About 6 months ago I turned on monetization for some of my videos. It was just a test since my videos don't get many views, but together they got about 5k+ views since then, so I found it strange that no revenue is shown.
Now when I go to my YouTube revenue section, I get this message:
Data is not available for the selected report, content and date range. If possible, try selecting a broader date range, different content or come back in 1–2 days after the most recent data has been processed.
But I select up to 6 months date range and I still get no revenue data. Is there something extra that needs to be configured for YouTube to start monetizing for me?
Best Answer
To understand what's happening here, you need to understand what you get money for, specifically: you don't get paid per views your videos are getting. You get paid if people click on ads or fully watch the ad.
And for 5000 views, it's still pretty likely that simply nobody clicked an ad. YouTubers as small as that don't tend to get targeted by advertisers, I don't know how niche the channel is, but niche content doesn't tend to attract advertisers either and if you've then disabled certain ad formats, the result can be that there rarely were any ads to be clicked to begin with, and when they were, nobody clicked them. Also, if you have less than 10k views in total, your channel doesn't get monetized anyways.
As a rule of thumb, it doesn't make that much sense monetizing a channel if you don't get somewhere around 1000 views per day at least. Not only does it barely give you pocket change before that mark (and the payout threshold is at 100 USD/70 EUR), it also is risky:
AdSense will disable publishers' accounts (publishers = channel owners) if you receive too many invalid clicks on your ads. Invalid clicks happen if you click your own ads or if a fan of yours who means well clicks all ads they see on your video. AdSense requires you to monitor your activity and report it to them timely if you see anything suspicious. And doing this for the couple cents you may get for a couple dozen views is simply not worth it. Also, at 1000 views per day, the aforementioned fan spamming you with invalid clicks for a day may be well offset by valid views at the end of the month.