Six months ago, we told creators to experiment with YouTube Shorts. We advised them to film vertical videos under 60 seconds (as the requirements suggest), post them to YouTube, and create a featured section on their channel to house the content.
Why did we suggest this? In just a few weeks, we saw channels getting thousands of views from Shorts. They mostly came from the YouTube Shorts shelf, a display area where different Shorts are featured. By the time a creator’s video left the shelf, it would have hundreds, thousands, or millions of views.
That’s how powerful Shorts are. With them, you can gain more subscribers in two weeks than you’ve had all year. Without them, you’ll miss a valuable opportunity to get discovered on the platform.
Read More: How to Create a YouTube Short: The Complete Beginner's Guide
If you want to know exactly why that is, watch our latest video about Shorts and the competition that’s quickly surrounding them.
The best time to post a Short was months ago. But if you hurry, you can still reap the benefits of creating content that gets played millions of times.
Need a push to get started? Here are three undeniable reasons to experiment with Shorts.
The first reason is a little obvious but worth repeating. Extra views from Shorts have helped many channels grow, and they’ve got the numbers to prove it.
Our standout example is Jake Fellman. In September 2020, he had 40k total channel views. After posting original, 3D-animated Shorts, he now has more than 3M subscribers and almost 2B views.
Read More: How This YouTube Creator Got 1.5 Billion Views In Just 80 Days
Jake isn’t the only creator to reap the benefits of Shorts. There’s also MrBeast, a popular creator who grew his Shorts channel to 4.79M subscribers. Professional YouTube channels such as LegalEagle have Shorts with more than 200k views each. Members of the vidIQ community have seen explosive growth, and some TikTok creators have successfully transitioned to Shorts.
You could be next if you act now. Shorts are viewed 3.5B times each day, so there are plenty of people willing to watch your videos.
Did you hear the news? Beginning in March, U.S. creators will get a beta version of the in-app Shorts camera.
The announcement came from Neal Mohan, chief product officer at YouTube. On Feb. 17, he shared the news in a blog post, his exact words being...
“Currently, Shorts is available in beta in India. Since the beginning of December, the number of Indian channels using Shorts creation tools has more than tripled... In the coming weeks, we'll begin expanding the beta to the U.S., unlocking our tools to even more creators so they can get started with Shorts.”
To be clear, anyone can post a Short today. As long as a video is vertical and under 60 seconds, YouTube will recognize it as a Short. What Mohan is mentioning above refers to a TikTok-style camera that’s only available in India. With it, creators can record, edit, and post Shorts directly inside the app, adding music and other special effects to their content.
When the U.S. market gets the Shorts camera, things are going to get very competitive. More creators will have tools for creating better Shorts. Plus, thousands of people who never posted a Short will do so just because there’s a new feature encouraging it.
In the coming weeks, it’s going to be harder to do what creators like Jake, MrBeast, and LegalEagle have done. Rather than wait, it's better to experiment with Shorts right now.
Right now, there’s no way to monetize Shorts. The Shorts display area doesn't support ads, and advertisers may not want to appear on a seconds-long video.
But if you think about YouTube’s history, things are always changing at the company. Just because creators aren’t making money from Shorts today, that doesn’t mean they won’t in the next five or 10 years.
It's likely YouTube isn’t doing this for free. With content as popular as Shorts, the platform could be searching for ways to monetize it as we type.
Before that happens, put yourself in a position to earn Shorts revenue. If you start posting them now, you can increase your chance of monetizing that content.
Even if you decide to post a few Shorts, you’ll need a way to measure their impact on your channel. When you download vidIQ, you’ll find two powerful tools within the Chrome extension – one for tracking Shorts views and another for researching popular Shorts on YouTube.
This dashboard is on the top right corner of all YouTube pages. Hover your mouse over the menu to discover how many Shorts views your channel earned in the last 48 hours. For easy access, click the box beside this metric to add it to your dashboard.
This tool lets you research the most-viewed videos on YouTube for any keyword. To access it, go to the YouTube Studio and click Most Viewed in the left navigation menu.
Type #Shorts into the search bar, then filter the results to show channels with 1,000 or less subscribers. This will show you all of the small channels on YouTube getting tons of views with Shorts. You can use this as motivation to start posting your Shorts or an idea generator for future Shorts.
Shorts are doing well on YouTube. They’re going to be around for a long time, so don’t wait to post your first vertical, less-than-a-minute video. Do it now to reap the benefits before creators in both India and the U.S. can do the same.
Lydia Sweatt is a writer who loves balancing her article/blog time indoors with a healthy dose of nature. She bikes, hikes, and identifies edible plants along the way.
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