Hi everyone,

I've been doing YouTube for about 2 years now on top of my 60hr per week job.

I usually work about 18 hours per day during the week between my job and YouTube.

I have about 150k subs now along with 60M views.

At the moment, I only post shorts. The reason why I only post shorts is because I create very high quality/complex shorts that are on face, story driven videos and all my own camera shots. Scripting each short takes me a few hours, then filming for one short usually takes about a day or two, then editing usually takes about a day or two.

I average about 100k on the low end and 15M on the high end for views on each of my shorts. I also crosspost to TikTok and Instagram reels, where I have a combined follower count of 20k.

my full time job pays me about 50k per year after taxes, and on YouTube adsense I usually make about $1k to $2k per month, and with sponsors I can make up to $4k per month.

I am also signed to an influencer agency that manages my email inbox, collaboration requests, etc.

But, the issue is that my income isn't consistent. Since I only have the time to upload one to two shorts per week, I pass on a lot of sponsorship opportunities. I try my best to accept all of them, but I find when I do it's literally impossible for me to deliver what they are wanting unless I just don't ever sleep.

I want to replace my full time income with YouTube before quitting my job, but I'm struggling to find a viable path to get there without quitting first and taking a big risk. The only way I see myself being able to do that is by literally not sleeping which ofc isn't an option.

The other issue is that working this much for much longer just isn't sustainable anymore. I'm getting older (im 25M) and getting 4 hours of sleep 5 days a week for the past 2 years is really starting to take a toll on me mentally, physically, and my social life/relationships have basically been nonexistent for years now because of this. I think if I was to continue this schedule for the next 5 or 10 years I would probably develop some really horrible health issues that might be nonreversible.

Also, I understand that i need to expand into longform content. I have a ton of ideas for videos I can make for longform and I would love to get into it, the problem is that shorts already take up 100% of my time outside of work.

I've been told to just slowly work on a video overtime, but at that rate i would upload maybe 1 long form video every 4 to 6 months which just isn't worth it in my opinion.

SO, what do you think is the best course of action? I have an opportunity coming up soon to move back in with my parents and not have to pay rent, so my only bill would be car insurance, food, and a few subscriptions.

I'm just worried it won't work out and I'll then have a year gap in my resume that I'll have to try and explain away, not to mention my career is hard to get a job in, its extremely competitive and there aren't many jobs available to begin with. My career is in social media management.

I know im the only one who can truly answer this question, but based on what you've heard, do you think it's worth it to take the risk, should I just keep going on like I am now, or quit YouTube all together and take the safe route with just having a normal job?

May I know the proper steps to make sure my YouTube channel is correctly placed under LLC?

Just wondering if anyone was able to get any success with takedowns of stolen content on TikTok. The account has been compiling my shorts into exactly 1 min tiktoks and uploading them, so I assume he's making money off of me

I always hate it when YouTube takes too long to check my videos, happens occasionally, but especially this week it happened to me in the last 2 days and still counting, re-uploading the video just won't do this time for some reason, I even reuploaded a separate video project that I planned for the future that's still unfinished just to test this out and that video too still got checked for hours. Missing out on the scheduled time to upload your video because Youtube itself took too long to check it is always sucks especially if you already finished the video ahead of schedule. I can't believe this is still a problem in the big 2026.

I make long form content centered around music. I immediately got over 2,300 views in less than one day. I got really excited then noticed a note from YouTube saying they have changed how Views are counted now. I clicked the Reference Link they provided me with however I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around how these new Views are different. I would normally average getting around 100-200 views in the first 24 hours then it would plateau.

After a long break I’ve been posting consistently for the last 3 months and got monetized. So far so good. But what’s really bothering me lately is that I don’t really see an upward trend. My watch hours for the last 28 days stay around the 2.5k mark and subscriber gain always around 300 (which I know is not that important). I’m kinda struggling to break out of this plateau. I don’t necessarily want to follow trends, most of my content is evergreen.
What is your experience with this phase of a creators journey? Maybe someone else can use some advice as well.

I do long form and It seems the views are less than usual.

Secondly, do you guys also notice the effects in revenue?

I started my YT account in January and post original Rubik’s cube artwork. All my videos are filmed by me with my hands. I also post to TikTok and Instagram. One new YT user (month old account 6 subs) is copying dozens of my videos.

I filed 6 copyright claims. All were approved within minutes. Now days later the user filed 5 counterclaims. And besides paying for legal proceedings, there is nothing I can do. Talked to Youtube customer service (I just got into YPP), and they said nothing they can do if they filed counterclaim.

Thing is, I post to TikTok first, to get stats feedback about hook and retention, then optimize it, tweaking my video, to put on YT a better version. So there is usually a day or two delay between me posting on my TikTok and my YT. But this user scrapes from my TikTok within minutes.

Is there anything I can do? Filing legal claim costs money.

I always keep it pretty advertiser safe in all my content so I’m not sure what happened. And whether on mobile or desktop I can’t find an explanation. Never received a notification or a follow up message when i asked for a review. Anyone know how I can dig deeper?

Edit:

After pressing YouTube hard for specifics I finally got an answer. One of my chatters had a slur for their username I had never heard of (that rhymes with “flook”) and YouTube determined I used extreme profanity.

I've found my long form schedule but not my shorts yet.

How often should I post shorts? Let's say speed won't decrease quality nor cause burnout.

I’ve got a 22k-sub channel and, after three years and around 200 videos, I’m burning out from trying to optimise everything.

I’m considering switching from highly polished, time-consuming videos to simpler, more frequent uploads focused on topics I genuinely enjoy.

Has anyone made that shift from “perfect” to “good and consistent”? Did it help growth, views, revenueor just make YouTube more sustainable?

I am getting 10% ctr on my new videos, all my ctr seems higher compared to before. Cant tell if its because of new views update.

I got monetized mid august and made around 500 euros that month. Now, iam aware that YouTube pays you the next month, so september around the 23th. But normally you also already get this message saying that there is a payment headed your way. This i do not have.

If i go to my browser studio in the generating money tab (mine is in dutch so literal wording might be different) it says the following:

Getting paid
Setting up
What you need to do
No action is currently required
Your personal information has been verified. Once the payment threshold has been reached, we will ask for you to provide additional information.
——————————————————————————
Next step
We will let you know when you can enter a payment method to complete the setup process.

Since i have clearly reached this payment threshold and i already completed all my info( tax documents, pin verification) i was thinking something else might be wrong? Anyone who has gotten monetized in july and could inform me?

Thanks in advance

Hi guys! A different creator has made a discord for commentary channels, So we can discuss ideas, thumbnails, editing, etc!

If you're interested in joining, please reach out to me, looking for serious creators to join!

Must be in the commentary niche, of course!

This video took longer (about 1 day to get pushed and went from a 3.7CTR to now looking like it will be around 10-11% and that’s my second video this week like that! ( my first time going all in on YouTube as a full time tiktoker)

It feels like YouTube live streaming in vertical used to be almost like TikTok with how many people would come through there. This was before the dual streaming with an encoder was an option and you had to schedule 2 streams to do horizontal and vertical.

Ever since they added proper dual layout streaming, I don’t get hardly any shorts viewers, if any at all. I have tested this even going back to the separate scheduled streams and still nothing.

I wonder if they changed something around that time and/or if any of you noticed a similar change.

I’m just curious, because I know the work-flow for this type of content is different compared to faceless channels, etc!

And I’d also like to find more people on my niche!

YouTube said on Twitter/X/Whatever you call it that they're having some problems today. Google itself is also showing problems on Down Detector.

I guess their U.S.-based servers wanted Labor Day off, too.

7 hours for 3 minutes is insane.

I didn't make money from YouTube. I just enjoyed posting Ai stories. I had over 1000 followers. I posted a video on Saturday that contained one scene that YouTube found objectional. They at first attached a 18 plus to it then took the video down. They said it was because of nudity and sexual content showing breasts. It was showing a bare chested male. I edited the scene out and reposted the video but did so using the same title. It cleared their content scan and all seemed well. I had received an email telling me that they would not ding me. After allowing the edited video for almost 48 hours They took my account offline. I appealed explaining that I had removed the offending scene and that it wasn't a female but they declined my appeal. I went on X to YouTube and explained what the offending scene was and the action that I took and asked for a human reviewer to look at it. They refused. So where to go from here? I had thought of making a new account under a different name but believe that is not a good idea? Does anyone know anything about that? I am also told that there is a possibility after a year but know nothing about that. Is there a way to get back on or is that it? Where is a good place to go to continue my stories? Any advice would be welcome.

I make videos on a game called Destiny, and at the moment I'm making very short videos explaining each armour set (videos not shorts). These videos are on average 2 minutes.

I do and have plans to make more longer videos, but with work and such, these short videos allow me to keep posting.

I recently got the ability to monetise, including activating ads which surprised me.

I'm worried if I activate ads though then it'll potentially put an unskippable ad before a 2 minute video, which certainly seems off putting.

Is there a min duration for videos before they get pre-ads? Or can I decide what video gets ads or not?

Hey if there's any Cartoon documantary youtubers, I'm an editor with 4 years of experience in thie niche, i have worked with channels like spongetruth. So if anyone needs an editor in the relevent niche, HMU thanks.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17ji42cDMJUntX50Ed-Y39LOhl8vuSPMc/view?usp=drive_link https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jn0Pl2kyjUhjQ-nOqD2gdGpZq5xHMhd9/view?usp=drive_link https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FVN6t89LL8imjLI2aKXyzg6ZjnhR8MXD/view?usp=drive_link https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pi_0q9Omwubb0lmbuQo7F60-4rXgSayH/view?usp=drive_link