It is about to be a year since YouTube introduced Shorts, a short video-sharing format, to take on the ever-growing popularity of TikTok. It then announced a dedicated $100 million fund to encourage creators to share engaging Shorts. The fund is finally live as YouTube is now ready to pay creators for making and sharing Shorts.

The payouts will begin at $100 and can go up to as high as $10,000 per month. This is undoubtedly a lot of money for creators to earn by making short video clips. It is hard to guess exactly how much monthly payment a particular creator can expect but YouTube says it will depend on the popularity of the Shorts content as well as on the audience demographics.

It means there is no fixed way to calculate how many views will guarantee you much payment. It is completely random and will vary from month to month. As of now, YouTube is making this new payment method live only in 10 regions including the likes of the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and India. There are plans to expand to more regions but no specific timeline has been shared yet.

YouTube has further revealed that only original content will qualify for getting payment. It means the videos should not be re-uploaded from other channels and services like re-cycled content from TikTok and Instagram Reels. These videos should also adhere to the usual set of community guidelines that we see for traditional YouTube videos.

This new method is essentially an alternative to the ad-based system YouTube has been following for years. It does not want to show ads in short videos and ruin people's experiences. While it is certainly good news for content creators, it will be interesting exactly how YouTube plans to earn revenue through Shorts without showing ads.