Many criticize that YouTube requires 4,000 hours of watching before accessing monetization features on your channel. But if you look at the numbers, this is a small stepping stone towards making money on the platform.
This is often still the first major milestone any new YouTube content creator will see. So how do you reach 4,000 hours of YouTube viewing? And what can you do to start a new YouTube career?
It will not be easy, as it is for many self-starters. However, by following our advice, which we have gathered from our own experience with the platform, you can achieve this number if you remain determined.
Why not bother losing 4,000 paid watch hours on YouTube
Let’s break the news first. 4000 hours won’t make much money. Take a look at the statistics below. This is all based on our own YouTube experience.
The average viewing time on our channel for the year was 4 minutes 7 seconds. This means that to reach this 4000 hour mark, we need to get 60,000 views on our channel. Our channel’s average CPM for the year was $ 7.16, with about half of our views coming from commercial reproduction.
YouTube also got a 45% discount, so after all that 60,000 views on our channel earned us $ 117. These are not bad changes, of course, but nothing special.
So what does all this mean? Well, you will lose around $ 117 with the new 4,000 watch hours that YouTube requires before monetization can be enabled. If you really want to do something on your YouTube channel, you don’t need to worry about it.
But I want 4000 hours watch now. How to do it?
Below we share with you a really great strategy to help you carve a niche and reach thousands of interested viewers. It’s a long-term mission that will take you far, far beyond 4,000 hours of YouTube viewing.
However, if you really want to hit that 4000 hour mark with the audience you currently have, here are some cheat sheet style techniques you can overuse to keep your viewing time as low as possible.
Create 20-60 minute podcasts
You might consider creating your own podcast. This will allow you to reduce your watch time per viewer, but it will also allow you to publish your video with less editing effort. You can click Record, create your podcast, click End, and then publish the raw video.
Live Stream
Live streaming requires no editing, yet another method of increasing watch time that counts towards your 4000 hours. You can multiply the average number of viewers by the length of your broadcast to estimate your watch time. Thus, one 4-hour stream with 50 viewers will on average equal approximately 200 hours of viewing.
Increase normal video length
Longer videos are becoming the norm on YouTube, so feel free to post videos that are 10 minutes or more long, and if possible, avoid posting shorter videos.
All of these methods can increase your watch time, but instead of focusing on that 4000 hour mark, think ahead to reach bigger goals. Work hard and invest time and that number will surely be reached, and instead, bigger milestones will quickly become your goal.
How to Reach 4,000 Watch Hours on YouTube and Beyond
4000 hours of watching on YouTube is not enough to pay the bills, so let’s see how we can increase the number of hours of watching and views in order to generate at least some income. To do this from scratch, we will need to do a few things to get our attention.
For you, the biggest hurdle is the thousands of other creators who have already made a name for themselves on the platform in thousands of different niches. This means that your content, as a new YouTuber, is unlikely to be recommended among existing competitors in your niche. You can publish videos without a strategy, and over time, you can achieve some success. But without a thoughtful approach, it will take years.
What you need to do is become an expert in your niche and keep a close eye on trends. Your mission will be to create a video on a hot topic before anyone else does. Then what happens is that your content is likely to be recommended to others, even if it is a short time, because you will be the only authoritative source for this hot news topic. Below we give two examples to better explain this.
You Create Content for Video Games: There are rumors on the internet that a new element is being added to the latest Call of Duty game. You research it, find the details and manage to create and publish a video on this topic before anyone else.
You are a sports news channel: rumors are circulating on the Internet that the footballer is about to join a new team in a record deal. You will find the details and report it. You publish your video before any of the major channels can do it.
The best result here is that your video will appear on the first page of Google when searching for the topic concerned, which will increase your views on YouTube itself. Likewise, any search on YouTube itself will also lead to your video. YouTube’s algorithm will recognize the topic in your video as popular and will attract viewers who are heavily interested in your niche to it.
This will include notifications sent to users of the YouTube mobile app, even if they don’t follow you, your video will appear in the Next section and on the YouTube home page.
Of course, once a larger channel covers the topic, your video is more likely to gain a ranking advantage and you will lose that growth. But it doesn’t matter, you already have enough audience to get some followers and views.
The next time you post a video, most people who watched your most recent video will see it in various viewing functions on the platform, even if they haven’t subscribed. So all you have to do is make sure your next video is interesting and has great icons.
So if you’ve read this far, you might be wondering. How do you find themes and create, edit and publish videos before anyone else? Well, you need to invest heavily in your niche to be able to grasp these stories. They usually land on pages like Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter before being reported on by major news sites and YouTube channels. This is true for many niches on the Internet.
If you are not investing heavily in the niche you are doing, you will not notice these stories, at which point you should ask yourself: Are you creating a video because you love what you are creating a video about? You have to be passionate about it and the video making process or you will burn out before you succeed.
Plus, you need to learn how to edit quickly, and you need a good download speed to help you publish your video before anyone else.
It’s harder if you’re not creating a niche video that focuses on interesting topics. For example, if you are doing more creative work, such as making cartoons or documentaries filled with facts. If so, you need to be more creative in your coverage of the hot topics. Once again, the best way to understand this is to truly live and breathe what you want to create on YouTube.
4000 Watch Hour Strategy Summarizing
To summarize this in the form of digestible information that you can carry with you, we recommend doing the following:
- Invest yourself heavily in your niche. Read all about it on the Internet.
- Once you see a hot topic, create a video to highlight it.
- Be quick, focus on light editing, and publish as soon as possible.
- You will collect views and your next upload will be recommended to those viewers.
- The next step is critical: create the highest quality content possible. Make it fun, interesting and make a good sketch.
- Repeat this process every time a new hot topic comes up.
You will not always be successful with this strategy; it may take several tries. When it really works, it works wonders and is a successful way to carve out any niche on YouTube.
In the meantime, you can continue to upload content regularly and use videos that aren’t getting many views yet to experiment with content, practice editing, and learn how to create icons. That way, when it’s your time to shine, when you finally see this trendy piece, you’ll be ready to pounce on it sooner than anyone else.
Did this article help? Are you ready to dive into the world of YouTube or do you still need some advice? Feel free to voice your opinion in the comments section.
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