Jack Craig successfully earned $2,358.34 from uploading YouTube shorts for 100 days. Here is a breakdown of his entire process of this case study.
100 days ago, Jack started the YouTube Shorts channel with the goal of reaching 100,000 subscribers by the end of the year. Now, 100 days later, the channel has reached 230,000 subscribers and earns more than $400 a week. This successful case study goes over the important details you need to know about making money on YouTube shorts.
Principle 1: Pick a Topic that Interests You with a Large Audience
It is advised to be interested in the channel’s topic; otherwise, motivation may be lost, leading to giving up. Jack is no exception to this principle. He created 3 YouTube short channels and only continued to post on the Nutmeg Channel because of their interest in the channel’s topic, which is football.
One channel he gave up on was focused on basketball content. Despite gaining 300 subscribers and reaching over 120,000 views after posting for just 19 days consistently, he couldn’t bear to create another short on a topic they just didn’t care for.
If he had spent this time on the Nutmeg Channel, who knows how large it could be right now. So, the lesson here is to learn from his mistake and pick a channel topic that you are genuinely interested in.
Principle 2: Be Consistent In Uploading During the First 2 Months
Jack Craig has emphasized that one is in control of how quickly success comes to their channel. If you take the time to publish one shorts per day and study the performance of every single shorts uploaded, success will come to the channel much faster.
He posted 39 shorts before realizing the need to go back and study the performance of their only viral short at the time. The difference between his viral short and all the other shorts on their channel was that it had high retention.
Retention is the most important YouTube metric behind any short going viral on YouTube. He identified two techniques that he accidentally applied to the short to make it have high retention. Ever since learning these techniques, it has been responsible for all of the viral shorts on the channel.
Principle 3: Edit Your Content Heavily
If you want to make money from YouTube shorts and it’s not original content, it is advised to edit the shorts. For the Nutmeg channel, it’s obvious that it is not the original content because it features famous soccer players from games and interviews.
To prove that one can make money from this, he suggested looking at the YouTube monetization rules for reused content. If you edit your shorts, it will meet the approved criteria of creating a funny or thoughtful revision of content that you didn’t originally create.
If the content doesn’t violate any of these rules, you can make money from YouTube shorts.
The Nutmeg channel was once flagged for reused content and momentarily removed from the YouTube Partner Program. But since Jack knew he was following the rules, he appealed the claim by submitting a video where he showed how he edited the videos. One day later, YouTube Parter Program added him back.
Principle 4: Aim for High Retention
It is recommended to aim for high retention in one’s shorts because, as mentioned, retention is a key metric behind any short going viral.
After studying his first viral short, he noticed within the first second, he already had one text edit, one highlighted circle, and two sounds. These types of edits appeared every two seconds throughout the entire short to keep the viewer engaged both visually and auditorily.
This constantly feeds the viewer with new content and gives them less reason to swipe away. To do this, you will need to know how to use video editing software. Jack has acknowledge that starting out, it can be hard if one has never edited before, but you can easily learn this skill by practicing for a few hours.
Principle 5: Appeal to a Wide Audience
You should be making shorts that appeal to the largest audience possible. Within the first viral short, the second difference he noticed was that it was dedicated to one of the most popular soccer players (Mbappe), showcasing his funniest moments. This topic appealed to a much wider audience compared to their traditional content, which was focused on die-hard football fans.
Another way to attract a wider audience is to create shorts with no words so people from all around the world can understand the content. Emojis and different types of graphics can be used to draw attention. However, this may not apply to everyone’s content, especially if you are doing some type of talking content that relies on a voice.
Principle 6: Set Realistic Goals
Please set realistic goals. The main priority if you want to make money from YouTube shorts is to reach the YouTuber Partner Program.
This requires gaining 1,000 subscribers and reaching over 10 million short views in a 90-day period. These number of views didn’t come until he had posted his first short and got less than 5,000 views. It is much better to start aiming for 100 subscribers in the first 14 days, uploading 1 short per day.
At the start, your channel’s growth will be slow, but do not give up. One thing about YouTube shorts is that growth is exponential and happens all of a sudden. Look at the analytics to see how your channel is performing.
Over the period, Jack’s channel reached 140 million views. It took around 13 days before his first short started to go viral. It reached a peak of 500,000 views per day. This was followed by a drop to around 100,000 views, then back to another peak at around 600,000 views.
It was in this peak where he went back and studied what worked within their first viral short. He then applied his own principles mentioned above earlier to increase retention to his new shorts. His two shorts didn’t immediately go viral, and their channel was averaging around 50,000 to 20,000 views per day. He got discouraged and during this time period, he gave up on posting frequently because it felt like there was no skill to creating YouTube shorts and it was all luck.
However, Jack’s mindset suddenly changed when the two shorts started to be pushed into the algorithm. It reached a peak of around 900,000 views per day. Going back to those two shorts, he looked at both of the performances. Basically, around 30 days, it did, in fact, receive minimal views until it started to be pushed into the algorithm.
After those two shorts went viral, it motivated him once again to stop posting and continue to test the retention principles. This is when he uploaded another short based on those principles, and it started to be pushed into the algorithm just after 12 days of being published. With continued success using those principles, he uploaded another two shorts, and they both contributed to the highest peak of the channel at around five to six million views per day.
Then it was followed by a drop to around two to three million views per day.
Earnings from YouTube Shorts
For revenue, he did not reach the YouTube Partner Program for a while since they had to reach the 10 million view threshold. It is interesting that the revenue shows that almost all the channel revenue was generated just within the last 28 days.
The highest paying day was around $160 and now averaging around $50 a day. He first got monetized in February and every month after, the revenue continues to multiply by a significant amount.
Also, the shorts RPM stats are revealed. The 50 million viewed short contributed the most to earnings over the last 28 days, and all the other shorts with around 6 million views earn around $100 each.
This should motivate you to start your own, get on this wonderful journey and start your own YouTube shorts channel and start making money on YouTube.