How To Get 4000 Watch Hours On YouTube (Hack)

One of the major requirements for the YPP is attaining 4000 watch hours and many often ask; how to get 4000 watch hours on YouTube?  Reaching this target is often the first major milestone any newcomer to the YouTube platform will dream of.

The biggest challenge to this goal is the multitude of other creators. Newcomers will find it hard since most of the other creators might have created a name for themselves in whatever niche they are. So technically, you will compete with both new and established content creators on the platform.

This competition will naturally limit the visibility of your content and its chances of being recommended amongst already established competitors. To attain your goal faster, you need to take a calculated approach in your YouTube content creation journey. This is not to say that you won’t see success if you post videos without a strategy but it will consume much time and resources.

In this article, I will be examining how to get 4000 watch hours on YouTube. We will be sharing with you some proven hack methods that YouTubers can use to get as much watch time as possible.

What Counts As Video Watch Time?

It’s important for anyone planning to operate on the YouTube platform to understand what counts as watch hours. This is because; contents posted on the platform are not equal.

YouTube only considers PUBLIC watch time as watch time. This means if the privacy of your video contents is set as unlisted or private. Even if such videos receive a million hours of watch time, it wouldn’t count as part of your watch time. It’s important for new YouTubers to take note of this technicality when uploading content.

In like manner, if you had a viral video two years ago, would it count towards your watch time? The answer is no. This is because 4,000 watch hours is not the same as the total number of watch time audiences watched during the lifetime of a channel.

YouTube considers its watch hour as a moving time frame and will only consider the last 365 days from the date in question. This makes the goal on how to get 4000 watch hours on YouTube a little more difficult.

Fortunately for YouTubers, you only need to attain 4,000 hours once. And once that is done, alongside 1000 subscribers, you qualify for monetization. After approval for monetization, it matters not the number of watch hours you accumulate.

YouTube’s 4000 watch hours

When we consider the 4000 watch hour target, we assume it’s a pretty large timeline. But in truth, the 4000 watch time barely translates to a little over $170 worth of earnings.

Also, the math’s behind the timeline is quite simple; one hour is equivalent to 60 minutes, and simple multiplication of the numbers will give the target figure.

4000 hours x 60 minutes = 240,000 minutes!

This simply means a channel must generate at least 240,000 minutes of YouTube watch time to attain 4000 watch hours.

A further mathematical breakdown in terms of days is given below:

One day has 24 hours. Therefore,

4000 hours / 24 hours = 166 days and 16 hours

This means, for a YouTube channel to attain its goal of 4000 watch hours on YouTube from an individual, he or she would have to watch the channel’s content on loop for 166 days and 16 hours none-stop. Certainly, this number becomes much smaller with an increase in the number of active subscribers.

How to Get 4000 Watch Hours on YouTube

In truth, there are several ways on how to get 4000 watch hours on YouTube. And the fact is depending on the niche you find yourself in, these methods will work differently. But in general, you can try some or all of these hacks to help hasten your journey to 4000 watch hours:

leverage Longer Video content format

Asides from the quality and uniqueness of your video content, longer videos can help you attain your goal faster. Many YouTubers are now seeing the value of creating videos longer than 10 minutes. So don’t shy away from it, incorporate some longer content in your channel and see your watch hour rise. Here are a few hacks on how to create longer video content:

• Create Podcasts: Podcast offers an awesome way of creating content that is longer than 10 minutes and you should consider starting your own podcast. This will allow you to squeeze as much watch time from each viewer. Another benefit is that you get to publish videos with less effort and time spent on editing. You can press record, do your podcast, press end, and then publish the raw video.
• Live Stream: Another hack to arrive at 4000 watch hours faster is through Live streaming. As with podcasts, it requires no editing and it counts towards your 4,000 hours. A simple extrapolation can give you an idea of the watch time you stand to gain from a live stream session. Simply multiply the average viewers by the length of your stream to estimate your watch time. Take, for instance, a live stream session that lasts for 2 hours and you had an average of 50 viewers, this will equate to around 100 hours of watch time.

Optimize Your YouTube Contents

A newcomer to the YouTube platform has a huge challenge to surmount. As with any new start-up, it’s not going to get recommendations and visibility instantly.

The YouTube algorithm will not recommend your content to audiences and your channel will have slow organic growth. This is because the platform doesn’t have enough data about your channel as well as your content.

This makes it difficult to recommend for anyone interested in watching them. This is where channel and video optimization comes in. Optimize your video title, description, and keywords for YouTube SEO.

When it comes to video optimization, your first point of call is the keyword. A popular keyword with less competition will give the chances of your video appearing at the top of searches by the audience.

Create Custom Thumbnails           

An effective hack on how to get 4000 watch hours on YouTube is through the use of custom thumbnails and titles. Thumbnails have the power of the first impression and are important factor is click-through rate. If your content is great but lacks an optimized thumbnail, chances are that audiences might not watch.

An awesome thumbnail portrays the value of your content even before the audience gets to watch it. It’s the first thing viewers notice when they browse their YouTube feed. Thankfully, there are many types of software that can allow you to customize your own thumbnails rather than the default freeze-frame YouTube provides.

A visually appealing custom thumbnail stands you out from the pack. And if you can grab the audience’s attention with it, chances are they will watch your video and increase your watch hour.

Utilize Video Cards and End Screens

Another trick on how to get 4000 watch hours on YouTube is to leverage video cards and end screens. A video card simply allows you to recommend more of your content to an audience who just viewed your content.

Video cards are the small icons that appear at the top right corner of your videos. YouTube allows a creator to recommend at least 5 other videos per content. Ensure you maximize this opportunity!

Video end screens are also similar to video cards but they require the audience to watch your content to the end. End screens are just a way of asking the audience to watch your other content. The YouTube platform allows creators to add up to 4 videos and a playlist to the last 20 seconds of content.

Utilize Playlist

Video playlist is one of the ways YouTubers can work around the challenge of how to get 4000 watch hours on YouTube. Playlists are a way of gently urging viewers to further watch your content.

It helps create more of a gradual viewing experience which has the potential of increasing a channel’s Watch Time on YouTube. Content creators can design several video playlists to encapsulate all their videos. The simple trick is to ensure that the playlist is organized in sequences and is of relevance to each other.

By leveraging the effectiveness of Playlists, channels can gain viewership by attracting more audiences to their content in a viewing session. This helps improve channel visibility and increases YouTube Watch Time. Here are ways to leverage the playlist:

• Playlists can be leveraged in a normal or series manner. With a “normal” or no playlist at all, there is no way of knowing if YouTube would suggest the concluding part as the next recommended video. The series playlists guaranties that your contents are played one after the other. So long they are serialized in a playlist. YouTube will automatically play your videos and you get to achieve your aim of 4000 watch hours.
• You can also share your playlist instead of individual video links. To do this, find the playlist containing the video you wish to share. Select the video you want to share and copy the long convoluted URL. You can then start to share this link and watch your watch hour increase.

Promote Your Videos on Social Media

One effective means on how to get 4000 watch hours on YouTube is to actively promote your content on other social media. Active promotion helps you drive traffic to your content from sources other than the YouTube platform.

Asides from increasing your watch hours tremendously, actively promoting your content have other benefits:

• You bring fresh users to the YouTube platform. This allows YouTube to show them ads which translates into extra revenue for YouTube. Result? YouTube will reward you with organic impressions.
• You know your audience best. By recommending your videos to people you know are interested in the content, you allow YouTube to create lookalike audiences. It works similar to Amazon’s “people who bought this also bought these” feature. Once YouTube is able to see patterns among viewers, it will be able to make educated guesses what other YouTube videos and creators you might be interested in.
• You make your own luck. Or in this case your own watch time. The more that you promote your own videos, the quicker you’ll get to 4,000 hours of watch time.

Create a Video Ad Campaign on Google Ads

Not everyone has the patience to wait for YouTube watch hours to grow organically. If you fall in that category, then you can opt to create a video ad campaign for your content. Keep in mind that you can use any ad platform but I will suggest using Google Ads.

To do this, follow the steps below:

• Create a Google Ads account and set up a new campaign.
• Select “brand awareness and reach” as the campaign goal.
• Choose “video campaign” as a type of campaign.
• Give your campaign a name.
• Select a CPC bidding strategy. We recommend manually setting a low bid cap, so you don’t quickly exhaust your campaign budget.
• Set a campaign budget as well as a start and end date.
• In the networks section, select “YouTube videos”.
• Select from the targeting options available.
• Target option one lets you increase up your watch time as well as also gain subscribers with your video ads. Target option two lets you get as many watch hours as possible at the lowest possible price.
• Create your video ad. Select a video of your choice from your YouTube channel and design your ad.
• Click save and continue. Once your video ad campaign has been reviewed, it’s ready to go.

Tip: adding “?sub_confirmation=1” to the end of your channel URL, will display a popup that prompts the audience if they want to subscribe to your channel. Also, we recommend promoting your YouTube channel in your ad copy and then linking to your channel URL.

Conclusion

The processes involved in how to get 4000 watch hours on YouTube are diverse and this list is by no means exhaustive. Many of the hacks shared here will work for some people and some will not.

The best bet is to apply a few at a time and revise your results with the YouTube analytics tool. This gives you an idea of what works for you and what doesn’t.  Keep in mind that getting 4000 watch hours is not an easy task and it will always require extra work on the creators’ part.