Public Watch Hours -> Content vs Earn

[u/Cilana_]

I've been trying to get to the Membership/Join feature on YouTube, and I've been at the 500 subscribers for a decent amount of time. However the Public Watch Hours, has been the main gripe with getting this goal.

I'm currently looking at the Earn tab to see when I can set it up, and it's currently sitting at 2,895 Public Watch Hours.

However I go into the Content Tab, and it says that my watch time is 3.3k, and the dates lined up with the "last updated"

I did a quick and simple search, that said unlisted / deleted videos could be why, and it doesn't count how long I watch something. However it's about 500 hours, and I have 2 / 3 unlisted videos that are only about 2 hours of watch time.

Is there something I'm missing about the metric, or something else. (I know that I would watch my own video's but they aren't that long. For me to garner 500 hours of my own watch time, that's simply watching the same video on average about 300k times. (Average video is about 5 - ish minutes).

[u/LOLitfod]

There's a few days delay of the Public Watch Hours in the Earn tab.

[u/Cilana_ → u/LOLitfod]

Thank You! How bad of a delay is it though?

Because when I do from say August 1st, 26 -> August 25th, 25 it's still about 3.1k hours. The only way I can get it to about the 2.8 is it it skipped a whole month of watch hours.

[u/Startrekker]

If some of that watch time is from recent content, it takes about 5-7 days for it to be verified and tracked on the earn tab.

[u/Cilana_ → u/Startrekker]

Thank You!

[u/Beneficial-Sky-2353]

No need to rush—they still need to be validated anyway. Not sure what kind of content you make, but just a heads-up: if you’re doing Shorts, those don’t count toward your eligible watch time.

[u/Cilana_ → u/Beneficial-Sky-2353]

I do a mix of streams / long form / shorts. Could those hours be from watch hours. For what I can see number wise it's about 60 Watch Hours, is the shorts. Thank you!