RU

October 3, 2026 · 5 min read

YouTube Shorts Monetization in 2027: How YouTube Pays and What Changes on February 1

Vladimir Sivenkov Vladimir Sivenkov · Official RHEI representative
Monetization

“How much does YouTube pay for Shorts?” People ask this all the time, and the honest answer is unpleasant: there is no exact price per view. But there is a clear mechanic, and from February 1, 2027 it changes noticeably. I went through YouTube’s official help pages and pulled out the essentials.

How YouTube Pays for Shorts

Shorts are not like regular videos. Ads are shown not inside the video but between videos in the Shorts feed. After that everything goes through a shared pool.

  1. The pool is collected. Every month YouTube adds up the ad revenue from the Shorts feed. This money pays creators and covers music licensing.
  2. The Creator Pool is calculated. The pool is distributed by “engaged views” of Shorts from monetizing creators.
  3. You get a share. If you have 5% of all eligible views in a country, you are allocated 5% of the Creator Pool.
  4. You keep 45%. Of the allocated amount the creator gets 45%. This doesn’t depend on whether you used music.

Everything is counted by country: views from different countries bring different money, as with regular videos.

What About Music

Music in Shorts doesn’t reduce your share, but it affects how much money gets into the pool. According to YouTube’s help page:

  • if a Short has one track, half of the revenue from its views goes to licensing and half to the Creator Pool;
  • if it has two tracks, a third goes to the Creator Pool and two thirds to licensing.

At the same time you are credited with 100% of your views regardless of music. Music doesn’t cut your share, but it reduces the overall Creator Pool: the more tracks in a video, the less money from it goes to the pool.

What Changes on February 1, 2027

YouTube’s official blog describes three changes, and one of them hits existing creators.

1. A threshold for earning from Shorts. To earn from Shorts (ads and YouTube Premium revenue) you need 10M Shorts views in the last 90 days. If a channel is below the threshold, it stays in the Partner Program but loses its share of Shorts revenue until it reaches the number again.

This applies not only to newcomers but to all creators.

2. New entry thresholds for new channels: 8,000 watch hours in 365 days or 20M Shorts views in 90 days. I wrote about this separately: YouTube Partner Program From February 1, 2027.

3. Premium Lite. YouTube is launching the Premium Lite subscription worldwide. Creators get 60% of net Premium Lite revenue and 30% of standard Premium. Revenue is split by watch time and views, with a 55% and 45% split in favor of long-form content rather than Shorts.

How YouTube Compensates the Loss

For creators below the 10M threshold YouTube promises other ways to earn: bonuses for YouTube Shopping, incentives for brand deals and boosted payouts for trend growth. Details aren’t available yet; YouTube promises to share them later. I will come back to the topic when they appear.

YouTube also expects to pay creators more in 2027 than in 2026.

What This Means in Practice

I would look at three things:

  • Shorts as direct money only works at large volumes. 10M views in 90 days is about 3.3M a month. For most small channels it is out of reach.
  • Shorts as a funnel stays valuable. Even without payouts, short videos bring people to your channel, website and Telegram. The money here comes not from YouTube but from your products and services. How this works I wrote in Why Shorts Don’t Lead to Sales.
  • Long videos win. Premium revenue and thresholds shift in their direction.

What I Would Do

  1. Look at your numbers. Open YouTube Studio and check your Shorts views over the last 90 days. That is your benchmark.
  2. If you’re near the threshold, don’t break anything. Keep doing what works and watch the growth.
  3. If you’re far, don’t chase the threshold for its own sake. It is better to use Shorts as an entrance to the channel and build money on other sources.
  4. Add long videos. They bring income more steadily and convert better into clients.
  5. Think about income outside YouTube. Products, consulting, affiliate programs. On a small channel they are often more important than payouts.

YouTube’s terms change, so before deciding check the official Shorts help page.

Want to understand how best to build Shorts and long videos on your own channel? Leave a request: I will look at the channel and suggest a plan.