To start earning money on YouTube through the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), you need to meet the following key requirements as of 2025:
- Have at least 500 subscribers on your channel.
- Upload at least 3 valid public videos within the last 90 days.
- Accumulate 3,000 valid public watch hours in the past 12 months or alternatively, have 3 million valid public YouTube Shorts views in the past 90 days.
- Comply with YouTube’s monetization policies and community guidelines.
- Have an active AdSense account linked to your YouTube channel.
- Enable two-step verification on your Google account linked to the channel.
Meeting these criteria allows you to access some monetization features such as fan funding, Super Chat, and channel memberships. However, to earn revenue from ads and get a share of YouTube Premium revenue, the thresholds are higher:
- You need 1,000 subscribers.
- Have 4,000 valid public watch hours in the past 12 months or 10 million valid public Shorts views in the past 90 days.
So, while you can start monetizing some features at 500 subscribers, full ad revenue sharing requires 1,000 subscribers and higher watch time or Shorts views
. In summary:
Monetization Level| Subscribers Required| Watch Hours / Shorts Views Required
---|---|---
Partial monetization (fan funding, etc.)| 500| 3,000 watch hours or 3 million
Shorts views
Full monetization (ads, revenue sharing)| 1,000| 4,000 watch hours or 10
million Shorts views
This new system lowers the barrier for creators to start earning money earlier but full ad revenue requires the traditional 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours threshold
