How Do I Increase YouTube Watch Time To Get Monetized?

To get monetized as a YouTuber requires getting four thousand watch hours (within 365 days). As a blogger, podcaster, and freelancer I have some unique opportunities to leverage. Getting 4k watch hours within a 12 month period is no easy task, so I'm brainstorming on ways I can accomplish this goal. This post outlines my general plan for increasing my watch time as I go down this YouTube road.

Before we dive in, here's the breakdown of my YouTube watch time by year (for videos only, shorts not included).

• 2018 = less than 1 watch hour (2 new videos)
• 2019 = 6.31 watch hours (2 new videos published)
• 2020 = 206.29 watch hours (33 new videos published)
• 2021 = 133.92 watch hours (23 new videos published)
• 2022 = 146.74 watch hours (16 new videos published)
• 2023 = 167.55 watch hours (22 new videos published)
• 2024 = 241.06 watch hours (36 new videos published)

There has been a general upward trend with my YouTube watch hours, but 2020 jumped because of how many podcast episodes I published and because my most watched episode of all time happened that year. Almost all of these videos before 2025 were long-form content podcast episodes. 2024 included some clips as I expanded my approaches. In January 2025, I'll publish 72 videos, most as clips from the podcast episodes that were published-in-full, before.

I've increased my watch time organically over the years. How have I done this? And how can I learn and more effectively do it going forward, now that I'm taking YouTube seriously?

At this point of the mission, what I'm looking for most is low-hanging fruit opportunities. What high-impact and low-effort activities do I have before me?

New Podcast Episodes

Primarily, my success so far was by producing new long-form content podcast episodes and publishing the videos to YouTube. For a while, I didn't create thumbnails and then I started creating simple ones sometime in 2020. But even those were mostly minimally made. Until recently, I didn't understand the value and importance of thumbnails and I did not take them seriously. I also assumed, wrongly, that all traffic to my YouTube videos was based on my efforts to promote them, and I missed how much YouTube does to drive people to videos.

Why do new podcast episodes generate watch time, even when I'm not promoting them actively? It's because those people have their communities and reputation and people want to watch the conversations. On the flip side, some people value my questions and interviewing abilities and know that I regularly deliver valuable and insightful discussions.

If I wanted to maximize watch time this way, I'd publish 2-3 new podcast episodes per week. My challenge is that my content creation isn't yet monetized so putting my time into it won't directly generate more income whereas working more freelancing hours will. This is what I aim to change so I can create a compounding growth content creating machine.

Once I'm earning from the podcast, it'll be a no brainer to produce new episodes, as each episode will be earning income. Getting monetized on YouTube is one of the clearest pathways towards this outcome but it has a limbo period of no financial benefit. So I've got to decide on where the optimal balance resides in the limbo period.

Luminaries, Vlogging, & Clips

1. Luminaries

2. Clips

Another thing I started doing in 2024 was posting clips from the podcast episodes (or my guest interviews) on YouTube. I had not done this at all until last year, only posting the full videos of my podcast episodes. But in my political activism, I wanted to communicate and share key ideas concisely so I started sharing clips to do this. One of those clips became my second most viewed video ever, generating 22 watch hours while only being a 100-second clip.

When people don't know me or the author, the topic can be an entry point into a conversation so topical clips with good titles and thumbnails can draw in views.

Through links in the description and video end cards, I can also drive traffic from these clips to the full video.

3. Vlogging

Vlogging is where you talk specifically to one person in a video while looking at the camera. All of my YouTube content has been created for other purposes and not specifically for YouTube. 

My first vlog was why I, as a Christian and Republican, was voting for Kamala Harris. That step opened the door for me to do more vlogs. And in 2025, I've posted 2 more, one on freelancing and another on my content marketing plan for the year.

An aggressive plan for the year would be producing several vlogs each week. Because of the dedicated work involved, it'll be less often, for now.

A Note on Resilience: Nothing to Lose

One huge benefit of getting politically active in a way that was in contention with a large amount of my family and community was that it creates a foundation that transcends these social dynamics. I've been insulted, questioned, misrepresented, and trolled by all types of people, including people I know. Being willing to be humiliated and having a mindset of having nothing to lose is a powerful foundation.

For example, if I had been successful on YouTube by talking exclusively about freelancing, I may have felt an uncomfortable tension getting active in controversial topics which means I may not have waded into them. That fear won't be something that holds me back in the future. And a diversified income also helps.

If you'd like to develop this type of resilience, check out the Share Life podcast episode on the topic.

Reels

Vertical video reels can generate a lot of views but they don't count towards the watch hours. But, there are two potential benefits of reels for my monetization goal.

A reel can be linked to a video so it can be used to drive views to other videos. And, reels also can generate more subscribers. Since I need 1,000 subscribers to get monetized, these reels may be helpful to accomplish this goal. For now, I'll spend less time on reels as I build up my normal video library. 

Driving Views From My Websites and Social Media

I get a significant amount of website traffic on this blog and Path of the Freelancer. I've also got my social media channels. All of these platforms can be used to direct people to YouTube videos that are compelling to them. On my websites, I've got a few ways to promote videos. One of these ways is by embedding the videos in my blog posts, which I've regularly for new podcast episodes for years. This way people can either read the blog post or watch the YouTube video version.

Another variation of this approach is to create videos for my top-trafficked pages. For certain blog posts, I get a lot of traffic so I can create videos of that content and embed it on the post. I've done a version of this with audio blog readings. So that's one of the two options. Ideally, I could do one of each, an audio blog reading and a vlog on the topic.

I'm also embedding the clips into my podcast pages in the part of the transcript where the clip is chopped.

Another option for leveraging my website to promote these videos, now that I'm making killer video thumbnails, is to use the thumbnail as an ad on the sidebar banner. And that could be a way to channel views more broadly. I'm experimenting with this now.

On social media, the same ideas would apply. I am doing posts across my channels (including Quora questions/spaces, relevant social media groups, and maybe even Goodreads) promoting new and old videos and inviting people to click the link to watch.

YouTube links on social media are less likely to get engagements than native videos on those platforms, but since those platforms don't generate income, it may be a worthwhile temporary approach. And, posting native videos with links to the full video on YouTube could be an effective way to encourage more watch time on long-form content.

For the social channels that don't make linking viable (Instagram and TikTok), I can simply post videos to build the channels up for the possibility of monetizing them in the future.

Search Engine Optimizing My Existing Blog Posts With YouTube Videos

Another opportunity I have, as a blogger, is going through all the blog posts on my website, which are primarily the posts for each podcast episode, and making some SEO tweaks to attract more search engine traffic. If I can draw more visitors to the existing long-form content, that will increase the number of watch hours. And these upgrades can be fairly quick, taking me only five minutes to do.

Email Marketing

Now that I'm halfway through my 72 videos in 31 days challenge for January 2025, and I've got compelling thumbnails, I'm going to test out including these videos in my email campaigns. There are several hundred people who get my emails, so we'll see if there is enough interest to click and watch the videos. If you're not on my email list, sign up below.

Something New To Try: Live Videos

I've never done live video streams on any social media platform. So, this is one of the things I'd like to test out. Since I'm already recording the videos in Riverside, it's easy to turn on the live streaming. And, live videos seem to get a lot of promotion via notifications on all the social platforms, as well as creating a sense of urgency, so this approach may be a good way to drive watch time.

If this attracts people who may not otherwise watch the on-demand videos, this would be a great option to increase watch time.

Video Distribution & Meta Data

YouTube does its thing to distribute and promote videos on its platforms, but I can join in on this activity by optimizing the video metadata. Every video posted to YouTube has a title, description, hashtags, thumbnail,s and keywords. All of these are factors in getting YouTube to push the video to more people who would value watching it.

Until this year, I didn't take any of these seriously but that has changed. I'm continuing to watch other great YouTubers giving terrific advice on how to improve titles, thumbnails, descriptions, and tags. I'm also learning how to leverage end-of-video video promotion cards. As I get better and more practiced at the technical details of publishing the videos, I'll continue to better position myself to succeed.

And, I'm also leveraging Chat GPT to help me (it's been much better than Google Gemini at this task). Here's a prompt you can use along with your video transcript (which you can copy from the YouTube video page.

Based on the provided transcript, create 3 compelling Youtube video title options in less than 8 words. Create an informative description of the content as the description. Create 3 compelling and curiosity creating thumbnail statements, 3-5 words in length each. Generate a keyword comma-separated list that is search engine optimized and includes specific content keywords, niche specific keywords, and broad keywords. Generate a space-separated hashtag set of up to 8 hashtags with the 3 most important first.

CityWatch LA has promoted a few of my podcast episodes. If I have more relevant content upsides, I'll ask them to do a post for those videos. Identifying and reaching out to other platforms that would share the videos would be another opportunity for which I could be on the lookout.

Running ads to boost certain clips and reels to drive viewers to my videos is another option, but that would not be worthwhile unless I was able to generate some type of income through affiliate links or selling my books.

And, there are other sites I plan to experiment with like Imgur and Pinterest, for promoting the video. These may be a way to also promote my quote graphics and recommended books.

Personal Sharing

A final simple way to get more watchers is to personally ask people to subscribe or to send them a video relevant to them worth watching. It's not a glamorous type of task, and not scalable, but for this first leg of the Marathas, it can make a big difference. If enough loyal subscribers follow along and watch a large volume of content, it makes a difference. Another way to do this is by adding a link to the YouTube video in my email signature.

Evergreen Compounding Effects

One other benefit of increasing my video library is the compounding effect on evergreen content. Evergreen platforms and content are my favorites because they allow me to build on something that grows over time, like compound interest on a financial investment.

If I create a video about freelancing that's relevant to freelancers in 5 years, that video will get views that entire time. So as I add more and more videos, the videos get more and more views, and a larger library snowballs towards and well beyond my watch hour goal.

This would be in stark contrast to a video that is trendy or about something in the bed that in a few years, no one will care about. Riding these trends can be hugely successful for a short time, but it requires a lot of energy to sustain. I'd rather build on an evergreen foundation and then tap into trends later on when I have that foundation in place, so my success is not fleeting.

One Final Insight on Creating Content as a Participant in an Area of Speciality

Before I got serious about getting monetized as a YouTuber, I would never have thought about creating a blog post like this. I didn't know or understand what was required to become monetized as a YouTuber and that meant I had no idea about the opportunity. Now that I've researched it and am working towards it, I know so much more about it and get to test ideas to bring it to life.

This illuminates an opportunity we all have in any area we want to grow in. Once we decide and open the door, a whole new world opens up for us. And that gives us an advantage over others to speak into the area as we work towards our goals. Whether it's YouTube, freelancing, entrepreneurship, getting married, or parenting, stepping into these worlds gives us new perspectives to share. And for content creators, that's essential to have something worth creating and an audience of co-adventurers to consume it.