This Is How Much YouTube Paid Me For 2,000,000 Views

It's been about 6 months since I started my journey on YouTube. For those of you who don't know what YouTube is: first of all, you must live under a rock, and second of all, YouTube is an online video-sharing platform with millions of creators and 2 billion monthly users.

Now not all of those users create, as I said before. That was me for a long time. I stuck to being a viewer, sitting on the sideline and watching the content which the millions of creators. That was until about six months ago, however. Those six months have been nothing like I expected. Most people say it takes years to reach a thousand subscribers; I did it in a matter of weeks.

Don't worry; this is not a story where I'm going to show off everything I've done on YouTube and my success. A lot of people ask me about how I did it on YouTube, so in this article, I'll be telling you how I did and how you can do it. In addition to this, I'll be answering the question that people ask me most, how much I earn.

How I Did It, And How You Can Do It Too

I reached 2,000,000 views in about six months. The first few months, I struggled to succeed and spent a lot of time making videos that gained no traction and performed poorly. Then, everything changed, and it was all thanks to one thing: YouTube Shorts.

What are YouTube Shorts?

YouTube Shorts is basically YouTube's version of TikTok on their platform. YouTube Shorts are 60-second short-form videos in a vertical format that appear on something called the shorts self.

The shorts shelf is quite literally a section on the app that has thousands of Short available so that you can just scroll and get lost in them. YouTube has its very own Shorts editor in which you can add music, stickers, and titles to your video.

How do they work?

YouTube shorts are made to make it much easier to go viral on the platform. The YouTube Shorts algorithm is very different from the regular YouTube algorithm in that the Shorts algorithm is a completely separate one. The Shorts algorithm mainly relies on audience retention to decide whether the video is going to do well.

Since the Shorts are only 60 seconds long, it's not as difficult to get high audience retention. For this reason, a typical YouTube Short with high audience retention has something called a spike or a viral moment where the video skyrockets. And I'm not joking; the video really skyrockets. After that, the video will either completely stop growing, as in getting one or two views a day, or continue its growth and potentially have another spike.

Anyone. Any creator on the platform, regardless of the number of subscribers they have.

How can you make them?

You can make them using YouTube shorts studio in the youtube app or uploading to the youtube website on your computer with the #shorts. The video has to be 60 seconds or less in time and in vertical format.

My Earnings

Now for the moment, you've all been waiting for: how much have I made on YouTube from 2,000,000 views? The grand total amount that I made from 2,000,000 views on YouTube for 12,000 watch hours was: $0.00.

I told you you'd be surprised!

Why I Earned Nothing From YouTube For 2,000,000 Views

Yes, going viral on YouTube was amazing. I was one of the first people to post YouTube shorts, and I was rewarded for that. However, I was not rewarded monetarily. In fact, I'm not anywhere near to the requirements for monetization on YouTube. YouTube monetization requires 4,000 hours, and yes, I have 12,000, but barely any of them count.

A Big Downside To Shorts

Shorts did not earn money for any creators on YouTube up until now. Shorts, according to YouTube, were the only ways for creators to gain subscribers and an audience, not money.

Watch time from the shorts shelf; the shelf that makes your shorts go viral does not count towards monetization or what you get paid for if you are already monetized.

However, this is about to change

YouTube recently announced a few months ago that, like the TikTok creator fund, there would be a Shorts creator fund of 100 million USD. However, for the first few stages, only the top Shorts creators will be eligible to earn from the fund.

Only shorts creators with hundreds of millions of shorts views and hundreds of thousands of subscribers will. Now you might ask me, are you part of those top creators. And my answer is no, probably not. There is no way of knowing until I'm notified by YouTube, which I haven't been, but I think I fall short of being eligible for this fund.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this article, and you learned something!

This article is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered Financial or Legal Advice. Not all information will be accurate. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.