How the YouTube Partner Program Works: Requirements, Earnings, and How to Join

Once your channel starts to grow, the next thing most creators look into is the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). It’s how YouTube pays creators, and it opens up income from ads, YouTube Premium, fan funding, Shopping, and brand deals.

Getting in happens in two stages. The first opens at 500 subscribers and lets your audience support you directly. The second adds a share of ad and Premium revenue, and it’s the one most people mean when they talk about getting monetized. Each stage has its own requirements, and you can reach them through long-form videos or through Shorts, depending on how you like to publish.

What Is the YouTube Partner Program?

Once YouTube accepts your channel into YPP, you can earn from every format you publish, including long-form videos, Shorts, live streams, and older videos in your back catalog. Joining is free, and more than 3 million creators are already in the program.

The program has two tiers:

• Fan Funding and Shopping: Your audience can pay you directly through channel memberships, gifts, Super Chat, Super Stickers, and Super Thanks. This tier also opens YouTube Shopping and YouTube Creator Partnerships, the tool that connects brands with creators.
• Ads and Premium: You get a share of the revenue from ads on your content and from YouTube Premium members who watch it.

YouTube can run ads on any video on the platform, including videos from channels outside the program. You only get a share of that revenue once your channel is in the ads and Premium tier.

Partners also get dedicated channel support, invite-only events, private forums and communities, content detection tools, and creator education.

YouTube Partner Program Requirements

To join the YouTube Partner Program at either tier, your channel needs to meet these baseline criteria:

• Monetization Policies: Your channel follows YouTube’s channel monetization policies, which apply to every creator who accepts a partner agreement.
• Location: You live in a country or region where YPP is available.
• Strikes: Your channel has no active Community Guidelines strikes. If you have one, you can apply once it expires or a successful appeal removes it.
• Account Security: You’ve turned on 2-Step Verification for your Google Account.
• Advanced Features: You have access to advanced features on YouTube.
• AdSense: You have one active AdSense for YouTube account linked to your channel, since that’s how YouTube pays you. If you need a new account, YouTube asks that you create it in YouTube Studio during your application.

YouTube Partner Program Eligibility Thresholds

Each tier also has an audience threshold. You need the subscriber count plus either the long-form route or the Shorts route, so you can qualify through one format without touching the other.

The fan funding tier also asks for 3 public uploads in the last 90 days. These are the new YouTube Partner Program requirements for the ads and Premium tier, and they apply to channels that apply from February 1, 2027. Until January 31, 2027, that tier asks for 4,000 watch hours or 10 million Shorts views. If your channel already earns ad and Premium revenue, the higher 2027 thresholds don’t apply to you.

If you’re getting close, select Get notified in the Earn section of YouTube Studio, and YouTube will email you when your channel qualifies.

What Counts as Qualified Watch Hours and Shorts Views

Only public content counts toward YPP thresholds. Qualified watch hours for the YouTube Partner Program come from public long-form videos. Hours from private, unlisted, or deleted videos don’t count. Neither do hours from ad campaigns, or from live streams that are unlisted, deleted, or not converted to video on demand.

Qualified Shorts views come from public Shorts that appear in the Shorts Feed. Views on private, unlisted, or deleted Shorts don’t count, and neither do views from ad campaigns or from image posts in the Shorts Feed.

The two metrics stay separate. If someone watches your Shorts in the Shorts Feed, that watch time doesn’t count toward your long-form watch hours.

How to Work Toward the YPP Thresholds

You can reach the ads and Premium tier through watch hours or through Shorts views. The two don’t combine, so it helps to pick one as your main route. Metricool’s 2026 YouTube Study, which analyzed 799,718 videos from 71,177 accounts, shows what helps on each one.

If you’re working toward watch hours:

• Keep People Watching Longer: Watch hours add up minute by minute, so one viewer who stays for 10 minutes counts as much as 10 viewers who leave after 1. Average view duration on long-form videos fell 37% year over year, to about 2.5 minutes, so holding attention is where most channels have room to grow.
• Post 2 to 4 Videos a Week: If your schedule allows it, that’s the pace where each long-form video performs best. Posting more often adds few extra views for the extra work.
• Add a Few Shorts: Channels that post around 5 Shorts a month get 46% more views per long-form video than the average channel in the study. At 35 or more Shorts a month, long-form views drop back to the level of channels with no Shorts, so a handful is enough to test.

If you’re working toward Shorts views:

• Post Shorts Often: The Shorts route into the YouTube Partner Program counts views over the last 90 days, so older views drop out of your total as time passes. Shorts have no clear posting ceiling, and channels that publish 7 or more a week get the most views per month.
• Give Viewers a Reason to Keep Watching: The Shorts feed brings in over 61% of organic views across the channels in the study. It shows a Short to new audiences based on how viewers respond to it.

On either route:

• Keep Your Best Videos Public: Only public content counts, so making a video private or deleting it removes its hours or views from your total.
• Start Earning at the First Tier: You can join the fan funding tier with half the subscribers and start earning while you grow toward the ads tier.

How to Join the YouTube Partner Program

When your channel meets the requirements, you can apply from YouTube Studio on desktop or in the YouTube Studio mobile app:

1. Open YouTube Studio by clicking your profile picture in the top right corner of YouTube and selecting YouTube Studio.
2. Select Earn in the left menu, or in the bottom menu if you’re using the app.
3. Select Apply now.
4. Click Start to review and accept the Base Terms.
5. Click Start to set up an AdSense for YouTube account or link an existing active one.

Once YouTube receives your application, the review step shows In progress. The mobile app only handles the application for now, so you’ll need YouTube Studio in a web browser to manage ads and other monetization features.

How YouTube Reviews Your Application

Your channel joins a review queue as soon as you accept the YPP terms and link an active AdSense for YouTube account. Automated systems and human reviewers look at your channel as a whole to check that it follows YouTube’s policies and guidelines, so meeting the thresholds doesn’t guarantee approval.

Most decisions arrive within about a month. It can take longer when application volumes are high or when your channel needs several reviews. If your subscriber or watch hour counts drop below the threshold while you wait, YouTube still reviews your channel. Changing video privacy settings or deleting videos during the review can affect your application, though, so leave your channel as it is until you hear back.

If Your Application Is Rejected

You can appeal within 21 days, or keep uploading original content and reapply after 30 days. If you’ve been rejected before or have already reapplied once, you’ll need to wait 90 days. A rejection usually means reviewers found that a significant part of your channel doesn’t follow YouTube’s policies, so check your content against those guidelines before you apply again.

How to Make Money With the YouTube Partner Program

Once you’re accepted, YouTube Partner Program monetization works feature by feature. You choose which features to turn on by accepting each one’s terms in the Earn section of YouTube Studio. Each one has its own requirements on top of the YPP thresholds.

The main ways to earn through YPP are:

• Ad Revenue: You get 55% of the net revenue from ads on your long-form videos, and you can add mid-roll breaks to videos that are 8 minutes or longer.
• Shorts Feed Revenue: You earn a share of the Shorts Creator Pool based on your engaged Shorts views, and you keep 45% of your allocation.
• YouTube Premium Revenue: You earn part of the subscription fee when Premium and Premium Lite members watch your long-form videos, Shorts, and live streams.
• Channel Memberships: Viewers pay monthly for perks like badges, custom emojis, and members-only content, and you keep 70% of the revenue after taxes and fees.
• Gifts and Supers: Fans can send gifts during live streams, highlight their messages with Super Chat or Super Stickers, and buy Super Thanks on any video.
• YouTube Shopping: You can sell your own products or promote affiliate products in your videos, starting from the fan funding tier.
• Brand Deals: You can work with brands directly or through YouTube Creator Partnerships, a tool in YouTube Studio that connects brands with creators.

Watch time shapes your earnings as well as your eligibility. Shorter views leave less room for mid-roll ads. Estimated ad revenue per long-form video fell by more than half year over year as viewers watched each video for less time.

How to Keep Your Channel in the YouTube Partner Program

Once you’re in, staying monetized comes down to following YouTube’s policies and keeping your channel active. The monetization policies apply for as long as you’re a partner. YouTube can turn off monetization on any channel that breaks them, regardless of its watch hours or subscriber count. A Community Guidelines strike on its own doesn’t remove you from the program.

YouTube can also turn off monetization on channels that stop publishing. From February 1, 2027, your channel counts as active if it meets any one of these requirements:

• Watch Hours: Your channel has 1,000 qualified watch hours in the past 365 days.
• Shorts Views: Your channel has 1 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days.
• Uploads: You upload 2 long-form videos or 5 Shorts every 90 days.

The upload option is within reach for most channels that publish regularly. The average channel in Metricool’s study posts about 1.3 long-form videos and 2.7 Shorts a week, which adds up to well over the minimum every 90 days. If your channel falls below all three requirements, you get 90 days to stay in the program by reaching either the watch hour or the Shorts view requirement above.

Shorts earnings also have their own minimum, introduced with the 2027 YouTube Partner Program changes. Your channel needs 10 million qualified Shorts views over the last 90 days to earn from the Shorts Creator Pool each month, starting February 1, 2027. If you drop below it, you keep earning from long-form videos and your other features, and Shorts revenue sharing starts again once you’re back above it.

Track Your YPP Progress in Metricool

Getting into the YouTube Partner Program depends on a few numbers that keep moving: subscribers, watch hours over the past year, and Shorts views over the past 90 days. When you follow them closely, you can see which route you’re closer to and what to publish next.

Metricool connects to your YouTube channel so you can track subscriber growth and views next to your other social profiles. It also shows how your channel compares with others in your niche. You can schedule long-form videos and Shorts from the same planner. And when you post a short video to Instagram or TikTok, you can send it to YouTube Shorts at the same time. That way, the videos you already make for other platforms also count toward your Shorts views.