How long it took me to get monetized on YouTube and how much YouTube paid me in my first month(s).

Wait, what? YouTube? Monetization? Aren’t you an artist? Well yes, haha, but I love numbers and analytics too. Since I’m a small channel on YouTube and recently hit the milestone of monetization I thought it’d be fun to make a video and an accompanying blogpost about it. For those of you that are also interested in starting a YouTube channel and hitting that goal of monetization.

The requirements of getting into the Youtube Partner Program

So, you just started your new channel and you’d like to earn some AdSense money? Sorry to say, you won’t get monetized on day one. There’s a treshold to apply for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). Currently (2024) you need to have 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours within 365 days. There’s also a lower treshold at 3000 watch hours to apply and offer subscriptions, but that’s not the same as earning AdSense.

Once you reach that treshold of subscribers and watch hours, you can apply for YPP and it might take a day or a few days to process. There’s some additional documents for tax purposes you need to deliver (depending on what country you’re from, I had to fill in a W8-BEN form and an additional proof of residency for my business) but then you’re set! It’s done, you can start earning money with your small YouTube channel now.

How long it took me to get monetized on YouTube

I started my channel on february 23rd in 2022. I’m writing this blog on february 23rd 2024 (do you see what I did there?) and I reached my 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours to get monetized on november 7th 2023. It took me about 1,5 years of making videos to reach that treshold and in that time I made 33 videos that together are almost 700 minutes in length. That’s an average of 21 minutes per video and 11,5 hours of videos made.

That’s a lot of videos made without any compensation! If you’re looking for a quick stream of passive income via YouTube, look somewhere else. If you actually like making videos, building an audience, video editing and have something to say, this might be for you. I personally started with zero experience in filming videos and editing software and had to learn everything from scratch. So after the initial, very steep, learning curve my videos also started to get better. If you have prior knowledge about editing, storytelling and filming your videos will probably be better sooner and you might be able to reach your goal of monetization faster.

Going viral vs. steady growth

All my videos until october 2023 have seen a pretty steady growth in views, most were around 500 - 1000 views per video. This might not seem like a lot, but visualize 500 people in a room watching your speech for 10 minutes and it creates a completely different visual. There were some exceptions, like a sketchbook tour that had 2K-3K views which seemed crazy at the time. But none of my videos really hit it off.

Untill I posted a studio vlog about the Artist’s Way and how I approached that book. It was, apparently, a trending topic at the time and many people searched for that specific keyword. My videos came up for a lot more people and the three studio vlogs I made with ‘the Artist’s Way’ in the title did a lot better, gathering between 3K - 7K views per video.

This was also the time I moved studios and edited a seperate video about doing so. My moving vlog had a pretty steady growth once I published it, but after a week or so it took off. So far it has gather 54K views and 3K watch hours by itself. This video easily took me over that treshold of 4K watch hours and I could finally apply for monetization on YouTube.

How much YouTube paid me for my first month of being monetized

Since I had to wait for my application for the YPP to be accepted the first 20K or so views from that viral video weren’t monetized, as well as a few succesful studio vlogs. However, from november 7th until december 7th I earned € 149,63 from AdSense alone. That’s an average of € 4,83 per day. Basically a coffee a day for just having my videos online! I’m obviously not sitting back and relaxing with this amount of income, but still I was surprised it was this much for my first month of monetization.

The first three months of being monetized on YouTube

Since it’s the end of february now I have a little bit of extra data for you. I published my last video of the year at the end of december (it did pretty well with 5,5K views and was about a very searchable topic, artist income). And then… imposter syndrome hit me.

I just couldn’t get myself to edit a video. I felt it had to be just as good as that ‘viral’ video and I had to grow in every way. I felt like I needed to achieve filmmaker status and use fancy lighting and storytelling and every video had to be a piece of art. Only, I made video about being an artist and sharing my studio practice and most days that’s well… pretty boring and unpolished. So I just didn’t post anything, I fell out of the habit of making videos and filming myself and I let my channel sit there.

On january 31st I forced myself to publish a video with all the footage I still had and made something ugly.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, because my AdSense revenue dropped. A lot.

You don’t have any say in Adsense revenue. It’s based on how much need there is for advertising space, if more companies want to buy the same space for advertising, the price goes up. If there’s no demand for advertising space, the price goes down. You might be able to connect the dots, january is not a very popular time for advertisers. November and december however are very popular and very much in demand for advertisers.

From december 7th until february 21st (I included december so you can see the drop in revenue) I earned € 71,07 in AdSense revenue. That is an average of € 0,89 per day compared to € 4,83 per day in november/december. That won’t get me a coffee a day anymore ;-)

My Youtube strategy going forward

I found out overthinking my videos is not for me. For some people writing very detailed scripts might help them, but for me a text or sometimes just a title and general theme is enough. I’m just an artist filming their studio practice and making studio vlogs from that footage. There might be a general theme to be found in that month, but sometimes there’s not. And it’s not an excuse to stop documenting my progress as an artist because in general it just makes me happy to share my work with the world through videos.

What I will do however going foward is implement more ‘searchable’ videos in my strategy. Since I’m an artist those searchable videos could be about framing an artwork, art as a business, artist income, basically anything that you can add ‘how-to’ to in a title. Those videos are ‘evergreen’ (meaning they’ll be searched for forever and not just this month) and can really enhance your YouTube channels longevity. Also, if someone asks me about a certain topic and I happened to have a video about that, I can just direct them to that video instead of explaining the same thing over and over.

Patreon as an extra passive income stream

We have almost discussed everything there is about YPP and monetization on YouTube, but there’s one topic I’d like to talk about in addition to this topic. Patreon. In the summer of 2023 I created a Patreon account as an addition to my YouTube channel where my ‘biggest fans’ could support my work and get some extra monthly content in return. I also post monthly art lessons on there that I don’t publish anywhere else, only on Patreon.

It started out pretty slow with 2-3 patrons a month, but since that viral video in november it has stead around 9-10 patrons a month averaging € 90 a month in passive income. I’m saying passive, but there are a few hours of work per month writing posts and filming lessons. However, if there’s 10 patrons supporting me or 10.000 patrons supporting me the work amount doesn’t change so in that regard it’s ‘passive’ income.

AdSense income varies per month and you don’t have any say in that. There’s going to be good months and bad months, changes in algorithm so your videos won’t be found etc. etc. However if you manage to lead a few of your biggest supporters to your Patreon, that is way more consistent than YouTube AdSense, instead of one passive income stream, you now have created two!

I love sharing my work and studio practice on Patreon and I really feel like I’m building a community over there. It’s also nice to not have to worry about keywords or algorithms because the people that follow me over there will see everything I post. In general people aren’t subscribed to 100’s of patreons since every single one of them costs money.

Have fun with your YouTube Channel

To end this very long blogpost, I just want to say that if YouTube monetization is your goal to just have fun with your channel. It will reflect in your videos and will be more fun to watch. Don’t fall into the trap of making everything ‘for the algorithm’ because it might be good for ‘the algorithm’ but it’s very bad for living, breathing and creative people. In the end we want to watch videos of people that inspire or have knowledge to share, not an AI generated perfect script without a soul.

In time I hope to come back to this blogpost and add a link to a new video of ‘how much Youtube paid me in a year’. I’ll be back!