You Tube Channel Demonetization: Your Perseverance Can Be Erased

You Tube Channel Demonetization: Your Perseverance Can Be Erased

You Tube channel demonetization is a serious offense and it will certainly be a major setback if it ever happens to you.

Building an engaged audience of loyal fans on You Tube is no simple task by any means. It takes tremendous hard work and perseverance. A You Tuber must know how to rank their videos, know how to get viewers to click, MUST be a prolific creator, and above all must consistently create GREAT content!

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you tube channel demonetization hurts

You Tube Raised the Bar to Meet Minimum Monetization Requirements

Since 2015, You Tube has raised the bar much higher for a channel to reach minimum eligibility to become monetized, meaning You Tube will allow advertisers to display paid ads within your videos.

In order for your You Tube channel to be eligible to be monetization, it must meet or exceed ALL of the following requirements within one calendar year.

  • Your channel must have a minimum of 1000 subscribers
  • Your channel must have a minimum of 4000 watch hours
  • You must have an active Google Ad Sense account
How many videos on average must be uploaded for you tube channel demonetization

Did you know a statistical study was made on a large number of You Tubers, and can you guess the average number of videos a You Tuber must create and upload to reach 1000 subscribers?

The number may shock you. It takes on average 152 videos uploaded by a channel to reach 1000 subscribers!   

Wanna Know How I Gained My Life Back?

Given how difficult it is to qualify to getting your channel monetized on You Tube, why would anyone who achieved such an honorable and formidable achievement ever want to take the slightest risk losing everything they worked for?

compilation videos

Compilation Videos: A High Stakes Game of Cheating

Lately I’ve seen a trend where slick You Tubers create compilation videos by “borrowing” (ripping) the best 20-40 parts of other You Tube creator’s original videos. Much to all of it is even the best viral content parts from some of the best trending videos.

They think they can outsmart You Tube and avert demonetization by having some sophisticated mechanisms set in place.

Perhaps in the short term they can.

By the way, if you want to learn how to go viral making You Tube videos legitimately, WATCH THIS VIDEO! 

However, seriously for those who partake in this game for “high rollers”, this is some high stakes cheating!

Furthermore, they never appear on camera or don’t even use their own voice, but an auto-generated one.

However, the auto-generated voice doesn’t disturb me. Nor does using other creators music; this is perfectly acceptable as long as you purchase the licensing rights to royalty-free music. That’s the right way to do it.

What does disturb me are the 100’s of hours of “ripped” video content from other creator’s viral videos.

These cheaters are looking for shortcuts. The program is they either reckless or highly insecure, because they did not get the proper online training.

Learn how to avert these dangerous pitfalls by trying out my #1 online training program for FREE.

you tube channel demonetization best and worst case

Welcome to Demonetization

Did you know that even borrowing a 3-5 second clip of copyrighted content to use in your video on You Tube, can get your video demonetized?

And that’s the Best case scenario in the majority of cases. In the minority of cases, your video will even be blocked by You Tube upon uploading it. This all depends on what action the original creator instructed You Tube to do.

There is no way you will know until it happens, it’s all an educated guess and high risk taking.

let me share my experience

Let Me Share an Experience

Even if you do not consider all the hours it takes learning how to create great You Tube videos, - which includes story-telling, filming, cinematography, lighting, music selecting, and editing - it can take a great deal of planning and time to even create a great 5-10 minute video of original content.

So I can understand why there are people who are looking for alternative solutions. I also get that some people don't have the time, or simply don't like creating videos but want to earn money as fast as possible.


Relative of many other You Tube channels, my channel is small and new. However, I still have created and uploaded 42 videos of my own original content since December 15, 2019 when I started this new channel - so that's an average of about 1 video per week.

Many You Tubers use short video clips from others, a scene from a movie, cute animal memes, short Tik Tok videos, etc. It seems innocuous. However, even using this type of shared content will often get demonetized by You Tube.

royalty free music

Occasionally I will use royalty-free music I find on the internet as background music for my video, where the original artist actually gives permission for anyone to use their music on You Tube, as long as you mention them in the end credits.

Let me tell you, even after following these instructions, as you can see this video of mine that has already received 1600 views, received a demonetized “red flag” from You Tube as soon as I uploaded it (see screenshot). This video now will never be able to be monetized. Ever.

I will admit, knowing that I did not yet met the minimum requirement to date (I currently have 406 subscribers) , there were videos that I created for the sake of "art" which I knew would be allowed to be uploaded but would be demonetized. However, the royalty-free music I used fit the video so well, I decided to include it anyway.

Even if you do not meet the minimum requirements to monetize on You Tube, we should always remind ourselves that these same videos that today get "dumped" into the demonetization category forever, could one day in the not too distant future be generating income for us.

getting your video blocked

Getting Your Video Blocked

Worse, I once attempted to use a short section (1 minute) of another random piece of copyrighted music; it was not only demonetized, it was blocked upon upload.

Believe me, this is not fun. Can you imagine? I had to first figure out WHY You Tube was blocking my video, locate and replace the perpetrating content, then re-upload the video. If not for my due diligence and dog-headed stubbornness to get this video up, those hours creating that content would have all gone to waste.

See how this is like “rolling the dice”?

Imagine investing 15-20 hours working on a video, only to upload it and be blocked by You Tube.

This happened to me and it was highly infuriating. But mine is at a best case scenario. For those who have reached monetization requirements, not only will they pull hairs out of their heads, it can be highly expensive.

Now what if they already met the requirements for monetization, good ad revenue was rolling in for some of their videos, and all at once a string of new videos were demonetized by You Tube?

Worse yet, what if You Tube determined that taking advantage by using other creator’s content became so egregious, that one day (out of the blue) they decided to ban your entire channel altogether? Simply because You Tube decided you were playing the game way too much

huge channels have been subject t you tube channel demonetization

Huge Channels Have Even Been Banned

Don’t think this is not possible. The loss in ad revenue would be extremely devastating even for a small monetized channel (1k to 50K subscribers).

Now imagine the financial devastation for a huge channel. Not only loss of ad revenue, but having "brand sponsorships run for the hills?" This HAS even happened to huge You Tubers, some with as many as 20 million + subscribers.

This happened to Logan Paul, who was once near the top of the You Tube food chain

Where is Logan Paul now? Have you seen his channel lately? Nope. Why? Cause he was BANNED forever! Last I heard he was boxing another BIG viral You Tuber to try to make up for some of that lost revenue.

is it worth the risk?

Do you agree that this sort of risk-taking could easily backfire?

However, if you still have a legitimate argument why such actions exposing you to you tube channel demonetization are legal and worth taking the risk, please leave your comments below.

I would be happy to discuss it.

About the Author

KAJU is the band leader and founding member of OFF THE HOOK, one of the premiere dance party bands in the New York Tri-State Area. After contracting a mysterious hand disorder, Kaju now writes to help other musicians and artists deal with disabilities. Currently he is a Full-time Affiliate Marketer and 1-on-1 mentor at Wealthy Affiliate, a community that can help anyone start an online business without prior experience. This is where he teaches others how to make a great passive income. Read more about his story here!

  • Les Waller says:

    Great post, Kaju! Really high quality work on this with the photos and graphics, I feel like my work is in the stone age or at least still in the 20th century.

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