I’m not embarrassed to say that I would be very happy if my YouTube channel was eligible for the YouTube Partner Program. This would allow me to receive a small amount of ad revenue from the content on my channel. However, as you can see from the graph below, I've currently reached about a quarter of the watch time needed to qualify for the program. A tough challenge for sure, but I’ve been working on video quality and consistency, and making steady progress over the past few months.
However, just when I thought I might have a chance of reaching that goal by mid-2027, YouTube went and changed the requirement. Beginning in February 2027, channels will need 8000 watch hours over the past 365 days, double the current 4000 hour requirement. If a channel qualifies for the partner program before February, it should be grandfathered in when the requirement changes. Hence our goal is to reach 4000 watch hours by January of next year.
To break that down, the channel is currently about 3000 watch hours short. There are 20 Saturdays between when I’m posting this and the end of the year. If I were to post a 20 minute video every Saturday, each person that watched the full 20 minutes would account for 400 watch minutes, or 6.6 watch hours. It would take about 450 people watching each video each week to add up to the 3000 hours needed.
Of course, I already have nearly 100 videos on the channel, and anyone who goes back and watches the past videos is adding to the watch hour total – so it’s not just the new content I’m counting on to help reach the 4000 watch hour goal.
Am I under the impression that qualifying for the partner program will equate to life-changing money? Absolutely not! However, if it helps pay for gas, routine maintenance, or maybe a new GoPro, it will enable and encourage me to continue creating and sharing adventure travel content.
I say this at the end of almost every video, and it's genuinely heart-felt; I appreciate everyone who subscribes to the Venture | Explore | Discover channel and everyone watches the videos. I am going to start sharing some of my favorite throwback videos in our new Facebook group [link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1347248364249730/ ], but any time you want to go down a rabbit hole and check out some of the older content on the channel, I would greatly appreciate it!
Thank you for your continued support!
-Richard
Also, just a quick note, without getting too technical. If you click a YouTube video, watch for just a minute or two, then click on something else, it does NOT help the content creator, even if you clicked the ‘like’ button while you were there. It essentially tells the YouTube algorithm that the video was not very good, since you watched very little of it before switching to something else – so YouTube stops suggesting that video to other people.
QUICK LINK TO THE CHANNEL: