With YouTube’s tremendous popularity and explosive growth in recent years, it’s easy to understand why so many business owners use YouTube to get the word out about their business. YouTube lets you introduce yourself and your business, showcase your expertise, demo your products and services, and much more in the world of digital marketing.
Useful YouTube Features
Another feature of YouTube is its Partner Program whereby business owners can simultaneously promote their business and make money via the content they place on their YouTube channel. While there are numerous ways to make money via monetization, the main ones include allowing other businesses to advertise on your channel, offering paid subscriptions for access to your content, and authorizing the selling of merchandise.
YouTube does not allow monetization for any and all video content. The YouTube Partner Program lays out specific criteria users must meet and comply with before becoming a partner.
Criteria You Have to Meet
- Your YouTube account must be in good standing
- The content you upload is original and meet certain quality standards; content must also be appropriate for all age levels, which makes it advertiser friendly.
- Video content is compliant with YouTube’s Terms of Service and Community Guidelines
- You adhere to all copyright laws and requirements (YouTube will review your content before approving it for monetization, to ensure it does not contain songs, music, graphics, etc. that could potentially infringe upon copyright).
Once you have met all the criteria and become a YouTube Partner, you can set your channel up for monetization. The first step is to enable your YouTube channel for monetization, or opt in to having this capability. This step is completed via the Status and Features option of your channel.
Additional Requirements
Once you’ve enabled your channel, your next step is to determine if your video complies with the video monetization criteria by meeting a few minimum requirements:
- Your content is advertiser-friendly, meaning it is suitable for all ages
- Either you created the content yourself or you’ve obtained full permission to use the content for commercial purposes
- You will provide documentation to substantiate that you own all the audio and video content
You earn money in accordance with YouTube’s Terms of Service on a portion of the advertising revenue that is generated when other people watch your video, and will be paid when a certain threshold is met. It is important to note that YouTube makes no guarantee that your monetized video will ever earn you any money, but the more views your video has, the greater the potential exists for you to earn.
