How do I start a YouTube channel and make money from it?
Pick one subject you can make a video on every week for a year, create the channel from a Google account, and treat the first months as unpaid practice: YouTube pays ad revenue only inside its Partner Program, which needs 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 public watch hours in 12 months or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days. Memberships, Super Thanks and Shopping open earlier, at 500 subscribers, 3 uploads in 90 days and 3,000 watch hours. On Shorts you keep 45% of your share of a pooled fund. Faceless and AI channels can earn, but since July 2025 YouTube refuses to monetise mass-produced, repetitive 'inauthentic content', and realistic AI footage must be labelled. A kids channel must be marked 'made for kids', which shuts off memberships and Shopping. From India, file US tax details in AdSense or Google can withhold up to 24% of everything; with the treaty it is 15% of US-viewer earnings. Most channels die by stopping too soon.
YouTube's own page on joining the Partner Programme: 1,000 subscribers with 4,000 public watch hours in 12 months or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days, plus two-step verification, no active strikes and an AdSense for YouTube account.
The full list of ways to earn inside the Partner Program, ads, Shopping, Premium revenue, memberships, Super Chat and Super Thanks, with each feature's minimum requirements.
The policies a channel must meet to earn. Since July 2025 the repetitious content rule is called inauthentic content and covers mass-produced, generic or repetitive videos.
How Shorts ad revenue is pooled and shared. Revenue from the Shorts feed goes into a Creator Pool split by each creator's share of engaged views in a country, and monetising creators keep 45% of their allocation whether or not they used music.
Why a creator in India must submit US tax information in AdSense: without it Google may deduct up to 24% of total worldwide earnings; with it, withholding applies only to earnings from US viewers at a rate set by any tax treaty.
YouTube's rule for AI in your videos: realistic AI-generated or altered content must be labelled at upload, such as a real person saying something they did not, altered footage of a real event, or a realistic scene that never happened. Unrealistic content and minor edits need no label.
Every channel, wherever it is, must tell YouTube whether its videos are made for kids under YouTube's agreement with the US FTC and the COPPA law. The page explains what counts as made for kids and that setting it correctly is the creator's legal responsibility.
