I have been playing with videos and wanted to explore the Monetization feature in Youtube. I am in the United States but Youtube gave me this message when I tried to activate the Monetization feature, “This feature is currently not available in your country”. The most common mistake is setting the country to the default, “Afghanistan”, which was my mistake. If you are in the same situation, you can resolve this in 3 simple steps.
Side note for those not in the US:
If you are in another country and want to apply for partnership, you’ll have a hard time finding the application form. It took me a good hour to find and it turns out that was not my issue. At least I hope this information will help someone. Here’s the link to the form, Youtube partnership application form. Good thing I had it in my records because I couldn’t find it again.
Error message from Youtube when trying to activate Monetization @USA
Step 1:
To change your country, click “Video Manager” in Youtube account. Click “Advanced” and select “United States” from the drop down menu and hit “Save”.
Click for larger image
Step 2:
To enable monetization, click on “Channel Settings”. Select “Features” and you should see the “Enable” button available, while before it was not.
Click for larger image
Step 3:
Confirm by clicking the “Enable My Account” button.
I did a quick search and decided to use the Image Watermark plugin. For those who are new to watermarking images like me, I’ll give some quick tip to avoid the mistakes I made. You can use other plugins if you’d like. Image Watermark is just what I used. In general the tips should still apply.
TIPS:
Go directly into your WordPress Dashboard.
Click on ‘Plugins’ > Add New > enter ‘Image Watermark’ in the search field > click search button > click ‘Install’ button next to the Image Watermark Plugin
Create your watermark:
In an image editor, create different versions of your watermark with a transparent background.
Versions in white for black photos, black for white photos or color for dull photos.
Bulkier text with letter spacing for better readability.
Time saver, add enough padding around your watermark image to give preset padding so you will not have to fiddle with the ‘Watermark offset’ setting each time you watermark a photo.
Time saver, set opacity to a lesser % and reapply for darker contrast. For example, set watermark at 30% opacity > apply, if too light > reapply, the watermark would be darker at 60% opacity.
Upload watermarks to your Media Library and TEST before applying to ALL your photos at once!!!
Play with the size, color, opacity and position until you like it.
MY BOO BOO YOUR WARNING:
Of course I could have add the watermark to each image one by one, but who could wait, first thing after I uploaded my watermark I applied it to all my photos. I am hitting myself right now…snif… I have to go back and redo all my photos again 🙁
Although it’s very tempting and logical to apply your watermark to all your photo at once. It would be wise to test the size, color, opacity and position on a few throwaway images first to find the right setting before applying it to every photo. There’s no preview before you apply your watermark. Once you’ve applied it you can not remove it! You’ll have start the process of uploading ALL the photo on your blog (assuming you still have them) and watermark each photo again.
