How to Get Your First Paycheck from YouTube: TheMaddness22 Edition

In March 2013, I applied for the YouTube partnership program. I was young, dumb, and hungry for the success following all of my YouTube idols such as Jacksfilms, Starkid, and Tobuscus. It was a different time, pre-Paul brothers and pre-Adpocalypse, and it was exciting to declare that you were a YouTuber, or at least trying to become one. I thought I’d be rolling in that YouTube dough by December 2013, at the latest. 

Six and a half years, 1987 subscribers, and 223 videos later, I have finally received my first paycheck from YouTube. 

If you’re unaware of how YouTube issues their payments, the very first thing you need to know is that they don’t send any money until after you earn their minimum threshold of $100. Now that you know that, the second thing you need to know is that it's really freaking hard to get that $100 if you have no idea what you’re doing. So here are some of my own tips and tricks that I learned from failing and then succeeding to earn that $100 over six years on the platform: 

#1: Enable video ads to play on all eligible videos

That’s where you get the big bucks. For my first four or five years on the platform, I only allowed the overlay ads across the board and then enabled the video ads on my larger videos. At the time, there was a huge stigma with video ads and you could be labelled a sell-out if you had them on every single video so I was trying to avoid it for moral/branding reasons. I made maybe $50 during those four to five years of making weekly videos, which wasn’t bad. During the adpocalypse of 2018, my channel fell below YouTube’s new partner thresholds and I lost monetization. When I was re-monetized a year later in March 2019, I decided to allow video ads on all videos since some of that stigma was lost and also, frankly, I wanted to see what would happen. 

I ended up making the remaining $50 in only six months. 

So video ads are key to making sure you eventually get a paycheck from YouTube. Hypothetically, you could just wait ten years for all of the pennies from only having overlay ads add up, but that’s a lot of work for such a little payout. 

#2: Post frequently, but with quality

Listen, there are ways you can hit that $100 threshold with only a handful of videos. It’s happened before. However, it’s only happened with people who got stupidly lucky, people who are very good at what they do, or people with a little bit of both. Chances are, you’re going to be with the 90% of us with no luck and mediocre to above average (but not godly) quality videos. That means in order to make money on YouTube, you’ve gotta post pretty frequently. You’d be surprised on how much money my backlist of videos generates. In fact, my most popular video that has, subsequently, earned the most amount of ad revenue was a filler video that I created for a gap in my content schedule. 

However, that’s not to say that you should post thousands of minute long videos about your dog. People still have to watch your video in order for you to make money. There’s more people than ever posting to YouTube these days so you really have to have your video stand out if you want people to watch them. So post frequently, but post with quality because a thousand and a half videos aren’t going to help you if no one is watching them.

#3: Respect your audience

Hey did you know your audience can tell when you’re only making videos for the money? Most loyal YouTube viewers are aware of the infamous 10:01 trick where a YouTuber will do whatever it takes to push their video past the 10 minute mark to supposedly appease the ad revenue gods. If you’re starting out and looking for that sweet YouTube cash, don’t do that. Focus on making your videos the best they can be regardless of the time stamp. You could lose audience members with cheap tricks and obvious grabs for both attention and money. 

On a similar note, if you’re pushing out videos just to push out videos your audience will notice that as well. I spent four to five years making weekly videos and while that helped me develop my skills as a content creator, it did not help much else business-wise. This year, I’ve adjusted to a “I’ll make a video when I have an idea for one” schedule and not only have I uploaded better videos, but I’ve earned more money from them as well. Of course, this method will vary by channel but for the most part you want to keep your viewers happy. They’re the reason you’re getting paid after all. They’re going to be the ones deciding whether or not to watch your video and how long to watch it. Respect them and they’ll respect you.

#4: Appease the YouTube Gods

2018 was a wild time for YouTube. After Logan Paul posted a…..ahem, controversial and also distasteful and overall garbage video, the YouTube Gods really cracked down on who and what could be monetized. They set up some new parameters such as requiring 4,000 public watch hours and 1,000 subscribers, established some new content policies (that seemingly didn’t apply to those who started the crackdown, but I digress), and re-worked their flag system. As a result, if you do not appease the YouTube Gods your channel will probably die. It definitely won’t get monetized, at the very least. Yes there are problems with their new system (particularly with their favored creators and the LGBTQIA+ community, but again I digress), but you’re still required to follow them in order to get paid. It’s like a really strict minimum wage job.

A really, really strict and really, really low-paying minimum wage job.  

#5: Invest more money and time than YouTube will ever return to you

Not to be a dream killer, but there’s a reason why YouTube’s primary color is red and it’s because that’s what the average YouTuber’s budget looks like. I would consider myself to be one of the more frugal YouTubers and even my budget is so red that Moses tried to part it. YouTube is not a cheap hobby. $100 does not even begin to cover a fraction of my costs with cameras, editing program subscriptions, other miscellaneous equipment, and there’s no way it covers minimum wage for the amount of hours I’ve poured into my channel. 

The point is that if you make YouTube videos exclusively for the money, you’re going to have a bad time. While the partnership program is a good idea in theory, YouTube’s poor execution of it has proved it to be unreliable and not worth the time required to utilize it for a full time career. 

However, if you plan on utilizing YouTube as a hobby or a secondary form of audience growth though, the partnership program is a nice little treat. That neat little paycheck covered a tank of gas all because I made some silly videos on the internet. Am I going to quit my day job because of it? Absolutely not. I like health insurance. But, it’s not hurting anything in my life so I’m going to stick with it and, hopefully, get a second check here in another six years.