A year after YouTube enabled monetization for Shorts, more and more creators are getting paid for this format. More than a quarter of the creators in the YouTube Partner Program are now earning money through YouTube Shorts. Given that more than 3 million creators participate in this program, this amounts to approximately 750 thousand Shorts creators.
The company does not disclose how much it has paid to Shorts creators. In total, over the past 3 years, it has paid authors $70 billion, most of which was for long-form content.
Recently, short videos have become increasingly popular. The number of short videos uploaded to YouTube has increased by 50% year-on-year. Currently, Shorts videos have an average of more than 70 billion daily views from more than 2 billion creators per month. The feature was first launched in 2020 and has since become more integrated with the platform. Despite this growth, Shorts still does not have the same influence and passionate user base as rival platform TikTok.
While there hasn’t been a massive shift from TikTok to YouTube, the monetization of Shorts seems to have encouraged more YouTube users to experiment with the new features.
Todd Sherman, YouTube Shorts’ product manager, believes that Shorts’ connection to the wider YouTube ecosystem gives the feature an edge over its competitors. Unlike TikTok, YouTube users can move from watching a creator’s short videos to watching their longer videos or subscribing to their channel, which is usually a more lucrative opportunity for creators.
YouTube’s monetization requirements are lower than TikTok’s, which theoretically gives creators more opportunities to make money. But some creators still find it difficult to generate revenue from short videos alone, likely because such videos receive much lower payouts than long-form YouTube content. Instead, many creators see Shorts as a way to attract new subscribers to their main channel.
«Shorts — it’s basically an ad that gives me a few dollars instead of me paying anything at all»,” wrote one Reddit user on r/PartneredYouTube.
Currently, YouTube gives Shorts creators only 45% of its advertising revenue, while keeping 55% for itself. However, the situation is the opposite with long videos. According to the company, this is due to the need to pay for music licensing in Shorts.
It is noteworthy that most creators of YouTube Shorts earn money through other YouTube features. Almost 80% of the creators who have qualified for the YouTube Partner Program through Shorts generate revenue through long-form videos and fan funding.
Source: The Verge