Breaking Down 5 Questions About YouTube Shorts

If you’ve seen the announcement video from YouTube featuring Colin and Samir, read our VidSummit recap, or this recent issue of The Publish Press, you know: monetization for Shorts is coming in 2023.

YouTube is the first platform to introduce a revenue share model for short-form content and this uncharted territory brings as much excitement as it does uncertainty.

With this topic dominating the creator economy conversation, we’re switching things up a bit today—breaking down five of the most common questions around Shorts monetization. Let's go 🚀

Question #1: What’s up with the revenue model?

The YPP revenue model looks different for short-form videos than for long-form. While creators get 55% of ad revenue on long-form videos, short-form creators will get only 45% of revenue generated from Shorts.

Plus, there’s another element to the revenue share—one that YouTube received criticism for not clearly explaining during their announcement. YouTube is allowing creators to monetize Shorts even if they use popular music, which is great for creators since music licensing is a tricky and expensive obstacle to navigate around.

However, to enable this free use of music, YouTube is distributing a portion of Shorts revenue to record labels. This makes the revenue pool available to creators (the pool they’re getting their 45% cut from) smaller, regardless of whether or not music is used in their videos. It remains to be seen what impact the addition of this third party actually has on creator payouts.

Overall though, we view the revenue share—a model YouTube and creators have experienced a mutually beneficial relationship with—as a step in the right direction for creators, bringing more flexible and potentially lucrative monetization to a format that needed it.

Question #2: What should creators expect as this rolls out?

Keep perspective: this is a platform’s experiment. YouTube’s intent of course is for the experiment to work—but it’s one new element added to its existing massive ad revenue machine.

“We always have to make sure an initiative fits into our business and we’re not just chasing what platforms are doing,” Samir told us.

There’s a chance it doesn’t fit into the larger picture for a slew of reasons: advertiser money could wane if brands don’t see strong ROI, the ad experience could turn users off, distributing the revenue across creators could be more mess than its worth–to name a few.

With a new initiative, volatility is to be expected. “Shorts have helped us with our subscriber and audience growth,” Samir said. “But at this stage, I’m also hesitant of inflated numbers.”

Colin and Samir shared that their channel’s Shorts views have slowed in the last couple months. That’s also been the case for a reader who wrote in to us for Creator Support, and Isaiah Photo. Despite having over 7 million subscribers and past Shorts raking in over 6 million views with regularity, Isaiah Photo’s last few Shorts haven’t cracked 600,000. We expect Shorts performance to remain in flux as the revenue model gets its bearings and both creators and users continue to adapt to the format.

Question #3: How does this move from YouTube play into the broader platform wars?

Not unlike Instagram stealing Snapchat’s Stories, YouTube has made strides integrating its TikTok copycat into the product and proving that multiple formats can work on a single platform. And with this announcement—YouTube is beating TikTok to the punch.

By being the first to release a revenue share model on the content format it made mainstream, YouTube is flexing what it’s best known for in the creator economy: paying creators.

Plus, with creators criticizing TikTok for its weak monetization, we’d expect this news to lure TikTok creators onto Shorts. Now it's up to Shorts to meet the expectations of viewership, engagement, and revenue.

This also puts the pressure on TikTok, as well as Snap, Meta, Twitch and the like, to sweeten the pot for creators. As YouTube is setting the bar high with revenue shares, it will be interesting to see how platforms adjust their creator monetization strategies if at all.

Question #4: If you’re a long-form creator with not much short-form experience, should you start experimenting? If so, how?

YouTube’s bread and butter from its start has been long-form content. Many homegrown YouTubers we’ve spoken to haven’t yet invested in short-form content or have only dabbled in it.

“I’ve never made enough time for [Shorts] in the past. They’ve often been an after-thought. But with short-form content becoming such a focus for every platform now, I know it is important and I am looking at how to incorporate them into my overall strategy,” arts and color theory creator Sarah Renae Clark said.

Where to start? Creators we’ve spoken to suggest an efficient approach. Instead of starting with a blank canvas, Julian Saliani, who assists in insights for Colin and Samir’s channel, recommends reformatting your past videos into a short-form version and checking out the performance. By repurposing your existing videos, you can experiment with less input and expose a potentially new audience to your catalog.

Mike Shake’s editor, Devin Robbins, is taking advantage of the low-barrier, flexible nature of Shorts with their approach. “Our strategy is to ramp up Shorts production with a standalone format that’s quick, easy, and cheap to produce,” he said. “Since there’s still so many question marks about Shorts, we just want to be major players in the space, and then we’ll adjust on the fly.”

Airrack uploads two Shorts for every four long-form videos. At VidSummit, he emphasized that he’ll keep his eye on long-from as well. “As we move into the Shorts era, make sure you’re balancing with long-form,” Airrack said.

Question #5: How are creators viewing Shorts as part of their broader content strategy?

As Andrew Manganelli explains on this episode of MKBHD’s WVFRM Podcast, Shorts give creators the opportunity to experiment. The barrier to creation is low and the potential audience reach is massive.

As we’ve seen short-form creators across platforms grow rapidly, it’s important for creators to remember the balance between the quality of connection and the quantity. “Shorts seem to be effective at reaching a larger audience but they don’t allow creators to connect on the same level and build the depth of relationship with their followers as long-form videos do,” Sarah Renae Clark said. “I think the most successful creators will find a combination of both.”

In the holistic view of your video content, Shorts is a very powerful format optimized for discovery. “Shorts provide width, but only use that to bring viewers into a funnel where you can provide depth,” Samir said.

Our Take

We’re excited for YouTube’s initiative to monetize short-form content, but we are still far from a complete solve. As Shorts views fluctuate, and we start to see how monetization shakes out, it’s important to keep your mission front and center. We see the next strong creator as someone who isn’t just good at long-form or short-form, but wisely uses both.

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