A common question is always asked that ‘How many views a person needs take to make money on YouTube?’ Everyone has heard that a person will make one dollar per thousand views. But in reality, it is the audience engagement with the ads that create money not the number of views.

But before a person moves to the charging phase he/she needs to build up a library of quality videos, work on promoting these videos, and target at a specific audience, via social media or any other means to gain a subscriber base.

Monetizing your YouTube Channel

Once the audience base has been created, a person can start to earn some money. YouTube does have a formal process a person needs to go through to monetize the channel.

• The first step to enable the account for monetization is to join the YouTube Partner Program. A person has to agree to the terms, basically agreeing that he/she would not do anything fraudulent.
• If a person does not have an Adsense account, YouTube will then ask him to set up the account.
• A person will need to tell Google where he intends to use the ads – in this case, your YouTube channel.
• Google publishes a list of the acceptable countries a person can monetise YouTube account. There are some parts of the world where a person won’t be able to operate a Google Adsense account to monetize the videos.
• If a person already has an Adsense account, the application will be approved immediately, and the YouTube channel will simply be added to the existing account.
• Once the AdSense account has been created the person will be asked to confirm that he/she owns the copyright to the videos and that he/she understands what one is doing.

Views and Adsense

Youtube give different kinds of ads to choose from and to place in different places on the YouTube page or within the videos themselves. A person will earn money via ads by how many times have viewers clicked on straight past an ad when watching a video. Viewers need to actively interact one way or the other with an ad for it to earn the youtuber some money.

Various types of ads are:

• Small ads at the bottom of a video called as Overlay ads- YouTuber only get paid if a viewer clicks on the ad to expand it.
• Display ads beside the video – YouTuber will be paid either when a viewer clicks on the ad or sees, at the advertiser’s discretion.
• Short ads at the start of a video on mobile i.e Bumper ads and ads at the start which viewers can’t skip over i.e. Non-skippable video – YouTuber gets paid if a viewer watches an entire ad.
• Ads at the start of a video that a viewer can skip after five seconds or Skippable video ads- These are the most common type of YouTube ad. YouTuber get paid if a viewer watches the whole ad or at least 30 seconds if it’s longer.
• Ads in the middle of a longer video or Midroll ads- a viewer has to watch an entire ad for at least 30 seconds.

There is no guarantee that AdSense will serve a YouTuber up with ads just because he/she has monetized the videos. They will only place ads on the videos for those brands which are willing to associate themselves with the channel.