YouTube is an amazing video platform and because it shares the revenue with the creators, you have an incentive to make videos and earn money from it.
But if you have been on YouTube for a long time, you might have noticed that initially, the YouTube videos were of varying lengths from 30 seconds to 10 minutes to 1 hour. The range was wild and bizarre. But slowly over the years, you have seen almost all of the YouTube creators you see have transitioned to at least 10-minute videos.
Long Vs Short Videos
And it is not a coincidence. Because everything less than 3 minutes has been categorized into shorts of the vertical format, and the reason is simple because YouTube don’t want you to earn money from short videos.
They want longer videos. And they will do everything in their power to punish you for making shorter videos. Yes, short video gets you reach, but doesn’t get you any kind of meaningful money. And anything longer video than 10 minutes will earn you multiple mid-roll ads, which are the main revenue generation for YouTube and also for you.
And so if you make videos like 5 minutes or 7 minutes long, the mid-roll ad doesn’t run and YouTube doesn’t make good amount of money from the video. YouTube doesn’t like it when you make smaller videos, and that’s why they punish you. And it has punished the creators so much that everyone has transitioned to at least videos which are 10 minutes or longer.
Rules of YouTube
So if you want to be successful on YouTube, you have to play by the rules of the YouTube. And that can be anything.
You must have also noticed that the transition from the people who used to use abusive words, And they were all prominent freedom of speech kind of people. Suddenly they stopped making that abusers because YouTube started demonetizing the abusive videos.
So whatever the rules YouTube makes, if you follow them, then you’re in the good graces and the algorithm will love you and eventually will make money.
Luck Vs Hard Work
Regarding the thing how to get so popular on YouTube that you have at least $1,000 of earnings from YouTube, that is something really different ball game. And it is 90% luck and 10% hard work.
Unlike what Mr. Beast suggests that you just make 100 videos and keep on improving it and you will get success. That is a wrong thing and wrong assumption. That’s not how YouTube works. Every day, hundreds and thousands of videos are uploaded on YouTube and all of them failed. And out of sheer luck, 10 people succeed.
But that doesn’t mean you should not try. You should try. But there is a hack. The hack is that you make the videos enjoyable so there’s a good retention, make the videos longer so there will be a possibility of mid-roll ad, and use all the YouTube rules in your video, but you pick up a trending topic because that’s how you get the initial views.
You might get 100 views, 50 views, or maybe 1,000 views because you use the trending topic which is in the news or something which people are already searching too much and they want new content of it. It can be a news article or anything.
A Secret Hack
So whatever your niche is, tie it to a news article or trending topic of the day, and you might get the initial boost of views. And maybe 1,000 people come to your video because of that, and because the video is interesting and long enough to keep them engaged, out of them, maybe 10 people will subscribe. But because 100 people liked that video, the YouTube might promote it more and the cycle will keep repeating.
And if you stay in the game for long enough, you might accumulate some kind of meaningful subscriber base and some kind of meaningful watch time and some kind of meaningful revenue from this YouTube game.
But at the end of it all, nothing is guaranteed. It’s just all an assertion, but I have seen this assertion work time and again. But if you don’t win, it doesn’t matter, you still win because you improve at your craft.
So if you’re looking at the YouTube as a place to practice your art and craft and improve upon it, you’ll definitely achieve that. And if as a byproduct you earn money from it, all the very good.