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

Every bit y'all probably know, yous accept to encounter two requirements before you lot can use.

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

Getting your starting time one k subscribers is the piece of cake part! There are over x.1 million YouTube channels with more than 1,000 subs, but but 2 million channels have joined the YouTube Partner Program. You tin can learn more most this in my commodity on How many YouTube channels are there?

Today, we will look at how we can get you to 4,000 hours of watch time every bit rapidly as possible. First, we are going to expect at your scout fourth dimension from three different angles:

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

So we explore different strategies and tactics on how to maximize your sentinel time to trigger the YouTube algorithm to apace grow your channel.

Sounds good? Great!

Then let's get started...

What Does iv,000 Hours of YouTube Watch Time Hateful?

4000 hours in minutes

When we expect at big numbers, information technology's sometimes difficult to imagine what those numbers actually hateful. So let's break down 4000 hours of YouTube watch fourth dimension into minutes.

The math is unproblematic. I hour equals 60 minutes, so all we take to exercise is multiply both numbers.

4000 hours x 60 minutes = 240,000 minutes!

To get to 4000 hours of YouTube watch time, you accept to generate 240,000 minutes of YouTube picket time.

4000 hours in days

How many days of continuous watching does information technology have to get to 4000 hours of spotter time?

Let'southward meet...

I twenty-four hour period has 24 hours. That means we can just divide 4000 hours of scout time by 24 to get our respond.

4000 hours / 24 hours = 166 days and 16 hours

To go 100% of your YouTube watch fourth dimension from i person, they would take to play your videos on loop for 166 days and 16 hours not-stop.

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

How Does YouTube Calculate the Number of Hours Watched?

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

What counts as video watch time?

The first thing that you have to sympathize is what qualifies as watch time?

Not all content is equal. YouTube only considers PUBLIC lookout man time as lookout time.

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

Keep that in heed when you upload your videos onto YouTube!

If you had a viral video ii years ago, would it count towards your lookout time?

Unfortunately not!

4,000 hours of watch fourth dimension is not about the total number of watch fourth dimension people watched during the lifetime of your aqueduct.

It's a moving time frame, and will always wait at the final 365 days from whatever appointment information technology is today.

Imagine this: If you had accumulated 1,000 hours of watch time exactly 500 days before today and then generated another three,000 hours within the concluding 365 days.

How many hours of watch time would you take?

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

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

The 1,000 hours that you lot collected 500 days ago are out of the 365 days date range.

Now the expert news is that you just have to get 4,000 hours once.

Once you authorize for monetization, y'all can utilise for monetization. And in one case you're approved, yous're approved. No matter how many hours of lookout man time you accumulate afterwards.

Example: If yous got monetized one year ago but only had 1,000 hours of watch time within the last 365 days doesn't thing.

You still stay monetized.

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

What'southward the minimum number of videos that you should make? How many views should each of your YouTube videos get? What's the ideal length of your videos?

To answer these questions, we have to practise a bit of math showtime.

1 X 1-minute video

Imagine that y'all just created a brand-new YouTube channel.

Day 0. You take 0 subscribers and 0 videos.

What if you created just 1 i-minute video. How many times would people have to watch this one video to gain 4,000 hours of watch time?

The answer is pretty uncomplicated.

Nosotros but accept to convert 4,000 hours into minutes. four,000 hours x 60 minutes = 240,000 minutes.

One 1-infinitesimal long video would take to be watched 240,000 times.

Wow, that'due south a big number!

It gets even bigger if we assume that not everybody will lookout man your video all the way till the terminate.

The commencement person might watch for 1 minute, the second person might watch 30 seconds, and the third person might click away immediately.

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

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

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

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

With our 1-minute video, 50% average picket time would double the number of required views.

240,000 1-infinitesimal views / l% = 480,000 views!

Yep, we are non going to practice that.

We need something way more achievable!

365 X i-infinitesimal videos

Ok, so what if we made ane 1-infinitesimal video every 24-hour interval instead?

How many views would we need?

Let's take our previous number of 480,000 views and divide it past 365 days.

And yes, I am simplifying a little here: The first video yous upload on day 1 has 365 days left to proceeds more views. While the terminal video that you upload on day 364 only has 1 24-hour interval left to gain more views and should therefore go a much smaller number of views. In my examples, we just pretend that all videos are the same.

What'south the event?

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

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

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

Merely, we tin do even better.

365 X 10-minute videos

What if we only made longer videos?

x-minute long videos instead of 1-infinitesimal videos?

Well, in this instance, nosotros can divide everything by ten.

i,315 views per video / 10 = 132 views per video

Let'southward bank check the number and encounter if we're right.

365 video 10 x minutes x 132 views per video ten 50% boilerplate watch length = 240,900 minutes = 4,015 hours

Boo-ya! Take that algebra! 😜

Allow's exist real

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

For once, coming upward with good video ideas takes time and requires mental energy to exist creative.

If you want to make 365 unique videos that are all as adept, yous might fire out pretty quickly.

And not only considering you drain your inventiveness daily (unless you alive stream video games on Twitch), simply besides considering of the time spent on product, editing, and promotion, which can easily accept upwardly a few hours per video if you lot want to do a good task.

What's a more realistic pick that would work for well-nigh people?

Here is what I recommend:

  • Create ane, 2 or three videos per calendar week. Each 10 to xv minutes long.
  • Create either a weekly or monthly livestream of sixty minutes.
  • Focus on content quality and promotion.

Allow'due south accept a look at how these numbers play out.

For this example, I will calculate the total number of unique content first so combine it with our live stream minutes.

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

Now, allow's calculate our alive stream minutes.

  • one x weekly video of 60 minutes: 52 weeks ten 1 x threescore minutes = 3,120 minutes of live stream content.
  • 1 x monthly video of lx minutes: 12 months x 1 x 60 minutes = 720 minutes of live stream content.

Now, all y'all have to practice is combine these 2 numbers. If you don't want to practise live-streaming, just skip it.

For example, if I desire to create 3 weekly videos and do 1 monthly live stream: 2,340 minutes of video content + 720 minutes of live stream content = three,060 minutes of unique video content or 51 hours.

In this case, I would need to become 78 views per video or live stream to reach iv,000 hours of watch time. Here is the math: iv,000 hours / 51 hours of unique video content.

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

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

And this is what this article will focus on.

Taking the best possible actions to ensure that each video has the all-time run a risk of success to get every bit many video views and watch fourth dimension every bit possible.

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

If you lot want to join the YouTube partner program, you lot have to go a lot of picket time fast. Let'south look at some of the best YouTube picket time hacks that will help yous grow your channel exponentially.

Create longer YouTube videos

Permit me show y'all a existent-globe example from my YouTube channel. Hither are ii of my top-performing videos at the time of writing.

  • How to get 500 connections on LinkedIn. 7 minutes and 31 seconds long. 1,490 views created 69.2 hours of spotter time.
  • How to go your first 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. 47 minutes and 6 seconds long. 456 views created 50.2 hours of sentinel time.

Every bit you can see, even though the 10,000 followers video only had near 23% of the combined views, it almost had 42% of the combined watch time.

That'due south why longer videos are then powerful!

Even though the average spotter time per centum is lower than shorter videos, longer videos make more than up for information technology when dedicated viewers lookout them all the way till the end!

Longer videos become shared more frequently than shorter videos.

Optimize your YouTube videos

When you're starting a new YouTube channel, the odds are stacked confronting you.

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

The good news is, you can get around this past optimizing your videos for YouTube search.

Y'all 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 volume and low contest keyword. Then optimize your video title, clarification, and keywords for YouTube SEO.

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

If there are only 5 videos about topic X, including yours, and so your video volition show up on folio i of YouTube's search results for your targeted keyword.

So, how do you find these keywords?

By using a software called TubeBuddy! I use it for all of my videos. It connects directly to YouTube'due south API and pulls up the number of searches for whatsoever keyword I type in. And it also tells me how many competitor videos show upwardly.

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

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

Create custom thumbnails for your YouTube videos

Want to know an incredible hack to increase your YouTube watch time?

Optimize your video thumbnails for clicks!

You could accept the best video in the world, but if nobody clicks on it, your watch fourth dimension volition be zilch.

Together with your video title, 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 browse their YouTube newsfeed.

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

Merely yous should ever blueprint and upload your ain unique video thumbnail to stand out from other videos.

You lot will get the all-time results if yous plan for the thumbnail before writing your video script. I wrote an in-depth article on how to plan, blueprint, and optimize your YouTube thumbnails. Make certain to check it out!

Add together video cards to your videos

Yous as well have to get more people to watch more of your videos to go more watch time. One of the easiest ways is by recommending someone 1 of your related videos via video cards.

Those are the little info icons that appear in the meridian 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 lot're just starting, yous might not have enough videos to recommend. But don't worry. You can always go dorsum and add cards afterward once yous accept enough material.

Create end screens for your videos

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

You tin can add up to 4 videos and video playlists to the concluding 20 seconds of your videos that viewers can watch with the click of a push button.

I recommend using TubeBuddy to supersede all of your video terminate screens with your near popular videos in bulk.

Recommend related videos in your video description and comments

Some other crawly way 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 frequently review my top-performing videos in terms of watch fourth dimension, views, and engagement. I re-create all video links in a text file and add the video title in forepart or above each link.

Next, I add links to my website, social media accounts, and products and so employ TubeBuddy to replace the description 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 different approach.

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

Add your videos to playlists

Every YouTube channel should have at least one playlist!

You can first past creating one for all of your videos and and so, await for it... add all of your public videos to it! Genius!

The thought of why you should create playlists is that information technology creates a very convenient style for viewers to majority-watch your content.

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

Accept advantage of series-playlists

If y'all desire to turbo-charge your YouTube playlists, you must take advantage of a little-known notwithstanding super-powerful feature chosen series playlists.

Remember of information technology like this.

You fabricated a travel documentary well-nigh your last vacation and carve up it into iii movies. Yet, it would make sense to spotter them in sequential order.

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

With a "normal" or no playlist at all, there was no mode of knowing if YouTube would suggest function 2 as the next recommended video if someone were watching part 1. Often random videos would be recommended. Often from other channels.

With a "series" playlist, this is different. Now, the probability that office 2 will exist suggested is nigh guaranteed.

Why is this so powerful?

Considering YouTube volition car-play videos after each video by default.

And if you tin sneak in more of your videos at the end, that means extra watch time, and y'all get to 4,000 hours much faster!

Another way you tin take reward of video playlists is past sharing playlists instead of individual video links.

First, notice a playlist of your choice that contains the video that you desire to share.

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

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

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

If it works, share this far and wide.

Not everybody volition continue to spotter your entire playlist.

But some will, and that'due south all that matters! More than sentry fourth dimension for your channel.

Promote your videos on social media

Y'all must bulldoze every bit much traffic to your own videos as possible!

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

YouTube will reward those who assist themselves.

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

  1. You lot bring fresh users to the YouTube platform. This allows YouTube to show them ads which translates into extra revenue for YouTube. Result? YouTube will advantage you with organic impressions.
  2. You know your audience best. By recommending your videos to people you know are interested in the content, you allow YouTube to create lookalike audiences. It works similar to Amazon's "people who bought this as well bought these" feature. Once YouTube is able to run into patterns among viewers, information technology volition exist able to make educated guesses what other YouTube videos and creators y'all might exist interested in.
  3. You make your ain luck. Or in this case your own picket time. The more that you lot promote your own videos, the quicker yous'll get to iv,000 hours of watch time.
  4. Y'all also go far convenient for others to share your video on social media. (If you lot want to dig deep to acquire why people share content online and how yous can motivate your audience to share more, hither's the commodity.) It's quite a big pace to take, to motivate someone who is already on YouTube, to open their Twitter account, to write a tweet then to link i of your videos. Only if you're the one sharing the video on Twitter and someone on Twitter watches your YouTube video, it'southward another affair. Now, all it takes is the click to retweet your video to their followers, and boom! New potential viewers that didn't know anything near yous before clicking right to your video.

Become live on YouTube

We talked about the importance of longer videos before. With longer videos, you need a much smaller number of viewers to get to the same number of spotter hours.

Since you don't have your start 1,000 subscribers yet, that's generally a adept thing.

I recommend recording longer videos of 10-15 minutes. But if you lot really want to amp up your spotter time, yous'll need significantly longer videos.

Now, unless you take the talent to produce hour-long movies every week without called-for out, in that location is a much easier manner to go your scout time up to speed.

Going Alive on YouTube.

I recommend having a regular schedule, for case, every Monday evening, then your audience tin can form a habit of attending your alive streams.

Start video premieres

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

It's like a sentry party for your new video. But select a appointment and fourth dimension, and YouTube will live-stream your new video at your specified time. Viewers can join the live chat and interact with you.

Later on, it will plough into a regular video that people can watch whenever they want.

The benefit of premieres is that it's a unique experience. Y'all can only ever lookout it for the first time, and and so it'south over.

Because of this novelty factor, you'll get a lot more people to watch your premieres in comparing to publishing videos the regular way.

Use YouTube to live-stream your webinars

If you practice webinars for your business organization, why not live-stream them on YouTube. I employ two tools for all of my webinars that permit me to live stream to YouTube: WebinarJam and Restream.

Why should you do this?

Because webinars are usually last from thirty minutes to 2-three hours. And that means a massive boost in spotter fourth dimension every fourth dimension you have a new webinar.

Make sure that you fix your live stream to the public. Otherwise, YouTube won't count information technology towards your iv,000 hours of watch fourth dimension.

Create an online course and host your videos on YouTube

Have you ever thought about creating an online class every bit a lead magnet? I utilize Thrivecart to host my online courses.

But you lot can continue information technology super simple. Just create a hidden page on your website and add all course videos as embedded YouTube videos.

Or if yous have an electronic mail list. Send them a sequence of daily emails, each with the link to a different YouTube video.

People dearest structure and are more than willing to swallow larger amounts of content if presented and structured the correct fashion.

And what does that mean for you?

You guessed it! More than scout time!

Create a video advertising campaign on google ads

If you lot don't have the patience, there is some other way that you lot tin think of...

Creating a video ad campaign on Google Ads.

Here is how this works.

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

Then you create a Google Ads account and prepare a new campaign.

You lot select "brand awareness and reach" as the entrada goal and and so "video entrada" on the next page.

Requite your campaign a name.

Then select a CPC bidding strategy. I recommend manually setting a low bid cap so you don't accidentally burn your campaign upkeep too quickly.

Ready a campaign upkeep as well equally a start and terminate date. I recommend starting with $x-20 and a time frame of 1-2 days to familiarize yourself with how everything works.

In the networks section, select "YouTube videos".

Equally for targeting options, there are ii. Either tailor your campaign to your platonic audience. Or just get for inexpensive and everyone.

I recommend option 2 to get as many sentry hours every bit possible at the lowest possible toll. And choice one, if you not merely want to amp up your picket time but also proceeds subscribers with your video ads.

Now it'south time to create your video ad. Select a video of your choice from your YouTube channel and design your advertisement.

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

Pro-tip: If you lot add "?sub_confirmation=ane" to the stop of your channel URL, people will run across a popup that asks them if they want to subscribe.

In the cease, click save and continue. Once your video advertising campaign has been reviewed, it's set up to get.

I recommend logging into your YouTube Creator Studio and keeping an eye on the real-time views. This is what it'll expect like on a daily basis in one case yous have many more subscribers! 🙂

Lookout your ain videos on your friend's phone

That'southward a bit of a hack. Side by side time yous come across your friend, tell them that you lot want to show them your new YouTube channel on THEIR phone.

Then let them lookout man one of your videos. And while you're at it, why not subscribe to them at the same fourth dimension... 😜

Every bit helps, and who knows, peradventure they'll plough into one of your most loyal subscribers who watch all of your videos.

Determination

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

I recommend publishing three videos of 10-15 minutes per week and i 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 allowed me to grow my channel from zero to 3000 subscribers.

Add up to five video cards to each of your videos to promote related videos from your aqueduct to encourage viewers to watch more than 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 most popular videos or playlists and/or closely related to the video someone just watched.

Add together a list of your near 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 sentinel all of your content in bulk.

Accept advantage of Series Playlists to meliorate the likelihood that one of your videos will be recommended as "next video to watch".

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

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

Frequently go LIVE on YouTube and apply the Premiere role to create a more immersive experience with your audition and boost scout time.

I apply WebinarJam and Restream to alive-stream your webinars.

Since webinars usually tend to be between i and two hours long and the audience retention is high, these are an incredible spotter time booster.

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

If you want to get results even faster, create a video advert campaign on Google Ads.

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

If you want to learn more about YouTube, make sure that yous check out my YouTube articles on how to go more views on YouTube, get YouTube subscribers fast, improve your video click-through charge per unit, and design awesome video thumbnails.

If y'all want to learn how I grew my YouTube aqueduct from 0 to 3,000 subscribers with TubeBuddy, check out my TubeBuddy review here.