2 Ways to Get More Hours of Watch Time on YouTube
Do you want to make some money on YouTube?
Well they now have new Monetization Guidelines and many small creators on the platform are worried, upset, or quite frankly pissed that they now have to fulfill these requirements:
YouTube requires your channel to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watchtime with the past 12 months to have monetization.
I’m also a small creator so I perfectly feel your pain.
What the best strategy to overcome this hurdle?
If Watch Time has to be 4,000 hours in 1 Year:
-What’s the minimum amount of videos you need to make this year?
- How many views does each video need to get?
- AND how long should the video be?
I’m not gonna tackle the subscriber issue, because I think if you follow the quest in getting 4,000 hours of watchtime, the subscriber count will go with it.
So, here are the things that we know:
- We know that 4,000 hours of Watch Time is equal to 240,000 minutes.
- We also know that YouTube prefers 10 minute long videos. So 10 minutes will be the baseline for part of our discussion.
Let’s Begin!
To reach the 240,000 minutes of Watch Time needed, you could make:
- 240,000 videos at 10 minutes long, with each getting 1 view. This is impossible.
- 2,400 videos at 10 minutes long, with each getting 10 views. This is also pretty unreasonable.
- 240 videos at 10 minutes long, with each getting 100 views.
*Extra Tip* Take a look at your video library. If you have a video that has already received 1,000 Watch Time minutes in the span of a year, find out what made it work so well and try to replicate it success.
We also know that 240 videos a year, gives us an additional 125 days in the year where a video is not being uploaded. This means 1 video every 1.5 days OR roughly 5 videos a week. Only 10 minutes a piece and you’ve got a nice weekend off.
But what quicker than that?
If you put out at least 24 videos in one month or one year, each 10 minutes long; with 1000 views, you should be able to hit the milestone.
That’s the baseline, but the more videos you put out, the fewer views you need to get on each video.
Create a content strategy around this, execute it for a month, and then figure out if creating this many videos is too difficult for you OR if you can create daily content.
PLAN B
You could promote 24 existing videos on your channel using Google Adwords, with the aim of having at least 10,000 views. But, that will involve money.
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Did this article help you? If so, consider checking out my YouTube channel at Awom Kenneth. I also help promote youtube channels, so let's talk at awomkenneth @ gmail . com
