Then, you desire to join the YouTube Partner Plan to monetize your YouTube aqueduct to finally make money with your YouTube channel?

As you probably know, y'all accept to meet 2 requirements before y'all can utilise.

  • Go ane,000 YouTube subscribers for your channel.
  • Gain 4,000 hours of lookout man fourth dimension within the last 365 days. That's what we're going to focus on today.

Getting your first one grand subscribers is the piece of cake office! There are over 10.1 million YouTube channels with more than 1,000 subs, merely only 2 million channels have joined the YouTube Partner Program. You can learn more about this in my article on How many YouTube channels are at that place?

Today, we will look at how we can get you lot to 4,000 hours of picket time as quickly as possible. First, nosotros are going to look at your watch fourth dimension from three unlike angles:

  • What's the minimum number of videos that you should make to get there?
  • How many views does each of your videos take to get?
  • How long should your video be?

So nosotros explore different strategies and tactics on how to maximize your watch time to trigger the YouTube algorithm to quickly grow your aqueduct.

Sounds good? Great!

So let's get started...

What Does 4,000 Hours of YouTube Sentry Time Mean?

4000 hours in minutes

When we wait at big numbers, it'south sometimes difficult to imagine what those numbers really hateful. So let's interruption down 4000 hours of YouTube watch time into minutes.

The math is simple. One hr equals 60 minutes, so all we have to do is multiply both numbers.

4000 hours 10 hour = 240,000 minutes!

To go to 4000 hours of YouTube lookout man time, you have to generate 240,000 minutes of YouTube watch time.

4000 hours in days

How many days of continuous watching does it take to get to 4000 hours of watch time?

Let's come across...

One solar day has 24 hours. That means we can simply split up 4000 hours of picket fourth dimension by 24 to get our answer.

4000 hours / 24 hours = 166 days and sixteen hours

To get 100% of your YouTube sentry time from ane person, they would accept to play your videos on loop for 166 days and 16 hours not-terminate.

Of class, that number will become much smaller if yous have more subscribers.

How Does YouTube Calculate the Number of Hours Watched?

There are two things that you lot accept to understand about watch time.

What counts equally video watch time?

The offset thing that you take to empathize is what qualifies every bit watch time?

Not all content is equal. YouTube only considers PUBLIC sentry fourth dimension every bit sentinel time.

That means if you set the privacy of one of your videos as unlisted or private. You could get a million hours of watch time, and it wouldn't count!

Go along that in mind when yous upload your videos onto YouTube!

If you had a viral video two years ago, would it count towards your watch fourth dimension?

Unfortunately not!

4,000 hours of picket time is not about the full number of watch time people watched during the lifetime of your channel.

It'southward a moving fourth dimension frame, and will ever look at the last 365 days from whatever date it is today.

Imagine this: If you had accumulated ane,000 hours of watch time exactly 500 days before today and and then generated another iii,000 hours inside the last 365 days.

How many hours of watch time would you take?

Hint: It's not 4,000...

If yous guessed 3,000, you're right on the money!

The ane,000 hours that yous collected 500 days agone are out of the 365 days appointment range.

Now the skilful news is that you lot but take to get four,000 hours once.

Once you qualify for monetization, you can use for monetization. And in one case you're canonical, you lot're approved. No thing how many hours of sentinel time you accumulate afterwards.

Instance: If y'all got monetized one year ago only merely had 1,000 hours of watch time within the final 365 days doesn't affair.

You still stay monetized.

What's the All-time Strategy to Become To 4000 Hours of Public Lookout Fourth dimension?

What'due south the minimum number of videos that y'all should make? How many views should each of your YouTube videos get? What's the platonic length of your videos?

To answer these questions, we accept to do a bit of math commencement.

1 X one-minute video

Imagine that you just created a make-new YouTube aqueduct.

Mean solar day 0. You have 0 subscribers and 0 videos.

What if yous created only one 1-minute video. How many times would people have to scout this ane video to gain 4,000 hours of picket time?

The answer is pretty uncomplicated.

Nosotros just have to convert 4,000 hours into minutes. 4,000 hours x 60 minutes = 240,000 minutes.

One 1-minute long video would accept to be watched 240,000 times.

Wow, that'southward a large number!

It gets fifty-fifty bigger if we assume that not everybody volition watch your video all the manner till the end.

The first person might watch for one minute, the second person might watch 30 seconds, and the third person might click away immediately.

What'south the boilerplate watch time? (60 seconds + 30 seconds + 0 seconds) / three people = 90 seconds / 3 people = thirty seconds / person.

In other words, 50% of the total video length.

In reality, 50% would be a pretty good effect for any video shorter than 10 minutes.

For longer videos, 30% or more is more realistic.

With our i-minute video, 50% average picket time would double the number of required views.

240,000 one-minute views / fifty% = 480,000 views!

Yeah, we are not going to practise that.

Nosotros demand something way more achievable!

365 Ten 1-minute videos

Ok, then what if we made 1 i-minute video every day instead?

How many views would we demand?

Let'south take our previous number of 480,000 views and divide information technology past 365 days.

And yep, I am simplifying a little hither: The first video you upload on solar day one has 365 days left to proceeds more than views. While the last video that you upload on day 364 only has ane day left to gain more views and should therefore become a much smaller number of views. In my examples, we just pretend that all videos are the aforementioned.

What's the issue?

480,000 views / 365 videos = one,315 views / video

Now that's mode more achievable, wouldn't you say?

1,315 people to view a video vs. 480,000 people to view a video...

Simply, we tin exercise fifty-fifty better.

365 X x-minute videos

What if we just made longer videos?

10-minute long videos instead of one-minute videos?

Well, in this instance, we tin split up everything by 10.

one,315 views per video / x = 132 views per video

Let's cheque the number and encounter if we're right.

365 video x 10 minutes 10 132 views per video x l% boilerplate sentry length = 240,900 minutes = 4,015 hours

Boo-ya! Take that algebra! 😜

Permit's exist real

Now all of these numbers brand sense on paper, but they might not work in practice.

For once, coming upwardly with good video ideas takes time and requires mental energy to be artistic.

If you want to make 365 unique videos that are all equally good, you might fire out pretty quickly.

And not just because y'all drain your creativity daily (unless you lot live stream video games on Twitch), but likewise because of the fourth dimension spent on production, editing, and promotion, which can easily take upwards a few hours per video if you desire to exercise a good job.

What's a more realistic option that would work for near people?

Hither is what I recommend:

  • Create 1, ii or 3 videos per calendar week. Each 10 to fifteen minutes long.
  • Create either a weekly or monthly livestream of 60 minutes.
  • Focus on content quality and promotion.

Let'southward have a look at how these numbers play out.

For this example, I volition calculate the full number of unique content first and and then combine it with our live stream minutes.

  • 1 ten weekly video of 15 minutes: 52 weeks x one x xv minutes = 780 minutes of video content.
  • ii ten weekly video of xv minutes: 52 weeks 10 2 x 15 minutes = 1,560 minutes of video content.
  • 3 x weekly video of 15 minutes: 52 weeks 10 three x 15 minutes = two,340 minutes of video content.

Now, allow's calculate our live stream minutes.

  • i x weekly video of hour: 52 weeks ten 1 x 60 minutes = three,120 minutes of live stream content.
  • 1 x monthly video of 60 minutes: 12 months x i ten 60 minutes = 720 minutes of live stream content.

Now, all you lot have to exercise is combine these two numbers. If y'all don't want to do live-streaming, just skip information technology.

For example, if I desire to create three weekly videos and do 1 monthly live stream: ii,340 minutes of video content + 720 minutes of live stream content = 3,060 minutes of unique video content or 51 hours.

In this instance, I would need to get 78 views per video or alive stream to attain 4,000 hours of lookout man time. Here is the math: four,000 hours / 51 hours of unique video content.

You lot'll never have the same number of views for each of your videos or live streams. Some videos will accept a few hundred views; others volition take less than l.

What'south important is that those numbers average out in the long run.

And this is what this commodity will focus on.

Taking the best possible deportment to ensure that each video has the best take chances of success to get as many video views and sentinel fourth dimension as possible.

How to Get To 4,000 Hours of YouTube Watch Time Fast

If you lot want to join the YouTube partner program, you have to get a lot of watch time fast. Let's wait at some of the best YouTube watch time hacks that will aid you grow your channel exponentially.

Create longer YouTube videos

Allow me show you a real-globe example from my YouTube channel. Here are 2 of my top-performing videos at the time of writing.

  • How to become 500 connections on LinkedIn. 7 minutes and 31 seconds long. 1,490 views created 69.2 hours of scout time.
  • How to get your first 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. 47 minutes and half-dozen seconds long. 456 views created fifty.2 hours of picket time.

As you can meet, even though the x,000 followers video but had about 23% of the combined views, it almost had 42% of the combined sentry time.

That'southward why longer videos are so powerful!

Fifty-fifty though the average watch time percentage is lower than shorter videos, longer videos make more than than up for it when defended viewers picket them all the fashion till the end!

Longer videos get shared more than often than shorter videos.

Optimize your YouTube videos

When you lot're starting a new YouTube aqueduct, the odds are stacked against yous.

YouTube volition – initially – non recommend your videos to new people, and your channel volition not abound organically because information technology doesn't know enough near you, your channel, your videos, and who would be interested in watching them.

The skillful news is, y'all can go around this by optimizing your videos for YouTube search.

You have to find video topics that many people are searching for on YouTube, with very few competing videos in the search results.

Create a targeted video for this topic once you found a high search book and low contest keyword. Then optimize your video title, clarification, and keywords for YouTube SEO.

YouTube SEO is one of the most powerful tools to optimize the click-through rate of your YouTube videos.

If in that location are only 5 videos almost topic X, including yours, then your video will show upwardly on page one of YouTube'due south search results for your targeted keyword.

So, how do you find these keywords?

By using a software chosen TubeBuddy! I employ information technology for all of my videos. It connects directly to YouTube's API and pulls upwards the number of searches for whatever keyword I type in. And it also tells me how many competitor videos show upward.

Based on these two numbers TubeBuddy will calculate a score between 0 and 100 points. The college, the better.

I then use these keywords to find ideas for new video titles and optimize my videos to get more organic reach.

Create custom thumbnails for your YouTube videos

Desire to know an incredible hack to increase your YouTube watch fourth dimension?

Optimize your video thumbnails for clicks!

You could have the all-time video in the world, but if nobody clicks on it, your picket time will exist zero.

Together with your video championship, YouTube thumbnails are the most important success factors for high video click-through rates.

A great thumbnail communicates the value of watching your video to viewers when they scan their YouTube newsfeed.

Past default, YouTube will select three freeze-frames from your video as thumbnail suggestions during the upload of your video.

Only you lot should always design and upload your own unique video thumbnail to stand out from other videos.

You will get the best results if yous plan for the thumbnail earlier writing your video script. I wrote an in-depth article on how to program, blueprint, and optimize your YouTube thumbnails. Brand sure to check it out!

Add together video cards to your videos

You also take to get more than people to watch more of your videos to go more sentry time. One of the easiest ways is by recommending someone one of your related videos via video cards.

Those are the footling info icons that appear in the summit right corner of your videos. You can recommend up to 5 videos per video, and I highly recommend incorporating this strategy for all of your videos.

When you're just starting, you might not take plenty videos to recommend. Just don't worry. Yous can e'er go dorsum and add cards after once you have enough material.

Create end screens for your videos

If your video is fun and entertaining to watch and someone stays all the manner till the end, ask them to watch some of your other videos via your video terminate screens.

You can add up to iv videos and video playlists to the last 20 seconds of your videos that viewers can lookout man with the click of a push.

I recommend using TubeBuddy to replace all of your video end screens with your most popular videos in bulk.

Recommend related videos in your video description and comments

Another crawly manner to promote your videos to new viewers is by sharing links to some of your videos and playlists in the description of your videos.

For my videos, I often review my height-performing videos in terms of watch fourth dimension, views, and engagement. I copy all video links in a text file and add together the video championship in forepart or higher up each link.

Side by side, I add links to my website, social media accounts, and products and and so apply TubeBuddy to supercede the clarification in all of my videos with the click of a push.

Sometimes, especially if I want to recommend very specific videos, I follow a slightly unlike approach.

Instead of sharing the video URL that I mentioned in my video in the description, I share them in a comment and then pin the comment to the top.

Add your videos to playlists

Every YouTube channel should accept at least i playlist!

You can start by creating one for all of your videos and and so, wait for it... add together all of your public videos to it! Genius!

The idea of why you should create playlists is that information technology creates a very user-friendly mode for viewers to bulk-watch your content.

I as well create several topic-specific playlists for all of my LinkedIn and YouTube training videos on my channel.

Take advantage of series-playlists

If you desire to turbo-charge your YouTube playlists, you must accept advantage of a little-known however super-powerful feature called serial playlists.

Call up of it like this.

Y'all made a travel documentary well-nigh your concluding holiday and split it into three movies. Yet, it would make sense to watch them in sequential order.

In this case, you create a regular playlist. Add all iii videos in the right order. And then switch it from "normal" to "series".

With a "normal" or no playlist at all, in that location was no fashion of knowing if YouTube would suggest function 2 as the next recommended video if someone were watching role 1. Frequently random videos would exist recommended. Often from other channels.

With a "series" playlist, this is different. Now, the probability that part two will be suggested is almost guaranteed.

Why is this so powerful?

Because YouTube will car-play videos subsequently each video past default.

And if you lot tin can sneak in more of your videos at the end, that means extra lookout time, and you get to 4,000 hours much faster!

Some other way you can take advantage of video playlists is by sharing playlists instead of private video links.

Get-go, find a playlist of your choice that contains the video that yous want to share.

Open it and then select the video you desire to share. You'll observe that the URL changes into a long, convoluted address.

Select it, copy it, and paste information technology into a new tab in your browser.

It should play your video AND then continue with other videos from your playlist.

If it works, share this far and wide.

Not everybody volition proceed to watch your entire playlist.

But some will, and that's all that matters! More watch time for your channel.

Promote your videos on social media

You must drive as much traffic to your own videos as possible!

Don't rely on YouTube. This is a win-win partnership.

YouTube will reward those who help themselves.

When you send viewers to your videos, a couple of things will happen.

  1. You lot bring fresh users to the YouTube platform. This allows YouTube to show them ads which translates into actress revenue for YouTube. Issue? YouTube volition reward you with organic impressions.
  2. You know your audience best. By recommending your videos to people you know are interested in the content, you lot permit YouTube to create lookalike audiences. It works similar to Amazon's "people who bought this also bought these" feature. In one case YouTube is able to see patterns among viewers, it will be able to make educated guesses what other YouTube videos and creators you might be interested in.
  3. You make your ain luck. Or in this case your ain watch fourth dimension. The more than that you promote your own videos, the quicker yous'll get to 4,000 hours of watch time.
  4. You too go far convenient for others to share your video on social media. (If y'all want to dig deep to learn why people share content online and how you can motivate your audience to share more, here'southward the article.) It's quite a big step to take, to motivate someone who is already on YouTube, to open their Twitter business relationship, to write a tweet and then to link one of your videos. But if you lot're the one sharing the video on Twitter and someone on Twitter watches your YouTube video, it's another matter. Now, all it takes is the click to retweet your video to their followers, and boom! New potential viewers that didn't know anything about yous before clicking correct to your video.

Go live on YouTube

We talked about the importance of longer videos earlier. With longer videos, you need a much smaller number of viewers to go to the same number of watch hours.

Since you don't have your first 1,000 subscribers yet, that's by and large a good affair.

I recommend recording longer videos of x-xv minutes. But if you really want to amp upwardly your lookout man time, you'll need significantly longer videos.

Now, unless you have the talent to produce hour-long movies every week without burning out, at that place is a much easier way to get your watch time up to speed.

Going Live on YouTube.

I recommend having a regular schedule, for instance, every Mon evening, then your audience can form a habit of attention your live streams.

Starting time video premieres

A cool method to increase the number of initial views for new videos is to publish them equally a video premiere.

It'south like a watch political party for your new video. But select a date and time, and YouTube will live-stream your new video at your specified time. Viewers can join the live chat and interact with you.

Later, it volition turn into a regular video that people can watch whenever they desire.

The benefit of premieres is that it's a unique experience. You lot can just always watch information technology for the commencement time, and then it's over.

Considering of this novelty gene, you'll get a lot more than people to watch your premieres in comparison to publishing videos the regular mode.

Use YouTube to live-stream your webinars

If you do webinars for your concern, why not live-stream them on YouTube. I apply two tools for all of my webinars that allow me to alive stream to YouTube: WebinarJam and Restream.

Why should you do this?

Because webinars are usually concluding from thirty minutes to 2-iii hours. And that ways a massive boost in watch time every fourth dimension yous have a new webinar.

Brand sure that you set your alive stream to the public. Otherwise, YouTube won't count it towards your four,000 hours of sentry time.

Create an online course and host your videos on YouTube

Take you ever thought well-nigh creating an online course as a lead magnet? I utilise Thrivecart to host my online courses.

Only you can keep it super simple. Just create a subconscious page on your website and add all course videos as embedded YouTube videos.

Or if y'all take an email list. Send them a sequence of daily emails, each with the link to a dissimilar YouTube video.

People honey construction and are more willing to eat larger amounts of content if presented and structured the right way.

And what does that mean for you?

You guessed it! More scout time!

Create a video ad campaign on google ads

If you don't have the patience, there is another way that you lot can recollect of...

Creating a video ad campaign on Google Ads.

Hither is how this works.

Find a video on your YouTube channel that'due south reasonably long. So no shorter than 10 minutes, platonic one-half an hour to an hr. Webinar replays work amazingly.

Then you create a Google Ads account and set upwardly a new campaign.

Yous select "make awareness and reach" every bit the campaign goal then "video campaign" on the next page.

Give your campaign a name.

And then select a CPC bidding strategy. I recommend manually setting a low bid cap so you lot don't accidentally burn your entrada upkeep as well quickly.

Set a campaign upkeep as well equally a first and terminate engagement. I recommend starting with $10-xx and a time frame of one-2 days to familiarize yourself with how everything works.

In the networks section, select "YouTube videos".

As for targeting options, there are ii. Either tailor your campaign to your ideal audience. Or just get for cheap and everyone.

I recommend choice two to get as many watch hours as possible at the lowest possible price. And option one, if you not only want to amp up your watch fourth dimension but also gain subscribers with your video ads.

Now it's fourth dimension to create your video ad. Select a video of your choice from your YouTube channel and design your ad.

I recommend promoting your own YouTube channel in your advertisement copy and so linking to your channel URL.

Pro-tip: If you add together "?sub_confirmation=1" to the end of your aqueduct URL, people will meet a popup that asks them if they want to subscribe.

In the end, click relieve and continue. Once your video ad campaign has been reviewed, it'southward ready to go.

I recommend logging into your YouTube Creator Studio and keeping an eye on the real-fourth dimension views. This is what it'll look like on a daily basis once yous have many more subscribers! 🙂

Scout your own videos on your friend'south phone

That's a fleck of a hack. Next time you meet your friend, tell them that you want to show them your new YouTube channel on THEIR phone.

Then allow them watch one of your videos. And while y'all're at it, why non subscribe to them at the aforementioned fourth dimension... 😜

Every bit helps, and who knows, perhaps they'll turn into one of your most loyal subscribers who sentry all of your videos.

Conclusion

In summary, for yous to beginning a successful YouTube aqueduct, you've to create a video strategy that works for you.

I recommend publishing iii videos of 10-15 minutes per week and one hour-long live stream per month.

Optimize all of your YouTube videos for SEO with TubeBuddy to generate organic traffic on YouTube. TubeBuddy is an incredible tool and immune me to grow my aqueduct from zero to 3000 subscribers.

Add up to 5 video cards to each of your videos to promote related videos from your aqueduct to encourage viewers to watch more of your content.

Create a pinned comment and recommend the same videos you recommended in your video cards.

Add together end screen for your videos and promote at least ane of your videos and your playlists. Make sure they're either your virtually popular videos or playlists and/or closely related to the video someone just watched.

Add together a list of your most popular, recommended, and related videos in the video description of each of your videos.

Organize all of your videos into topic-specific playlists. This allows viewers who are interested in a specific topic to picket all of your content in bulk.

Take advantage of Serial Playlists to improve the likelihood that one of your videos will exist recommended as "next video to scout".

Instead of sharing the direct link, add your videos to playlists and and then share the playlist with your video of selection every bit the currently selected video instead. This will heave your watch time tremendously!

Brand sure that you always promote all of your videos on social media. I use SocialBee to practise this on autopilot.
Promote your videos on social media

Frequently go LIVE on YouTube and utilize the Premiere function to create a more immersive experience with your audience and boost watch fourth dimension.

I use WebinarJam and Restream to live-stream your webinars.

Since webinars usually tend to be betwixt ane and two hours long and the audience retentiveness is loftier, these are an incredible lookout time booster.

You tin too create an online course and host your videos on YouTube to increment the watch time on your channel.

If you lot want to go results fifty-fifty faster, create a video advertisement campaign on Google Ads.

And if all of these are not enough, bug your friends and force them to sentry your videos on their smartphone 😉

If you desire to acquire more than almost YouTube, brand sure that you check out my YouTube articles on how to get more views on YouTube, become YouTube subscribers fast, ameliorate your video click-through charge per unit, and pattern awesome video thumbnails.

If you want to learn how I grew my YouTube channel from 0 to 3,000 subscribers with TubeBuddy, cheque out my TubeBuddy review here.