Is this channel monetized? How to check — yours and somebody else's

Updated 06.10.2026 · Kostas Obuchow

For your own channel it takes thirty seconds and there are three states, not two. For somebody else's, the honest answer is that almost nothing is reliably visible from outside — which is itself the answer if you are about to pay for one.

Short answer

Your own channel: thirty seconds in Studio. Monetization section, and the status is stated plainly — in the programme, not in the programme, or eligible-and-waiting.

Somebody else’s channel: you cannot know. Ads appearing on a video do not prove the channel earns from them, and no external tool reads the status. Anyone quoting you a figure for a stranger’s channel is estimating from view counts and a guessed rate.

If that sounds like a gap, it is — and it is the whole reason the next section of this page exists. A buyer who cannot verify monetization from outside has exactly one way to verify it: a live screen, not a screenshot.

How to check if your channel is monetized

YouTube Studio → Earn. What you see is one of:

• in the programme — the section is populated, the revenue tab has data, and the terms are accepted;
• not in the programme — the requirements are shown with your progress against them;
• eligible and waiting — you crossed the threshold and are in review. Nothing to do but wait; how long is in the refusal and resubmission cycle.

While you are there, check two things most people never open: whether the payout account exists and is verified, and whether tax information is submitted. A channel can be fully monetized and still pay nothing, which is the subject of AdSense for YouTube.

Is this particular video monetized

Channel status and video status are different questions. In Studio, each video carries a monetization icon:

• green — monetized normally;
• yellow — limited or no ads, usually advertiser suitability. The video still earns, but much less;
• grey or crossed out — not monetized: a claim, a restriction, or settings on that upload.

A channel can be in the programme while half its library is yellow, and that is one of the most common reasons a channel’s RPM looks broken. The diagnosis belongs with the other revenue numbers, in the six numbers that decide revenue.

Three states, not two

The question is usually asked as a yes-or-no, and it has three answers worth separating:

Knowing which of the three you are in changes what you should do next, and it is the thing the yes-or-no framing hides.

Somebody else’s channel: what you can check

Honestly: very little, and nothing conclusive.

• membership in the programme is not public. There is no badge, no page, no API field;
• ads on a video prove nothing about the channel. Ads can run on videos whose revenue goes to a claimant rather than the uploader;
• no third-party tool reads the status. The ones that claim to are multiplying view estimates by a guessed rate, and their revenue figures are off by a factor of several in both directions;
• what is genuinely visible is the surface: upload history, view counts, titles, the audience’s visible language, comments. All of it useful, none of it the status.

Monetization checkers and what they are worth

The pattern is the same throughout: every externally visible signal is adjacent to monetization without being evidence of it.

If you are about to pay for it

Then the inability to check from outside is not trivia — it is the central risk of the transaction, and there is exactly one way around it.

Ask for a live screen share, not screenshots. In that session, in this order: the monetization section showing the programme status, the revenue report month by month for twelve months, the payout account page, the account standing page, and the audience geography. Every one of those is a believable image file and an unfakeable live screen.

The rest of the checks for a purchase — what transfers, what stays with the seller, and the four places these deals break — are in buying a channel or a page.

The same check on a Facebook page

Same structure, same conclusion. For your own page the status sits in the professional dashboard, and when the section is missing entirely that has its own three meanings, covered in monetization not showing.

For somebody else’s page, nothing about monetization is public, and there is an additional wrinkle that matters more than people expect: the rate is not a property of the page’s size but of its audience’s language and market. Our own measurements run from $0.08 to $0.33 per thousand qualified views, a 53-fold spread between the cheapest and the most expensive audience language. So “is it monetized” is the smaller half of the question. The larger half is what a thousand views is worth where its viewers are.

The network runs about 250 pages in 25 languages. Across the monetized pages the average is $0.024 per thousand views, and $0.08 to $0.33 per thousand qualified views — the ones Meta counts, averaging $0.185. The best single page-month was $21,216 and the best day $4,163. These are measurements, not a promise: the rate follows language, market and format. Full breakdown in RPM by country.

How we help

1. Your videos and photos go out on the network's pages and we split the revenue. The invitation, the eligible country and the payout account stop being your problem — the pages and the payouts are on us. We pick the language and the market that fit your content, and we check every file for originality risk before it is published. The rights to your material stay with you.
2. You monetize on your own page and we set it up. If you would rather own the asset and keep all of the revenue, we prepare the page, help with the payout details and hand over a plan of what to publish and when.

Write to us with a link to your channel or page: we will say which languages your material makes sense in and roughly what it would return.

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