See that ZW on YouTube? It means you can now make money from your video

If you’ve been on YouTube lately you probably noticed the ZW “attached” to the YouTube logo. That’s actually a locale identifier, something that you will notice if you are, of course, accessing the video platform from Zimbabwe.

The question that most people have had though is what this means for Zimbabwe.

It turns out this change is a result of YouTube enabling monetization for Zimbabwean content. This change has happened silently, YouTube is yet to make an announcement for this.

This monetization means that you can get paid by YouTube for content that you upload on the platform. It’s the same arrangement that a host of other countries have had all along, something that Zimbabwe YouTube content creators hadn’t been able to do until now.

Previously, the only way Zimbabwean content creators could make money from YouTube content was to approach potential advertisers and enter into arrangements based on the views registered for videos and the potential displayed by this reach and quality.

It’s pretty much the same angle being used for publishers of content on Facebook. We have seen content creators like Nafuna TV and P.O BOX working with these workarounds, along with with other custom strategies to model revenue streams.

Enabling monetization (its optional, you have to activate it) means that you will get paid for ads that YouTube places on your content. This makes it easy to create an additional revenue stream. The challenge though, is that you need to garner a lot of views for the payments to offer the huge returns that most people normally associate with the hard work behind content creation.

How do I enable monetization?

‘The process of enabling monetization on your videos involves doing the following

– Go into your YouTube advanced settings

– Change country to Zimbabwe.

– Click on “monetization” in the left hand pane

So how much money will you earn?

There aren’t any specific figures released for how much you will get for video traffic. This is determined by more than just the views. Something YouTube considers are the advertisers your content can attract based on the quality and nature of your content. Average payment rates have been cited on other forums as varying from between $2.50 to $10 for every 1,000 views.

YouTube splits this revenue with you at with a 55/45 ratio, meaning that you will get $55 for every $100 earned in advertising revenue. You need to have an active AdSense account linked to your YouTube account and the money you earn will only be released after you’ve reached an earnings threshold of $100.

It’s clear from these numbers that YouTube revenue is not enough to base all your revenue projections on. It does however, mean something in the bank as long as you can make content that’s truly engaging. It just reinforces the view that content creation for digital media works best when it’s for an open, global market, and hardly for a single domain like Zimbabwe only.

One response

Simbarashe ZimInvestors

16 June 2015 12:49

This has been a long awaited development. A combination of this and other revenue streams online will usher a new era of Zimbabwe internet companies. I believe internet opportunities in Zimbabwe is the future. Thanks for the great post and great insite