Today I want to write an article about how to avoid the “YouTube Monetization Under Review” problem. If you have a YouTube account you might be eligible to monetize your videos on YouTube. YouTube has some very strict rules and guidelines that everybody has to follow who tries to upload and monetize videos on YouTube. YouTube has summarized them in the so called community guidelines with examples which should make it easier for their YouTube community to understand them.
I have uploaded a couple of videos in the past and also successfully monetized them without any problem. But recently when I uploaded another video and tried to monetize it, it was not successful. First the icon came up with the usual green question mark for “Under review” to change then into a forbidden sign with grey background indicating that this video cannot be monetized. I received then an email from YouTube where they told me to provide “proof of the necessary commercial use rights” for this video. Some steps can be followed as stated in the instagram video ads. The creation of the video is done within the length limits to get more likes and views. The reviews of the video are excellent when the content selection is the right one. No problem should arise while posting the video at the profile.
First I reviewed my video a couple of times to find out if I violated any YouTube rules. I couldn’t find any wrong doing from my side and also the music I used was royalty free. I wrote to YouTube and explained about what the video was all about and that I produced all content of the video myself and that the music was royalty free and that I hold all right to publish and monetize this video”. After a couple of hours of waiting the status of my video has changed from “Cannot be monetized” to “Being monitored for possible review” which does not allow me to monetize this video. I waited for a couple of weeks but this video was still “Being monitored for possible review”. My channel doesn’t have so many subscribers and views as others, so one can assume that my video was very low ranking for a possible review and at the end of a long review queue.
If one of your videos is stuck in a status “Cannot be monetized” then you cannot monetize any additional videos that you upload apart from the ones you have already monetized. In contrast if you manage to get your video to a status “Being monitored for possible review” at least you can upload and monetize additional videos except for the one currently under possible review.
I started to investigate this problem on the internet and I found several blogs, YouTube videos, etc. explaining how to remedy this problem. It seems it is a glitch in YouTube’s automated process of analyzing the video content. There is no other explanation for this phenomenon that so many users complain about. Different approaches exist to fix this problem but there is no guarantee that it really works out. Everybody seems to offer and to have “The solution”.
One video explained and recommended to log in using Internet Explorer and to disable monetization completely, rename the title of the video to “The”, remove the description and all tags and to save the new settings. Then you log out and use Google Chrome browser in Incognito mode instead and re-enable monetization for the same video. Then log out from Google Chrome and log back in using Internet Explorer or Firefox and monetization should now have been re-enabled. Once monetization is re-enabled you can then put back the title, description and tags to what it was set before you made the changes. I tried this method several times but it didn’t fix my problem.
Another method explained that you have to disable monetization completely, change the title to “The”, remove the description and all tags and save everything. Then simply use YouTube editor to cut out 1-2 seconds from the beginning and the end of the video. Save your YouTube video which will start the rendering process from scratch. After a couple of minutes when the rendering is complete you can try to monetize your video again and it should work. Once you got it monetized you can then put back the original title, description and tags. I also tried this method to no avail.
At the end of the day no method available on the internet (YouTube videos, blogs, support forums, etc.) helped me to solve this “Monetization Under Review” problem. My last option was to delete the video and to upload it from scratch.
It seems that the automated process from YouTube to check if the video is eligible for monetization, has got some serious bugs and YouTube doesn’t seem to care about it as so many people complain on the internet and it seems there is no real fix for it. The methods mentioned above might work in some or even many cases but unfortunately they didn’t work for me. There must be something that people do “wrong” when uploading a video for monetization. With “wrong” I don’t really mean wrong but in a way that “confuses” the YouTube monetization checker software to come to a wrong conclusion.
Because of reading and watching so many “How to fix” articles/videos I created some guidelines for myself how to avoid this “YouTube Monetization Under Review” problem completely as it doesn’t happen always. It seems that there is a very high chance and likelihood if you follow the guidelines described below that your video will be monetized immediately in the first attempt and that you don’t have to go to the pharmacy to buy some headache pills or pain killers. Read the Solution Description