Users on YouTube can hop from watching a creator’s Shorts to watching their full-length videos or subscribing to their channel.
More than one in four YouTube creators, who are part of its ad sharing programme, are now earning money with the short-form video service Shorts, the company said on Thursday. One year after YouTube turned on revenue sharing for its shortform video feature, a growing chunk of creators are getting paid for it. To subscribe please click tau.id/2iy6f and access our live channel.
More than 1 in 4 creators in YouTube’s Partner Program are now earning money with YouTube Shorts, the company announced on Thursday. Given there are over 3 million creators in YouTube’s ad sharing program, that amounts to roughly 750,000 Shorts creators in total.
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The company doesn’t break out how much it has paid Shorts creators specifically. It has paid $70 billion to creators in total over the last three years, with the bulk of that going to longform content. By all measures, Shorts are getting more popular.
The number of Shorts uploaded on YouTube has grown by 50 percent year over year, and the feature now averages over 70 billion daily views from over 2 billion creators per month, YouTube’s spokesperson for Shorts stated. The feature first launched in 2020 and has become more integrated with the platform in the years since.
Even with that growth, Shorts still lacks the influence and passionate user base of TikTok, the platform it’s imitating. The rival platform is popular enough that its users flooded congressional phone lines earlier this month when prompted to by the app.
YouTube’s eligibility requirements for monetization are lower than that of TikTok, which in theory gives more creators opportunities to earn money. But some creators still struggle to earn revenue from Shorts alone, perhaps due to what some report is a far lower payout than longform YouTube content.
YouTube retains 55 percent of revenue from ads for Shorts, while creators receive the other 45 percent. That’s the reverse of what YouTube offers its longform creators, which the company says is necessary due to music licensing fees for Shorts.
Interestingly, Nearly 80 percent of creators who became eligible for YouTube’s Partner Program through Shorts are earning revenue through other parts of the platform, including longform videos and fan funding. While this is a win for YouTube, it also suggests that the revenue opportunity for short-form video may still be limited.
