The FASTEST Way to Monetize Your YouTube Channel Right Now

0:00Getting monetized on YouTube has become so easy right now, it almost feels like cheating. And I know some of you are thinking, "Zini, if it's that easy, why am I still stuck?" If that's you, this video is for you. But you'll want to move quickly because that window is closing. In the next few months, YouTube is doubling what it takes to get in, from 4,000 watch hours to 8,000. So if you're anywhere under 4,000 hours, [music] there are four things that can get you over the line much faster than you think. By the end of this video, you'll know exactly which of those four your channel is missing and what to do about

0:36it as soon as possible. So let's start with the one that decides whether anything else in this video even works. [music] Most people pick their next video based on how they feel. They find something interesting, [music] spend a whole week making it, and it sits at 100 views. Then they blame the algorithm, but the algorithm never got a chance because nobody was looking for that video in the

0:59first place. [music] Which brings me to my first point. Pick ideas that are backed by data, and the best data you can get is a question. When someone types a question online, they're telling you in their own words the exact [music] video they'd click on. Your job therefore is to find those questions before you make anything, and there are two places I always look. Starting with the one behind one of the best videos on my second channel. That second channel is a geography channel. A while back I was digging on Reddit for ideas, and the same question kept coming up. "Why can't

1:33Canada build its own oil refineries?" It's not a question I would ever have picked on my own, but people kept asking it, so I made [music] the video. As we speak, it has passed 350,000 views. That's more than four times what a normal video there gets, and the only thing that changed was where the idea came from. Now, you could say that was luck, but let me shock you. Did you know there's a whole community on Reddit

1:58built on exactly this type of question? It's called Explain Like I'm Five, and people go there to post the things they don't understand and ask for the simplest possible answer. And you know what one channel did? They took that exact idea and built a whole channel out of it. It's called Crayon Capital. They started in March last year, and 31 videos later, they have 270,000 subscribers. And just look at their biggest videos. The Wolf of Wall Street scam [music] explained like you're five 4.2 million views. The Great Depression explained like you're five 2.8 million. The 2008 financial crisis explained like you're five 2.3 million. They found what people

2:43were already confused about and explained it simply. And that's why the channel grew so fast. Now, I know what you're thinking. That's great, Zennie, but I'm not on Reddit, and honestly, you don't need to be because the second place is somewhere you already are every single day. The YouTube search bar. Type a topic in your niche and YouTube fills in what people are actually searching for. But there's a problem with search, and honestly, it's why so many people make the video everyone's searching for and still [music] get nothing. If a lot of people are searching for something, a lot of creators are making it, too, and

3:20making the exact same video gives you no chance [music] when everyone else is already on it. That's why I go one step further. Open the videos already showing up for that search, go straight to the comments, and look at the questions people are still asking. Those are the gaps the video didn't answer, which means you can make the sequel those viewers are waiting for. Personally, I let Claude pull the comments and sort out [music] the questions for me. And in a few minutes, I have a list of what my niche keeps [music] asking. Here's the rule I use now. If I can point to real people

3:54asking [music] for it, I make it. If I can't, I park it. And this is exactly the kind of thing we go through inside my community, finding the questions your audience is already asking and turning them into videos. If you want to check it out, the link is in the description. [music] However, the right question only gets you halfway because even a great question can sit at zero [music] views if nobody clicks. And that's where the second thing comes in. So, now you've got a question people are actually asking. But this is where a lot of people lose it because they [music] take that great question and give it the most

4:29boring title in the world. Something like Canada's oil refineries explained and nobody clicks even though the idea was great. Which brings me to my second point, a title and thumbnail that make people feel something. Curiosity, surprise, fear, hope, even sadness. [music] When someone reads your title, they should feel something strong enough that they have to click. [music] The one

4:51thing your title can never be is boring. Remember Crayon Capital? One of their videos is called the $63 billion company that sold nothing. [music] Read that again. A $63 billion company that sold nothing. How is that even possible? That's curiosity and the only way to settle it is to click. [music] That one video is close to a million

5:12views. Now, I know what you're thinking. Okay, Zennie, but I'm not a copywriter. How am I supposed to come up [music] with titles like that? And honestly, you don't have to guess because your title [music] and thumbnail should be backed by data, too, the same way your idea is. There's a tool I use called One of Ten and it shows you the videos that did way

5:32better than their channel normally does. That [music] means you can see exactly which titles and thumbnails are pulling clicks right now. And by the way, [music] they're not sponsoring this video, but if you want to check them out, the link is in the description. And let me show you something I found on the one of 10

5:49podcast that will change how you use it. This is a geography channel called across the globe. Look at this thumbnail, a map of Wisconsin, one spot glowing red and two words, [music] stay away. That video has nearly 400,000 views. Now look at this channel, Tiffany Weber is a real estate lawyer and for a long time her thumbnails [music] looked like this, her sitting in a chair and her videos were getting one or two thousand views. Then her strategist at one of 10 did something most people would never think of. They took that exact geography style and put it on real estate. An aerial shot of a property,

6:28[music] one spot in red and one word, stay away. 137,000 views. Bad idea 1.4 million. Illegal 775,000. Banned 311,000. Same style, one word changed. Back to back to back to back and it didn't stop there. [music] The same style went on to work on a golf channel too and I know this works because I've done it myself. If you watched my last strategy video on how to blow up your channel so fast it feels

7:00like cheating, you've seen this one. This is a colorway video about personal branding, nothing to do with my world. Five color bars, big faded numbers behind them, [music] him cut out in the middle, one big word across the bottom and this is mine. Same five bars, same colors, same order, same faded numbers, same person cut out in the middle. I didn't borrow his title and I didn't borrow his topic, I borrowed the layout but I changed one thing. He put words in those bars and I put view counts because my audience cares about how many views a niche

7:35actually pulls. [music] His did 140,000. Mine did 339,000 which means the best title and thumbnail for your channel might not even come from your niche. The data is already out there. You just have to look outside your own lane. But, don't just take their title and swap in your topic. Look at why it made people click. Is it a

7:58number that doesn't make sense? [music] Something that sounds impossible? A mistake people are scared of making? Then, use that same pull on your own idea. And your thumbnail has a job, too. [music] One mistake I see all the time in the channels I review is the title written out again on the thumbnail. That wastes the space. Your thumbnail text should add something the title doesn't say in three words or less, so the question in their head gets even bigger. One more

8:26thing I do on every single video I test. YouTube lets you upload more than one thumbnail and see which one people click on more, which means you never have to guess. Let the viewers decide for you. However, a click only gets someone through the door. What turns that click into watch hours is how long they stay. And the first way to make them stay

8:47longer is simpler than you think. Getting them through the door is one thing. Keeping them there is where the hours are. And what if I told you the exact same video with the exact same views could get you twice as close [music] to 4,000 hours? No extra views, no new idea, just one change, which

9:07brings me to my [music] third point. Make your videos longer. Now, I know what you're thinking. Zini, nobody wants to watch a long video. But, stay with me because this math is wild. Say two videos both get 10,000 views and people watch about half of each one. [music] The 10-minute video gives you around 800 watch hours. The 20-minute video gives you over 1,600. Same views, same people, double the hours, which means if every video you post right now is 8 minutes long, you're working a lot harder for

9:42those 4,000 hours than you need to. However, don't stretch your video if there's no need for it. If you drag a 10-minute video out to 20 with filler, people feel [music] it and they leave. But honestly, most of you making videos have a lot more to say than you [music] think. Remember those questions from the

10:00comment section in the first point? Answer three or four of them in the same video and it gets longer because there's more in it for the viewer. The only thing is you have to make it interesting enough that people actually keep [music] watching. And there are two numbers I always watch. In my experience, when people are watching a video for more than 3 minutes on average and more than 5% of the people who see your thumbnail click on it, that's when [music] YouTube

10:26starts pushing it out to more people. I'm seeing it happen right now. I'm testing a new channel. One of its videos suddenly took off. And when I looked at the numbers, those were exactly the two it was hitting. And then there's the move a lot of channels are using to stack [music] hours, the complete course. One video 1 to 3 hours long [music] that teaches everything about one topic from start to finish. People tend to save it, come back [music] to it and watch it in pieces, and every one of those minutes counts. I'm actually

10:58making one for this channel right now. Just make sure it's brand new because stitching your old videos together can get flagged as reused content, [music] but there's a catch. A longer video only gives you more hours if people actually stay to watch it. [music] Make it 20 minutes and lose everyone at minute two and you're worse off than when you started, which is why the last one is

11:21the one that holds everything together. [music] And minute two is exactly where most channels lose people, which brings me to my fourth point [music] and the one that holds everything together. keep them watching. Let me tell you what I found when I looked at my own channel. New viewers, the people who'd never seen me before, were watching for about 2 and 1/2 minutes on average. And my intros back then were almost 2 minutes long, [music] which means most new people were leaving right around the time I finally got to the good part. [music] That's when I cut my intros down to under a minute, and honestly, [music]

11:57it's the first thing I'd fix on your channel, too. So, open with the thing they clicked [music] for. Show the result. Say the surprising part. Ask the question in the first few seconds. No long welcome, no story about your week. Then, [music] once they're in, you have to keep pulling them forward. The writers of South Park have a rule for this. Every part of your story should connect with but or therefore, never and then. And then and then and then is how people tell a boring story. I made a video, and then I posted it, and then it got 100 views. Now, listen to this one. I made a

12:33video, but nobody clicked on it. Therefore, I changed the title. But then the views came in, and people left after a minute. You want to know what happens next, right? And you might have noticed I've been doing that this whole video. Next, when you say something, show it. If you mention a number, it's on the screen. If you talk about a channel, we see the channel. When the picture matches the words, people don't drift off to check their phone. And when the video ends, don't let them go. Point them to your next video, and give them a reason to click it with an end screen to

13:06make it easy. Every minute they watch over there counts toward your hours, too. [music] So, that's the fourth one, and it's the one that makes the other three work. So, which of the four is your channel missing? Let's find out right now. Ask yourself these four questions. Are your ideas coming from questions real people are asking, [music] or from what you felt like making that week. When a stranger reads your title, do they feel anything at all? Are your videos long enough to give people everything they came for? And are people still there after minute two? Whichever one made you wince a little, that's the one. Start [music] there on your very

13:43next video because this is why I said getting monetized feels like cheating right now. Every one of these four makes the videos you're already making count for more. And with the bar doubling in a few months, that's exactly what you want on your side. And if you want help working out which one it is for your channel, that's exactly what we do inside my community. We jump on calls every week. We break down channels together, and we work through things like this side by side. If that sounds like your kind of room, the link to join is in the description. And if you want to start earning before you even hit

14:16those numbers, watch this video next where I show you real creators doing exactly that. I'll see you there.