Revenue for YouTube Shorts creators starting February 1. Google has just announced the launch of the revenue sharing program from its recent platform dedicated to short videos. Strict rules will govern the payment of advertising revenue for youtubers. With the update of its YouTube partner program, the American giant now wants to compete with TikTok and attract influencers to its platform.
Monetization in four steps
To monetize its service, YouTube broadcasts advertisements between two videos. Revenue generated will be split equally between creators and music partners, if a creator uses copyrighted audio. In detail, advertising revenue sharing will take place in four stages: pooling the funds generated, calculating the money to be allocated to each creator (“based on number of views and music usage in the Shorts”), the distribution between creators and finally the application of revenue share (45% for Shorts).
In the case of a Short using protected video content, “the views attributed to the Short are shared between the user who uploaded the video and the third-party rights holders (the owners of the other content used in a Short)”says Google.
What conditions?
To enable Shorts monetization on February 1, videographers must agree to the new YouTube Partner Program terms. Until the new contract is validated, access to the YouTube Shorts revenue sharing program will be blocked. In addition, creators will be able to use a portion of the funds generated by their viewers’ YouTube Premium subscriptions. The profits generated will be donated to 45% of the net income of the service. “Payments are made to each creator based on their share of views of the Shorts within subscriptions in each country”indicates in particular Google.
Finally, to hope to monetize their Shorts, the videographers will have to respect the classic rules applying to content adapted to advertisers. Thus, for example, it will be impossible to receive income for videos with content “non-original, such as unedited clips from movies or TV shows, reposts of other creators’ content from YouTube or other platforms, or compilations without the addition of original content”. Artificially generated views of Shorts, “from bots that click or scroll automatically”, will not be counted. Some sensitive themes may also be demonetized, as is already the case on YouTube, to the chagrin of some creators.
In addition, to be eligible for the revenue share program, creators must have reached 1000 subscribers and have registered “4000 hours of valid viewing on public videos in the last 12 months” or have “recorded 10 million valid views of Public Shorts in the last 90 days”.