How to make money on YouTube in 2026
YouTube pays 55% of watch page ad revenue, 45% of your Shorts pool allocation, and 70% of memberships and Supers. Those splits are the only fixed numbers in the whole business — and the entry bar doubles on 1 February 2027.
9 minute read
YouTube is five businesses, not one
Most guides treat YouTube income as a single thing, and that is where the confusion starts. YouTube's own partner earnings page describes several separate revenue modules, each with its own eligibility gate and its own split: ads on the watch page, ads in the Shorts Feed, YouTube Premium, fan funding through memberships and Supers, and shopping. Sponsorships and anything you sell yourself sit entirely outside that structure, so YouTube takes no cut of them at all. The practical consequence is that "am I monetized" is not a yes-or-no question. You can be earning from memberships and shopping while earning nothing from advertising, and for a channel doing less than a few hundred thousand views a month, that is usually the more realistic place to start.
The bar you have to clear today
There are two doors, and most write-ups collapse them into one. The lower one, which YouTube calls the expanded Partner Programme, asks for 500 subscribers plus three valid public uploads in the last 90 days, together with either 3,000 qualified watch hours in the last 12 months or 3 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days. Clearing it unlocks channel memberships, Super Chat and Super Stickers, Super Thanks, jewels and gifts, and shopping features. It unlocks no share of advertising or YouTube Premium revenue. For those you need 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 qualified watch hours in 12 months or 10 million qualified Shorts views in 90 days. Both routes also require no active Community Guidelines strikes, two-step verification, and a linked AdSense account.
On 1 February 2027 the entry bar doubles
On 10 August 2026 YouTube announced the first real change to Partner Programme entry in years, and most guides ranking for this topic still do not have it. From 1 February 2027, new applicants will need 1,000 subscribers plus either 8,000 qualified watch hours in the last 365 days or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days. Both numbers are exactly double the current ones. Existing partners are grandfathered and do not have to meet them, though everyone has to review and sign the updated terms in YouTube Studio by the changeover date. A second rule applies to everybody: earning ad and subscription revenue on Shorts will require 10 million qualified Shorts views over a rolling 90 days, and dropping below that pauses Shorts revenue while you stay in the programme and keep earning on long-form. Fan funding and shopping thresholds are unchanged.
The splits are the only fixed numbers in this
Almost everything about YouTube earnings is variable, with three exceptions that YouTube publishes and does not move. Turn on watch page ads and YouTube pays you 55% of net ad revenue from your public videos, including when they are embedded elsewhere. Shorts Feed ads work differently: revenue is pooled monthly, you are allocated a share of that pool based on your share of engaged views, and you keep 45% of your allocation rather than 45% of what your Shorts earned. Memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers and Super Thanks pay 70% of net revenue. In the same August 2026 announcement YouTube also set out how subscriptions feed the pool, with 30% of net Premium revenue and 60% of net Premium Lite revenue going in, paid out at those same 55% and 45% rates.
What RPM depends on, and why the published tables are guesswork
YouTube defines RPM as what you earned per 1,000 video views after its revenue share, counting ads, memberships, Premium, Super Chat and Super Stickers together, while CPM is what advertisers paid per 1,000 impressions before the split. What moves RPM is niche, geography and season, but the tables putting finance at $30 and gaming at $3 trace to no dataset you can inspect. Epidemic Sound's own explainer is unusually candid, reporting that some outlets claim $1 to $6, others $1.25 to $2.25, and others $2 to $15, naming a source for none. Season, at least, is verifiable from outside. Alphabet reported YouTube advertising revenue of $11.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025 and $9.88 billion in the first quarter of 2026, still up 10.7% year on year. The pool contracts after Christmas even in a growing year, so an annual projection built from a December RPM is fiction.
The arithmetic, and why views is the wrong target
Do the multiplication honestly. A million views at an RPM of $2 pays $2,000; the same million at $10 pays $10,000. The views did not change, so the views were never the lever. Worse, a large fraction of views carry no ad at all, mid-roll breaks require a video of at least eight minutes, and Shorts earn on engaged views out of a shared pool rather than per view. Now compare: a hundred people paying $5 a month for a membership returns roughly $350 a month at YouTube's 70% share, forever, from an audience smaller than a single mediocre video. That is the whole argument against optimising for views. Views are how people find you. What they do next is what pays.
The streams that usually pay more at small scale
Memberships and Supers are the obvious first move, because the 70% share is the best rate YouTube offers and the gate is 500 subscribers rather than 1,000. Shopping affiliate opened to creators at 500 subscribers in March 2026, so tagging products you already recommend is available long before ads are. Sponsorships are paid directly by the brand with no YouTube cut, and are priced on who your audience is rather than how many views a video got, which is why a small specialist channel can out-earn a large general one — note that published sponsorship rate cards suffer the same sourcing problem as RPM tables. Selling your own thing sits above all of it. YouTube's most recent published figure on this, from 2023, showed US channels earning most of their revenue from fan funding growing more than 20% year on year.
What to actually do with this
Pick the door you can realistically reach. Twenty million Shorts views in 90 days is a punishing bar for a new channel, so for most people long-form carries the watch hours while Shorts do the discovery, and going past eight minutes where the material genuinely supports it makes mid-rolls possible. Get to 500 subscribers and switch on memberships and shopping rather than waiting for ads. If you are already a partner, sign the updated terms in Studio before 1 February 2027. The constraint underneath all of this is output: most channels stall because publishing consistently is hard, not because they picked the wrong revenue stream. If cutting vertical clips from your long recordings is the step that keeps stalling, FrameOS does that pass for you — 300 credits for 3 days · no card.
FAQ
How many subscribers do you need to make money on YouTube?
500 subscribers, plus three public uploads in 90 days and either 3,000 qualified watch hours in 12 months or 3 million qualified Shorts views in 90 days, unlocks memberships, Super Chat, Super Thanks and shopping. Advertising and YouTube Premium revenue need 1,000 subscribers with either 4,000 qualified watch hours in 12 months or 10 million qualified Shorts views in 90 days.
Is YouTube changing its monetization requirements in 2027?
Yes. YouTube announced on 10 August 2026 that from 1 February 2027, new Partner Programme applicants will need 8,000 qualified watch hours in 365 days or 20 million qualified Shorts views in 90 days, double the current bars. Existing partners are grandfathered but must accept the updated terms in Studio. Fan funding and shopping thresholds are unchanged.
How much does YouTube pay per 1,000 views?
There is no published rate, and the RPM-by-niche tables you find are not traceable to any inspectable dataset. What YouTube does publish is the split: 55% of net watch page ad revenue, 70% of memberships and Supers, and 45% of your allocated slice of the monthly Shorts Creator Pool. Your own YouTube Studio RPM is the only figure worth planning against.
Can you make money on YouTube without ads?
Yes, and at small scale it is usually the better route. Memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers and Super Thanks pay 70% and open at 500 subscribers. Shopping affiliate opened at 500 subscribers in March 2026. Sponsorships and your own products or services are paid outside YouTube entirely, so no revenue share applies to them.
Sources
- New opportunities to earn and changes to the YouTube Partner Program · YouTube Blog
- Overview of the expanded YouTube Partner Program · YouTube Help
- YouTube partner earnings overview · YouTube Help
- Understand ad revenue analytics · YouTube Help
- YouTube hits nearly $10 billion in Q1 ad revenue · Tubefilter
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