YouTube Shorts monetization is today! Here’s what you need to know 👇

It’s an exciting time for creators, with vertical video to see a big jump in revenue opportunities on YouTube starting today. Shorts getting monetized is the current big thing, but how exactly do creators make money from Shorts? And is your channel ready and enabled?

Here’s a video on what you need to know and what you need to do right now.

Key points from the video
1) Click on the “Earn” tab and accept the terms under “Shorts”
2) Ads will run between different Shorts
3) Revenue generated will be split among all eligible views

YouTube’s documentation is available here: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/12504220?hl=en

Video transcript:

Kelsey has a great question. I’m a newly monetized channel. How does the new Shorts paid feature work? Explain it like I’m five. Challenge accepted. My name’s Corrado and I’m your personal YouTube and content coach. Let’s get you growing or in this case, let’s get you making money.

So the first thing you need to know is that you have to accept the new terms on the earn of the Monetize page to start earning money from the Shorts. You click on the Earn tab, you click view on the Shorts. You accept it. It’s boring. I know, but you got to do it. If you want to know more, I have another whole video on that you can watch, but that’s not important right now.

The second thing you need to know is that YouTube is taking a bit more money from the Shorts than they take from long-form horizontal videos. So right now, horizontal videos, YouTube takes 45%. But in Shorts, YouTube is going to take 55%. The extra 10% is going to cover all the music licensing deals. So you, as the creator, can use whatever music you want without having to worry about getting demonetized.

So one of the big questions then: how does monetization actually work? So Shorts are to short for things like in- video ads and there’s no real room for display ads. So as of right now, at least, there’s only one place for ads – in between the Shorts.

Which leads to the next question. If the ad is between the Shorts, who gets the revenue from the ad? As you know, with normal monetization, if there’s an ad on your video, you split the money with YouTube. But in this case, who gets the split? The answer is no one, but also everyone.

So everything – this is how it all works. So like every time an ad is displayed to someone in the Shorts feed, all that money is being put into a giant bag. YouTube is going to take 55% of that bag and the remaining 45% is going to be split up between all creators who had eligible monetized views.

So what’s an eligible monetized view? Well, if you’re not monetized and you’re not part of the partner program and you get views, even if there is an ad next to your Short, you don’t get anything. This is the same as it works right now with horizontal videos, so that’s nothing new. You’re not in the partner program, you don’t get any revenue.

The other thing is that if you are in the partner program, but the Short video doesn’t meet the ad guidelines, then you’ll either receive limited monetization or none at all. So basically that’s basically it. All the revenue goes into a big bag. YouTube takes their cut and the rest goes out to creators based on views.

Thanks, Kelsey, it’s a great question.