Guide · Updated October 2026

How does YouTube Shorts make money?

Shorts get views more easily than long-form videos, but each view earns much less. Understanding how YouTube splits Shorts revenue helps you use Shorts for the right job: pulling in subscribers and pushing viewers to long-form videos.

Find Shorts topics that are taking off

Terms

1,000 subscribers and 10 million valid public Shorts views in 90 days (or 4,000 long-form watch hours in 12 months).
Join the YouTube Partner Program and agree to the Shorts monetization terms.
Original content: Shorts that re-cut other people’s videos, films, or TV shows do not count.

How Shorts revenue is split

Ads that run between Shorts are pooled into a shared fund each month. The creator portion is divided in proportion to each channel’s Shorts views, and the channel then receives 45%. That is why Shorts RPM is usually just a few cents to under 0.1 USD per 1,000 views — many times lower than long-form, and heavily dependent on the audience’s country.

Making Shorts that earn money

Use Shorts to test topics fast: whichever topic takes off as a Short, make a long-form video on the same topic.
Link a related long-form video to the Short to pull viewers over.
Target audiences in high-RPM countries if your goal is ad revenue.
Shorts suit affiliate / sales channels: the main income comes from orders, not ads.

Frequently asked questions

How much do 1 million Shorts views earn?

Usually from a few USD to a few dozen USD depending on audience country and niche — much lower than 1 million long-form views.

Does posting Shorts hurt a long-form channel?

Not if they are on the same topic. Shorts on a different topic can bring in viewers who don’t care about your long-form videos.

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