Live-streams can be crazy things, but once you get used to them, they are fantastic, and at the end of that journey, you have Super Chats to financially support you. Incredible stuff, do try it.

With the Super Chat tool already highly successful, YouTube announced a new feature called Super Stickers. This will allow fans to purchase animated stickers during livestreams and Premiers to show their favorite creators just how much they enjoy their content.

Stickers will come in a variety of designs across different languages and categories, such as gaming, fashion, beauty, sports, music, food, and more.

Generate Revenue on YouTube by Selling Merchandise

I'm sure you've seen the merch carousel that's now directly baked into YouTube channels that allows you to buy merch directly from the video watch page. The requirements for offering this feature are a little stiffer. Being in the YouTube Partner Program is the prerequisite, of course, and for this, you will need more than 10,000 YouTube subscribers and have zero Community Guidelines Strikes. To set this functionality up:

Go to the Monetization screen in the new Creator Studio

Click on the Merchandise tab and then toggle on the Display Merchandise option.

Set up merch items from the merch store you intend to use.

There are many YouTube channels that have built entire financial empires out of merchandising, and as you grow your channel and build your community, you will start to develop brands and slogans and characters that people might want to get a piece of in terms of merchandise. Being able to sell your stuff officially through the YouTube platform is pretty awesome. However, the drawback to date has been only one available merch provider, Tee Spring, but the good news is YouTube recently announced five new supported vendors, and those are Crowdmade, Don't Forget To Be Awesome, Fanjoy, Represent, and Rooster Teeth. We recently featured Crowdmade on TubeTalk and you can read more about them and 

how to make money from selling merchandise on YouTube

How to Make Money from YouTube Channel Memberships

YouTube Channel Memberships allow viewers to join your channel through monthly recurring payments. In return they get membership-only perks like badges, emojis, and other goods you offer, like exclusive live-streams, extra videos, and even discounts on merch. The eligibility requirements are pretty strict for this one.

You need 30,000 subscribers, be over the age of 18, be located in a country where channel membership tools are available, agree to the terms of service of the feature, and have zero strikes on your channel. Even then, you might not be eligible, as it's still rolling out.

Now, of all of the monetization roots you can go down, memberships probably requires the most effort from you. Super Chats are pretty much taken care of by YouTube. You don't have to do anything for them. In terms of merchandising, you can pick one image and create dozens of items from it and have a shop set up within the hour, but with channel membership, you are making a commitment to your audience to create exclusive content for them. So, think about the creative juices and the time, energy, and resources you're going to have to put into your channel members.

Think back to when you were first starting your channel and you were committing to a video schedule, whether it be once a week or once a day. Well, channel memberships is like that, but on an entirely new scale. You need to make a commitment to those channel members to provide what you're promising, because they're paying for it.

With all that being said, recently, YouTube have massively upgraded this tool with one of the most requested features, membership levels. With levels, creators can now set up five different price points for channel membership, each with varying perks. This is how the Fine Brothers are using membership levels on their React channel, going all the way up to $30 a month. According to YouTube, this has increased revenue from their channel memberships by 600%!

YouTube recently announced even more ways that creators can generate revenue from their video content. Find out if you can take advantage of the new features via the YouTube Partner Program.

How to Make Money on YouTube! [New Updates]

I'm going to let you in on a little YouTube secret today. One that's been earning our channel hundreds of thousands of views per month, and will likely earn us millions of views in the future. Thought you'd be interested in this one. Let's do this!

Have you ever had a video that just keeps churning out views, months, even years, after you've made it? The reason I ask is because those are the types of videos you can build entire channels around. And that's exactly what we've been doing here at vidIQ over the course of 2019. And the best news is this has nothing to do with 

The story starts back in July 2018 when YouTube introduced a new hashtag feature, and the moment we heard about this, we decided to make a tutorial video on the topic. Now it turns out that a lot of people wanted to know what these hashtags were and how to use them, so much so that this video a year later has over a quarter of million video views. Now that's pretty cool isn't it.

A simple tutorial on something that turned out to be a bit of a bust, but here is the craziest thing. A year after that video was made, it is still generating between five and six hundred views every single day, that's more than 3000 views per week, 15 thousand views per month. And it's been like this pretty much all year.

Yes the daily views have dropped maybe 25 percent - but most YouTube videos do not do this. They sink without a trace after the first month. So, obviously there's a question here, why is this video still being served up to viewers a year after it was made?

Well first of all it's a fantastic thumbnail, wouldn't you agree? For once I'm not actually joking, the click through rate on this video is ten percent, which is at the top end of the typical average. And one of the reasons why this is happening is because from the moment we launched this video it has sat on the top of the search page for YouTube hashtags. And we know just how important being at the top of these search rankings is, because we have a second video all about hashtags which we launched a few weeks after the first one which has a fraction of the views and click through rate to match.

And how did we immediately find ourselves at the top the search rankings? Well it was because we were the first channel to make a video on YouTube hashtags on the platform and get it out there before anyone else. Obviously it goes without saying, if there's anything new in your topic of interest, if your the first onto YouTube and video content you have a distinct advantage. And if there's a lot less competition, like there was with YouTube hashtags, which is a relatively minor news story, then you can dominate the search rankings and be the authority.

And now here's where there's a really important distinction between two different types of content. On the one hand we have trending news, that's here today, gone tomorrow. It's all about shock and awe, aiming to be in the right place at the right time for a viral video. And on the other hand we have brand new information, not trending news per say but something to add to a knowledge base that people may need to learn about for weeks, months, even years to come.

Evergreen Content on YouTube: The Key to Success

We've got a word for that, it's called evergreen content. Evergreen content is content that is always relevant or at least relevant for a very long period of time. We often joke that the gold standard of evergreen content would be to rank a video number one for how to change a car tire, or how to unblock a toilet. It doesn't matter how old that information is it's still relevant today. And yes, if you are brave enough to do a search for this term, and yes I have blurred out some of the thumbnails, you will find videos made over ten years ago with millions of views, that still get 70 views per hour today.

So ranking on YouTube for evergreen content could potentially be your superpower. The problem is, and forgive the very intentional pun, it is very difficult to unclog existing evergreen content. Unless of course that existing evergreen content suddenly becomes obsolete and is replaced by something new. You can see where we're going with this one folks.

Over the past decade this screen has become part of the daily fabric of my life, and it helped transform my career path. But it's time is coming to an end, if not already, replaced by YouTube's new creator studio. This is a monumental change, hundreds of screens, analytics, channel setup and video management all changing from something we're all very used to, to something new, arguably improved but quite different, and unfamiliar. And this isn't just affecting me, it's affecting every single one of you watching this video, and reading this post, and millions more besides.

It’s a bit like saying, I know we've been learning about the Marvel universe for the last ten years, but going forward we're going to learn about the DC universe, it's kind of the same but everything is different. So if everybody on the platform needs to learn something new, who's going to teach it to them?

Let me give you a very simple example. How to delete a YouTube video, a basic function you might need to know, and the top video on this search result has one million views, nicely done. But sitting in the number two slot right now is a video we made in the beginning of 2019, which shows you how to do it in the new creator's studio.

Now doing keyword research for this was pretty simple, it was the first thing that came into my head. How to delete a YouTube video. Everybody's searching for that term if they want to know how to do it. The thumbnail is pretty straightforward as you can see, my key concern was to make sure that it stood out against the rest of the thumbnails and looked different in some way. And no text certainly helps that.

Now that is all standard YouTube practice, but here are where things get a little more complicated when it comes to evergreen content. Evergreen content is often solution based in its nature, answering questions to commonly asked questions. And more often than not those asking the question just want the answer as quick as possible, nothing else. And that can lead to a counterintuitive YouTube video strategy.

On purpose I made the video relatively short, under three minutes and showed viewers how to delete a video in the first 30 seconds of this video, all the value was up front, the rest was saved for detail and a bit of bonding with the vidIQ community. Of course the common mantra is that watch time is the most important metric on YouTube. But what YouTube is also telling all of us more and more is to stop making videos for an algorithm and make videos for your audience.

Time is one of the most valuable currencies in the world and when a viewer spends it with you they want value from it. I can't and will not try to fool a viewer into a ten minute video on how to delete a YouTube video. And in this particular scenario YouTube completely agrees with me.

The second thing you need to appreciate with this strategy is your video will almost definitely perform worse to begin with, you just need to have unshakeable faith in the system. Through the vidIQ video comparison tool we can see that the blue line that represents this video on how to delete a YouTube video underperformed against channel expectation which is the pink line, at least to begin with, given time as the video grinded it's way through the algorithm, more people searched for it, clicked on it, and got value from it. By the end of its first 28 days this video was performing well above expectation from the channel. That's what a cumulative view kind of looks like, but the daily view count graph looks even more impressive.

It is not uncommon for evergreen content to tank very quickly after it's launch. It's usually not a sexy topic, a small number of people may be searching for the keyword, but the power of evergreen content is that the same number of people will likely be searching for the term tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, and if your video delivers the value the expectant audience wants this is what can happen. Almost as many view per day as the day the video was launched. Already that video's doing pretty well, but if I'm honest with you I expect it to do even better in the future.

At the moment YouTube are currently running both the classic studio and the beta studio, but at some point they're going to turn off that classic studio, which means all of those videos on the old method of how to delete a video will be obsolete and whose video is be there waiting in second place to take the top spot? Yep, it makes perfect sense now doesn't it? So that's one evergreen piece of content up and running.

But hang on I just said that the entire YouTube creators studio is changing, that gives me an idea. This has been our side project throughout 2019, creating simple tutorials to do important things in the new YouTube creator studio. As you can see some videos have been more successful than others, but each and every one of them is still getting views today and fingers crossed, those should be guaranteed views for years to come.

To date these new creator studio beginner guide videos have collectively brought in over a million views and we still have dozens more videos on the list we need to make. Admittedly this is a rare occurrence, for absolutely everything in a topic, YouTube analytics and channel maintenance completely change and that has given us a rare opportunity to dominate a huge topic as if it was starting all over again. But this type of thing in smaller doses is happening all the time.

When a new season starts in a sport, such as basketball, baseball, NFL, there's always potential evergreen content that could last you 6 to twelve months. When a new version of a phone or a new operating system for a program is released, again there is evergreen content potential. It could last you 12 months even two years. New games, beauty products, back to school, these all have potential evergreen content.

The right evergreen video content can earn your YouTube channel an incredible amount of views per month. Find out how.

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