Shorts Monetization Is Coming In February 💸

What's going on? It's been a long road since September, when YouTube first promised monetization for Shorts were on the way. It's finally happening in February and YouTube dropped new terms for the YouTube Partner Program.

Break it down for me. For starters, everyone who's currently part of the program is going to have to sign some new agreement terms. Whether you're looking to make money from Shorts or not, you're gonna have to sign on the dotted line... or at least click "Agree."

Now, I know what you might be thinking. "But wait, I've already been able to make some money from Shorts via Super Chats and shopping integrations, as well as a creator fund that the company had set up." And you'd be right. But let's be real here, that model wasn't paying the bills.

Everyone in the program, whether they plan to use Shorts for monetization or not, will have to sign a base agreement that covers things like what you can post on the site and how payment works.

So, if you're already a YouTube Partner, don't worry. You'll have until July 10th, 2023 to accept the new terms or else your ability to monetize with the platform will be turned off and you'll have to reapply to the program. But that's not all! You'll also be able to agree to additional agreements for "Watch Page" and Shorts monetization separately. Basically, you can pick and choose what you want to monetize.

The Shorts agreement, which will be available on February 1st, will give you a cut of the revenue from "ads viewed between videos in the Shorts Feed." And the Watch Page agreement covers all the other stuff, like livestreams and traditional "long-form" videos on YouTube, YouTube Music, or YouTube Kids.

How's Shorts monetization compare to TikTok? It'll likely be in another league. TikTok doesn't directly share ad revenue with creators. That's something that YouTube has been doing for years with traditional videos and now it's coming to Shorts.

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Creator Advice Of The Day 📝

Here are some interesting thoughts from Ali Abdaal, a YouTuber with over 3M subscribers.

In the email, he says things like, "It’s insanely hard to make a full-time income as a creator." and "If you just vlog your life like Emma Chamberlain, you'll have no competitive advantage (unless you’re extremely charismatic; even then it’s tricky)."

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