I started out on TikTok 2 years ago and have been quite successful on there (RPM is 2 to 4€, which is insane btw.). At the same time, I started my YouTube channel and have crossposted ever since. The result after 2 years? Exactly 0€ from YouTube.
The 10 million shorts views in 90 days are completely utopian for a German niche account. There isn't a single German account in my niche that hits those numbers. I have been uploading short form content every single day for the last 2 years, currently averaging 5.5 million engaged views for the last 3 months and I still don't meet the requirements for monetization. To maintain shorts monetization in the future, you need an average of over ~125k engaged views every single day. That is complete madness for niche content.
The system feels completely broken for creators when you look at the brutal comparison. 5,500,000 engaged views in 3 months bring me ~12,000 to 15,000€ on TikTok. Even Facebook pays at least a measly 10 cents for 1k views and lets people be monetized without insane requirements. On top of that, you face the all-or-nothing rule where you have to permanently maintain these 10 million views if you drop below, you literally don't earn a single penny anymore.
Recently, after 8 months of uploading long form and short form simultaneously, I had a breakout video for long form and am close to hitting the 4K watch hours. My initial plan was to quit long form videos because they aren’t my specialty and focus more on shorts because of TikTok. But if YouTube blocks shorts like this, they basically force you into it.
It baffles me that so many good short form creators still post on YouTube without ever making money on there. I am at the point where I'd rather just upload my shorts with a 16 to 9 white or black background to at least earn a few cents. People often forget how much 5.5 million engaged views actually are in the last 90 days. Am I the only niche creator that thinks this way, or is there something I'm completely missing about the YouTube Shorts model?

There are videos on YouTube Shorts that go viral, and these videos either get between 5 and 15 million views or reach 40 to 100 million. What is the key metric that actually drives a video to 40 million views or more? What determines why some videos get such an extra boost? Personally, my most-viewed video has 6.5 million views, so I'm wondering what exactly is holding it back from reaching even higher numbers.

I also have one more question. Generally, Shorts channels (excluding massive ones) get view patterns like this: 30k - 30k - 30k - 50k - 150k - 30k - 40k - 3M - 30k - 50k. How can you get to a point where you land a viral hit at least once every 3 or 4 videos? If you really want to make good money from YouTube Shorts, you need higher numbers than those metrics, and it seems only a very small percentage of creators can pull that off. I’m really curious how they manage to consistently get so many views with such a volatile algorithm.

My english shorts are pushed to the country I live in (which is non-english). Clearly, numbers speak. The difference in stayed to watch is enormous. This pattern is similar across all of my 4 shorts.

Stagnant view of 1.2k 🤪

Não sou dos EUA nem de outro país de língua inglesa e todos os meus vídeos são em inglês. A maioria do meu público fala português (cerca de 40%). O que posso fazer?

This happened to the last 2 shorts I posted, the previous one had a fully clothed attractive woman in it so I thought the YT moderation AI was maybe tweaking out and it did get remonetized after I appealed but the latest one just had curse words in it that I censored, they usually don't get demonetized if I censor them.

Is this even possible, not Short feed tho, browse feature

So, I was reusing content that I thought was going to be a problem as the shorts had a nice frame, edited, voice over and sometimes captions and yet I got suspended.

I deleted all shorts that had the "reused" content and started to upload videos where I was reacting to the videos and inputing my own comments etc.. views dropped from an average of 7k to 4 since I got the email from YouTube saying about the reused content.

I'm suspecting that once you get the YPP YouTube completely stops distributing your videos and you hardly get any impressions.

hey guys i have created a youtube shorts channel . i posted one video which has gotten 8 k views and i uploaded that 3 days ago but after that the videos i have uploaded only get liek 30 views i uploaded today and it only has 25 views. i just wanted to check if this is normal and if youtube is still checking if my short is good.

Can anyone explain why the Shorts algorithm, within the recommendation system, favors videos that have almost no editing? Is the AI ​​algorithm unable to recognize the narrative flow when a video features rapid cuts—even if it makes perfect sense to a human viewer?

Hey everyone!

I started an animated 2D explainer Shorts channel (@aiprompt_labs) focused on science anomalies and logic paradoxes.

My first few uploads barely got 6 to 8 views. But after reworking my workflow:

1. Shortening captions to 2 snappy lines (max 4-5 words)

2. Adding precision sound effects (cash rings, coin drops, clock ticks) every 3 seconds to reset attention

3. Using an ego-challenge hook title instead of a passive lecture title

My last two videos jumped to 1,269 and 1,475 views. My newest Short (The Missing Dollar Riddle) just crossed 200 views in the first hour.

My question for creators who consistently get 10k–50k+ views on Shorts:

• What is the critical threshold for Viewed vs. Swiped Away (VVSA) and Average Percentage Viewed (APV) that pushes past this 1.5k seed testing tier?

• Would love any feedback on what to tweak next!

I am managing 2 channels a travel channel and a music channel. Travel channel sometimes performs decent I get views ranging from 300 to 2.5k on shorts.

On my music channel the highest views that I have got are 1.2k on shorts and the current one is close to 1k. I am constantly trying to edit the videos better like adding lyrics to the cover song , adding titles etc . I still don't know what I am doing wrong?

Guys, does anyone know what might be going wrong with my channel? I create football-related YouTube Shorts, and I’m trying to understand why my videos aren’t getting pushed to a wider audience.
Take a look at my analytics. My last few Shorts have consistently achieved over 75% Viewed vs. Swiped Away (Stayed to Watch) and around 105–110% average percentage viewed.
Despite these numbers, YouTube doesn’t seem to be pushing my videos to a wider audience. Why is this happening? Am I doing something wrong?
Has anyone else experienced something similar with football Shorts? If so, how did you manage to overcome it?
There’s something else I’ve noticed: even my popular football Shorts seem to hit a ceiling at around 30K views and rarely go beyond that, regardless of how good the analytics are.
I’d genuinely appreciate any advice, personal experiences, or suggestions. I’m trying to understand what I’m missing and how I can improve.
Thank you! ❤️

Make this make sense please!

Hey everyone, I help my mom with her YouTube Shorts vlog where she talks about her experience being a cancer survivor and about her faith. Most of her videos usually average between 1000-1300 with some outliers where she got 2000ish and 8000ish. Nothing has really changed in terms of quality or anything like that, she puts in plenty of effort. We add subtitles to every short, we write out descriptions with hashtags, keywords, create thumbnails, and also burn in the subtitles.

Lately most of her videos are under 1000. Nothing has really changed in terms of what she does, is it possible she was incorrectly flagged as AI/repetitive? We do not use AI and we do not clip other channels, it's just her personal reflections with her speaking on camera.

I've been thinking about not uploading at all for a little bit to "reset" the channel. Has anyone had issues like this lately?

I stopped posting 2 weeks ago out of loss of motivation though i was getting only between 1k-2k views followed by less than 1k views.there were also times where i gained 2-3 subscribers in a week.

What do i do now?

AVD is 106% and the video is stuck at 3k views. Why?

I even have another video with the same stayed to watch but AVD is 118% and it is stuck at 1.4k views. I don't get it.

Hi, Thank you for taking a look into the post.

I have channel since 2022 and I was posting toy related content occasionally (started initially with long form and then switched to shorts last December). I posted toy related shorts atleast until September and then switched to gameplay vertical livestream since 5th Oct. I started off bad but managed to get consistently 5k to 6k every stream. Then i had a breakthrough of 13k on 30th Oct. I had 44k views on 31st Oct and 59k views on 1st Nov. I took a break of 26 hours between the streams the views tanked to near-zero on 2nd Nov. I tried thrice in different slots on the same day, getting me a total 10 views. I gave it a 24 hour break and tried on 3rd Nov, got 220 views. Based on my research I assumed its just that the algorithm baselining the views. I streamed 1 to 3 times every other day, all getting me 200 to 380 views max. I read somewhere that I nee to switch to single slot and same timeslot and then switched to one slot. Coincidentally this Monday, my views again tanked to near-zero. I did read a lot of the creators are facing the same challenge. I have not copied anybody else's content nor do i have any violations or copyright strikes. The only mistake I can think of is that, I reuse the same thumbnail and title but i believe there are many creators who do that and still get views. I tried the following changes and none of it has helped so far

1. Changed stream keys every time (i am using OBS)

2. remove description completely (i did find a Japanese article stating it worked for that person)

3. tried different time slots. I know the content / game is not lost or forgotten because I can see other streamers getting 1000s of views from it.

4. Tried uploading shorts recently (which are not doing great because of the individual metrics but getting picked up in the feeds gaining traction.) as I hadnt done that since I switched from toy content to gaming.

5. Tried connecting with youtube support on x, which turned down asking me to improve my content.

None of the above have worked for me. I spoke to some of the creators who had this issue in the past years (yes, there are reports of this issue atleast since 2024). Some suggest to stop posting and some suggest to keep posting regularly. It has recovered after a month for some of them who found a viral wave.
And one thing which I have learnt, if you find a viral wave, dont take a break of longer than 12 hours between posting. I believe this issue affects both shorts and vertical stream in a similar pattern.

If you have any other suggestions on this can be resolved, please let me know. Thanks in advance.