Two Channels, one easy to monetize, the other totally impossible...

Atari2600

New Member
Hey guys, I was hoping you could help me. I have two channels that I'm managing. One is a watch review / restoration channel that I created back in 2020. I was monetized in two years... didn't even really try. I would buy a watch, review it, and post a video, and then sell the watch. Sometimes I bought a broken watch, fixed it up and restored it, and then reviewed it, and then posted a video. Here's a link to it: https://www.youtube.com/@ToddsWatchshop

I haven't posted a video in a year, and before that, maybe posted 2 every 4 months... and I still get on average about $100 bucks a month in revenue. I wasn't really trying to build a channel, just trying to have fun with a hobby. It has 2.97k subscribers, and 148 videos.


Now, I'm helping my daughter create a channel, and her content is SIGNIFICANTLY more exciting to probably more people (I'd think), and has much more substance. This is her channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GenerationZGarage

She started the channel 3 years ago when she was 14, and is now 17. She restores cars. I mean... she actually restores cars. She totally stripped down a Pontiac Fiero, rebuilt the engine, restored the interior, suspension, welds, you name it. She's really, really good. She has 2.67k subscribers, about 87 videos... and I CANNOT get her channel monetized for her. It's like impossible. We've got more than 1,000 subscribers, but no matter what we do, we can't get more than 3,500-3,600 hours of watch time in a 365 day period. I NEVER remember it being that hard when I did the watch channel. Furthermore, her videos used to get about 1,500-2,000 views... a couple of them have 10k views... but since February it seems like her views have basically halved. Her videos are really good (here's a couple of examples):

EDIT: Removed the videos... didn't realize I couldn't post them. Sorry about that. Anyway... just take my word for it that they're really good.


Has YouTube changed significantly, or is it something that I'm doing wrong?

I hope it's OK for me to post these links... I'm just at a loss. She's working so hard on these videos (and I'm helping with them), and it's soooo much work, and while I don't expect her to get wealthy from it. I thought it would be a nice thing for her to have so she can buy a pizza on Fridays... hahaha... but I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong. I've watched tons of videos, I have tags, good descriptions, hash tags, 500 characters worth of reference words, good titles, decent thumbnails ... what am I missing?

Thanks guys... :(
 
That sounds more like the watch-hour window being unforgiving than anything you did wrong. The channel clearly has an audience if it's pulling 2.6k subs and a few thousand hours, but one bad month can wreck the runway on monetization. If views dropped around February, I'd check which videos were still getting suggested or search traffic and which ones fell off. On car-restoration stuff, the title/thumb usually have to make the project feel immediate, not just "another update."
 
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