How to make money on YouTube: the main ways a channel earns

The ways a channel earns, at a glance

YouTube has its own ways to earn: ads on long videos and in the Shorts feed, a share of YouTube Premium fees, channel memberships, Super Chat and Super Stickers, Super Thanks and Shopping.⁴ Sponsorships, affiliate links and your own products sit outside them: a brand, a retailer or a customer pays you directly.

Each YouTube feature is offered only in certain countries. For fan funding you have to be at least 18. For ads you have to be 18 or have a legal guardian over 18 who handles your payments.⁴

Ads: joining the YouTube Partner Program

To share ad revenue you have to be accepted into the YouTube Partner Program. There are two ways in: watch hours on long videos, or views on Shorts.¹

Subscribers

1,000

needed on both routes

Watch hours

4,000

on public long videos, last 12 months

Or Shorts views

10 million

in the last 90 days

Your share

55%

of net revenue from ads on your long videos

Hours watched in the Shorts feed don't count toward the 4,000, and neither do private, unlisted or deleted videos.¹

From application to first payment

1. Get the basics in place

   Follow the channel monetization policies, live in a country where the program is available, have no active Community Guidelines strikes, turn on 2-Step Verification and get access to advanced features.¹

2. Apply in YouTube Studio

   Once you reach a threshold, open the Earn tab, accept the base terms and set up or link an AdSense for YouTube account. The channel then joins the review queue, and YouTube says a decision typically takes about a month.¹

3. Add your tax details

   Every monetizing creator has to submit US tax information in AdSense for YouTube, wherever they live. Google withholds US tax on what you earn from viewers in the US, and may withhold at the maximum rate without that information.⁵

4. Get paid

   A month's earnings are added to your AdSense for YouTube balance between the 7th and 12th of the next month. They are paid out later that month if the balance has reached your local payment threshold and the account has no holds.⁵

Then keep publishing. YouTube may turn monetization off on a channel that hasn't uploaded a video or posted to the Posts tab for 6 months or more.¹ From February 1, 2027, a channel counts as active with 1,000 watch hours in the past 365 days, 1 million Shorts views in the last 90 days, or 2 long videos or 5 Shorts uploaded every 90 days.¹⁰

Shorts: one shared pool, split by views

A Short doesn't carry its own ad. Ads run between videos in the Shorts feed, and that revenue is shared out every month in four steps.⁶

1. The ad revenue is pooled

   Each month, revenue from ads shown between videos in the Shorts feed is added together.

2. Music takes its part

   A Short without music sends all of its revenue to the Creator Pool. With one music track, half goes to the pool and half covers music licensing.

3. The pool is split by views

   Each monetizing creator is allocated a part of the pool that matches their share of engaged Shorts views in each country.

4. You keep 45%

   That share of your allocation is yours, whether you used music or not.

Some views are left out of the count: unedited clips from other people's films and shows, reuploads of other creators' videos, views from bots, and Shorts that don't meet the advertiser-friendly guidelines.⁶

Per view, Shorts pay much less than long videos. One creator network's 2025 data put average creator revenue at $0.328 per 1,000 Shorts views in the US and $0.008 in India.¹¹ That is a single source, so read it as a sense of scale, not a rate card.

From February 1, 2027, a channel needs 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days to receive its monthly share of the pool. A channel below that line stays in the program, and its long videos keep earning.¹⁰ More in the Shorts monetization guide.

Memberships and Supers: payments straight from viewers

Fan funding opens at the earlier level of the Partner Program: 500 subscribers, with the smaller upload and watch-time requirements in the table above.² YouTube pays you 70% of net revenue from the three features below.⁵

• Channel memberships

  Viewers pay every month in exchange for perks you offer.⁴

• Super Chat and Super Stickers

  In a live chat, viewers pay to make a message or an animated image stand out.⁴

• Super Thanks

  On a regular video or a Short, viewers pay to show an animation and have their comment highlighted.⁴

At the same level YouTube also offers Jewels, which viewers buy to send gifts during the live streams of eligible creators.²

Shopping, sponsors, affiliate links and your own products

None of these depends on ad rates. They depend on whether your audience trusts you enough to buy.

• YouTube Shopping

  • Partner Program
  • Not for made-for-kids channels

  Connect your own store, and viewers can browse and buy your products on YouTube.⁴ It needs Partner Program membership and a channel that isn't set as made for kids.⁷ In the affiliate program you tag other brands' products and may earn a commission when a viewer buys. Each brand sets its own rate, and the program is open only to creators based in certain countries.⁸

• Sponsorships

  • No YouTube threshold
  • Disclosure required

  A brand pays you directly to feature it. You have to select the paid promotion option in the video details, which adds a label at the start of the video, and you and the brand are responsible for following the law that applies.⁹

  YouTube sponsorships

• Affiliate links

  • No YouTube threshold
  • Disclosure required

  Outside YouTube's own program, a retailer or an affiliate network gives you a link and pays a commission, on its terms, when a viewer buys through it. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) expects you to say clearly that you earn from such links.¹³

• Your own products and courses

  • No YouTube threshold
  • You carry the costs

  Merchandise, a digital product, a course, a paid community or your own services. YouTube is where people find you. The sale happens on your site or a marketplace, on that platform's terms.

If you dub a sponsored or affiliate video, dub the disclosure too. The FTC expects it in the language of the endorsement, on screen and out loud when you both show and talk about the product, and it holds the creator and the brand responsible, not the platform.¹³

Why the viewer's country changes ad income

Two channels with the same views can earn very different amounts from ads, and a large part of the reason is where the viewers are. YouTube lists viewer geography among the things that move CPM, next to the time of year and the mix of ad formats: the ad market is more competitive in some places than in others.¹⁴

In data for videos uploaded in 2024, the median rate was $11.95 per 1,000 YouTube ad impressions in the United States, $1.33 in Brazil and $0.96 in India. Advertisers paid ~9× as much to reach a viewer in the US as one in Brazil, and ~12× as much as one in India.³

Check in YouTube Analytics which countries your views come from. To see what the same views are worth from viewers in another country, put your views into the calculator or compare ad rates by country.

Where a second language fits

A second language doesn't change what you made. It changes who can watch it.

If viewers in another country find the dubbed version and stay with it, the ads they see are sold at that country's rates,¹⁴ and sponsors and products that sell there become relevant too.

YouTube reported that creators who uploaded multi-language audio tracks saw, on average, more than 25% of their watch time come from views in a non-primary language.¹⁸ That is an average across creators who used the feature, not a forecast for your channel.

DubSync makes the dubbed version. You upload the video file (MP4, MOV or M4V, up to 150 minutes and 1 GB), choose one of 28 languages and download a dubbed MP4 with a voice created from each speaker and your background audio kept. Each language is a separate dub, paid per minute of the original video.

DubSync doesn't publish to YouTube on your behalf and doesn't make subtitles or audio-only files. For an audio track, export the sound from the dubbed MP4 in any editor. There is no script editing either, so watch the result before you post it. And YouTube's own automatic dubbing is switched on by default for eligible creators, so check what it has already made for your videos first.¹⁹

Plans from $4.90/month. You see the minutes and the cost before anything starts. See pricing

Questions before you start