Rising Creators Forum

I’ve been posting youtube shorts for a few months and getting decent views but i have no idea if i'm making any money from them

i'm in the youtube partner program for my long form videos but the shorts seem to make basically nothing. Is that normal?

How does youtube shorts monetization actually work and is it worth putting effort into shorts?

Youtube changed shorts monetization in early 2023 so if you're hearing old info that might be why you're confused

now shorts are monetized through ad revenue sharing just like regular videos. BUT the RPM is way lower because:
1. shorts ads are less valuable to advertisers
2. people watch way more shorts in a session so each view is worth less
3. the ads between shorts are split among all the shorts in that viewing session

you need to be in the youtube partner program to monetize shorts (1k subs and 10M short views in 90 days OR 1k subs and 4k watch hours on long form)

my shorts RPM is around $0.08 per 1000 views. so if a short gets 100k views i make about $8. it's not much but it adds up if you're getting millions of views

the real value of shorts is growing your subscriber count. don't make shorts expecting to make good money from them directly

Youtube shorts monetization is terrible compared to long form. i'll just say that upfront

I get about 500k views per month on shorts and make like $40 from them. my long form videos get 100k views per month and make $800. the difference is insane

shorts are monetized through the shorts fund and ad revenue sharing but the RPM is super low, usually $0.05-0.15 per 1000 views compared to $2-5 for long form

so why bother with shorts? because they help grow your channel. i've gotten about 3k new subscribers from shorts and maybe 5% of them watch my long form content. that's still 150 extra viewers for my real videos

think of shorts as a marketing tool, not a revenue source. use them to drive people to your long form content where you actually make money