One of the most common frustrations that YouTube creators have is that they’ve set up, and enabled, their YouTube channel for monetization. But none of that money actually seems to be getting into their bank account.

Hey Tim.

“Can you please explain to me why I don’t have even one cent from ads that are shown on my videos?”

Yeah, usually it’s because you’ve enabled monetization, but you haven’t connected your channel to your AdSense account. Which is the tool that YouTube uses to process all your earnings, and then deposit that into your bank account. Let me take you to my desktop, and walk you through the whole process of connecting your YouTube channel to your AdSense account.

But before you do that, you need to make sure that you go to google.com/adsense and ensure that you have an account there first. If you don’t already have an AdSense account, you need to first create one. Because there’s no way to link your YouTube channel to your AdSense account if you don’t have an AdSense account.

Check Status and Features

The first thing you need to do is come to your channel here to check on status and features. And then make sure that monetization feature is enabled. You have this green light right here. Once that is on that means you are monetizing your videos, but the money’s not coming into your AdSense account. So here’s what you’re going to do.

Click on view monetization settings, or you just click on monetization over here in the left sidebar. And it’s kind of hidden unfortunately. I don’t know why they’ve hidden it, but it’s under this one. How will I be paid?

You click on that, and here you can see in this channel, it says, payments are managed through Google AdSense. You must associate an AdSense account to your YouTube account in order to be paid. So if– this link is here because I haven’t made the association on this channel yet.

Associate an AdSense Account

So what I’m going to do. If you see this same thing, and this is the secret that you need to do, right here. Click on associate an AdSense account under that little link. It says you’ll be redirected– once you’ve completed this process you’ll be redirected back to YouTube, all right?

Click on next, and I’ve already logged in. So this is what I’m seeing. It says since you’re already an AdSense publisher, you must sign it with the Google account you use to access your Google account. And it’s saying I’m currently signed in. That’s the correct account right there, so I will click yes, that is the correct account.

And then it’s going to give me– this is my website I’m using basically. YouTube.com/user/timschmoyer. It’s going to be in English. I’m going to accept the association, redirecting me back to YouTube. And that should be all you need to do.

Now it says your AdSense account you associated is now approved. And you can review and change these, but now you can see it’s a little bit different. And that one little question that was here before is gone.

The only other thing you might want to double check in your AdSense account is make sure that you have set up your bank account information. Your routing number, your account number, so that the money can be deposited into your account. And you also have to verify that account which can take a few days to a few weeks which that whole process is explained as you’re setting up your AdSense account, so I won’t get into it here.

But that’s really all there is to it. That little secret link is what you need to find. But maybe you’ve already gone through this process, and you’re saying, hey, there’s a different problem for me. I have linked them, I’m still not getting paid.

I want the rest of you guys, if you have any other solutions for people to think through about how to solve this problem, definitely leave those in the comments below. And if this is a problem that you have, go read from the people. Learn from them. You will learn a lot as I do every week from those people who are commenting down there, as well.