Last Updated on January 21, 2022 by
Many small content creators get bogged down by YouTube’s monetization policy. The policy makes it mandatory for every channel to have a minimum of 4000 hours of watch time in the preceding 12 months and at least 1000+ subscribers to earn revenue. This target is steep and challenging for newcomers, but it is not impossible. The first thing that a creator must do is work out mathematically to cross that threshold limit of watch time and subscribers.
The first question a channel owner on YouTube should ask himself is if a watch time of 4000 hours is required in 12 months, then
· What is the minimum number of videos one needs to make in a year?
· How many views does each video need to get?
· What should be the duration of each video?
It is not feasible to get into how many subscribers one should have because that depends on the views. More watch time, more chances of subscribers going up along with it. Plus, many other variables go into the calculations of getting more watch time hours, such as content quality, upload timings, playlists, etc.
Mathematically, it is easy to understand that 4000 hours of watch time is equivalent to 240,000 minutes. Also, everyone knows that YouTube prefers video to be at least 10 minutes long. Another assumption would be that each video gets at least a minimum number of views.
Let us understand mathematically which scenario would be practical to achieve the annual target.
To reach 240,000 watch time hours, a channel owner has the following options.
1. Make 240,000 videos of 10 minutes duration, with each getting 1 view. This is practically impossible.
2. Make 2400 videos of 10 minutes each, with each video getting at least 10 views. This is again unreasonable as creating 2400 videos in the year means creating at least 8-10 videos daily.
3. Make 240 videos of 10 minutes duration, with each video getting 100 views.
The third option looks possible, which means nearly one video per day but again not practical or achievable consistently throughout the year. This also means making quality videos and attractive thumbnails that are clickable and search-friendly so that every video can get 100 views minimum.
Again, to have 240 videos of 10 minutes duration and each getting 100 views would mean each video has at least a minimum of 1,000 Watch Time minutes. This is equal to roughly 16.5 hours and not easy.
Service providers like YouTubeStorm can work out what strategy would be the best to create video content. It could depend on which niche the channel is focusing on. Suppose the contents are on IT or education. In that case, it is better to have longer duration videos as they require a lesser number of views to achieve the 4000 hours threshold. For small channels to get 100 views is a lot, as much time is consumed to record, edit and upload the video. After that, one also needs to spend time promoting the videos on other social media platforms. The ideal way to take care of this, in the beginning, is to buy YouTube watch hours. This will increase the view time.
