6 months after YouTube monetisation, here's what nobody tells you... Making $130 last month from AdSense was a wake-up call. That 'magic' 1K subscribers target? It's just the beginning of realising how little AdSense actually pays." I don't think many of us have sat down and really asked the question of what our personal monetary goal is. I was fortunate enough to monetise my Electric Vehicle channel very quickly, and I was ecstatic when I finally did. Yipee! I made it 🥳 Even though this fantastic milestone was achieved, in reality, making money with Adsense is never going to produce a comfortable income or replace an income. Here's the reality: My EV channel gets 2K-5K views per video. Last month's AdSense? $130. But when I started promoting affiliate products and gaining sponsorships, my income from this far exceeded my AdSense income by a country mile. One thing I wish I knew sooner and wish someone had told me is the fact that you don't need to achieve that magic metric of (1k subscribers and 4k watch hours). Sure, it feels great, but when the dust has settled and you see how much it pays, it suddenly dawns on you that you need to achieve thousands of views per video to ever make it worthwhile making videos. So, if you have a skill or passion you can share with the world, don't wait for permission from YouTube to monetise it. You can actually do that right now. If your content helps just 10 people solve a real problem, you're already ready to monetise. I've seen creators with 200 subscribers creating a great income because they serve a specific, engaged audience. Quality beats quantity every time. My biggest regret? Waiting 8 months to create my first digital product. Those months of 'building to 1K' could have been months of actual revenue. What knowledge could you package right now? What problem do your viewers ask about repeatedly? That's your first product. YouTube is a fantastic platform, but it's your marketing tool, not your business model.

The vast majority of creators think YouTube judges a video on its own merits. Post it, wait, see what happens. That's not quite how it works. When your video goes live, YouTube immediately looks for a warm audience to serve it to. People it already knows have an interest in what you talk about. If you've been quiet all week, that list is thin. So the video gets shown to cold traffic first, click-through is low, and the algorithm concludes nobody wants it. That's not a bad video. That's a cold start. Here's the fix. Every time someone watches a Short from your channel or sees a Community post, YouTube adds them to what I think of as your warm list. It knows they care about your topic. So when Thursday's video drops, it's got a pool of active, interested viewers to recommend it to right away. The first hour looks completely different. One long-form video per week is enough. But the week around it matters. A couple of Shorts clipped from the video, scheduled across the days before and after. A Community post or two keeping the topic alive. Daily presence without daily production. The one thing that kills this is Shorts that pull in the wrong audience. Trending sounds, off-topic hooks - they train the algorithm to associate your channel with people who'll never sit and watch a 15-minute video. Keep everything contextually relevant, and the model works. What does your week look like between uploads right now? Curious what people are actually doing.

Can anyone help me with a link to a cool tutorial on how to make AI thumbnails, especially the realistic face generation options?

Short answer: yes. But not in the way most creators think. Subscriber count isn't what gets your videos distributed. YouTube's algorithm runs on viewer satisfaction - retention, CTR, session depth, what someone does after they watch. A channel with no subscribers can get recommended if it performs well in early testing. What still matters is engaged subscribers. The ones who open notifications, watch within the first hour, and come back. That early view velocity signals the algorithm to push wider. Ten thousand real watchers outperforms one hundred thousand people who subscribed and disappeared. The subscribe CTA still works. But the generic version doesn't. Asking someone to subscribe at the top of your video before you've given them a reason to is backwards. Time it after a value moment. Make it specific to what they'll get. That's the version that still converts. The mistake I see is creators either obsessing over the subscriber count or giving up on the CTA entirely. Neither is right. Build content that earns the sub. Then ask clearly, once, at the right moment. Are you still asking for subscribers in your videos - and if so, where in the video are you doing it? Des

I've seen a few posts lately from people wondering if it is still worth it. Here is what I keep coming back to. YouTube has 2.7 billion monthly active users in 2026. The average channel hits 1000 subscribers in around 15 months. Channels posting consistently and combining long-form with Shorts are growing 41% faster than those doing one format. Search content posted years ago is still delivering traffic today with zero maintenance. None of that sounds like a platform in decline. What is actually happening is a filter. Generic, surface-level content is getting harder to grow. Specific, experience-led content from people who actually know their subject is doing better than ever. If you are a professional who has spent years in your field, you have something that a 22-year-old with a ring light does not. That is not a small thing. I also think the comparison game is a big part of why people want to quit. Someone else's month six looks like your month one. But their month one looked exactly like yours. The research I have been looking at suggests the creator economy is now worth over $250 billion and still growing hard. The opportunity is not behind you. It is ahead of you if you keep going. What is the main thing making you doubt it right now?