The Right Way to Upload YouTube Shorts (Grow FAST in 2026)

All right, guys. I'm about to show you the right way to upload YouTube Shorts, and most people are doing this completely wrong, and it's costing them views, subscribers, and money. So, I'm going to walk you through exactly what to do step-by-step, but I'm also going to show you something that almost nobody in this space is willing to say out loud, something that completely changed the way I think about Shorts. And by the way, this is coming from somebody who has many different channels. I have over 1.5 million subscribers total, and I've made over 1.2 million dollars in revenue just from YouTube AdSense alone. So, I know what I'm talking and if you want to grow on YouTube the smart way, make sure to watch this until the very end. So, if you appreciate me making videos like this, let me know by gently tapping that like button, and let's jump into it right now. All right, so let's get started with what you actually came here for, how to actually upload Shorts the right way in 2026, because most people are doing this the completely wrong way. Because most people have the wrong Short strategy, and to be honest, I could make an entire video just on that alone, and I've also mentioned it in many of my other videos. But, most people kind of treat Shorts like a throwaway. They just toss something up and hope the algorithm does the rest, and that's not how this works. So, I'm going to walk you through this. The first thing is the first 3 seconds of your Shorts are literally everything. See, on a regular long-form video, people clicked on your thumbnail, right? So, they already kind of committed to watching it. Now, don't get me wrong, the hook or the intro is still important with long-form videos, but they already made the decision to watch the video by the time they actually watch the intro. But, with Shorts, people are literally just swiping. They didn't choose you. The algorithm put you in front of them, and they will swipe past you in less than 2 seconds if you don't grab their attention immediately. So, no slow intros, no "Hey guys, welcome back." The very first frame needs to make someone stop mid-swipe, and this can be done in many different ways. A bold statement, a surprising visual, a question that hooks them. Think of it like a billboard on a highway. You're driving 70 miles an hour, you don't have time to read a paragraph. You need something that hits you instantly. Now, the second thing is length. YouTube Shorts can technically be up to about 3 minutes long now. But just because you can make it that long doesn't necessarily mean that you should. The most up-to-date data show that Shorts between 50 and 60 seconds get the highest watch through rates, which are around 76%. And watch through rate is the single most important metric for Shorts, not views, not likes. It's how many people watch your short all the way to the end without swiping away. So, the best way to think about this is make your short exactly as long as it needs to be and not a single second longer. Every extra second is another chance for someone to swipe away. Now, the third thing, your title needs to be keyword friendly. Put your main keyword as close to the beginning of the title as possible. This is the same thing that I do on my long-form videos that have gotten me millions of views. And I've actually gotten over 40 million views just from YouTube search alone. And making the title SEO friendly, not necessarily SEO optimized, but SEO friendly, helps YouTube to understand what your video is about and who to show it to. Okay, fourth, write a real description. Most people leave this completely blank on Shorts. Don't do that. Even though viewers might not see the description, the algorithm absolutely reads it. So, put a couple sentences about what the short is about, include your main keyword naturally, and throw your most important links in there. Fifth, use a custom thumbnail. YouTube lets you pick a custom thumbnail for Shorts now. And a lot of people skip this, but when your short shows up on your channel page or in search results, that thumbnail matters. Sixth, add two or three relevant hashtags. You don't need 30, just two or three that actually relate to your content. And then seventh, timing. YouTube pushes your short to a small test audience in the first one to two hours after you publish, and based on how that test group responds, YouTube decides whether to push it further or kill it. So, post when your audience is actually online. Go into your analytics and look at when your specific audience is active. Then post about 30 minutes before that peak time, and be consistent. And post at least one short per day. One random short every 2 weeks is not going to do anything for you. The algorithm needs to see that you're serious. Another way of saying this is you want to stay top of mind. And in order to stay top of mind, you need to be consistently uploading shorts. All right, so those are the best tips for uploading shorts in 2026. If you do all of that, shorts will absolutely perform better. But now let's talk about the math that nobody wants you to see. Because to be completely honest with you, many of you probably shouldn't be uploading shorts in the first place. Or if you are uploading shorts, you need to have the right strategy. And if you are uploading shorts, you need to be doing it in the right way. So let's talk about that. And this is really the part that nobody in the space wants to talk about. And it's honestly kind of a buzzkill. But I'm going to tell you anyways because I'd rather be honest with you than to just get a bunch of clicks and waste your time. So this is Zach D Films with 26 million subscribers. This guy is arguably the best shorts creator on the entire platform. And he's probably the highest earning. And he's basically doing everything right when it comes to shorts. You get stitches, a doctor threads a needle, And in the last 28 days, this channel got 1.6 billion views. And his estimated revenue was somewhere between 53 and 186,000 dollars. Now hold that number in your head for a second. Now look at this channel. The Organic Chemistry Tutor has 10 million subscribers. This is long-form educational content. So x squared will never equal -4. So therefore, has gotten 19 million views. Not a billion, 19 million. And his estimated revenue is 50,000 to 139,000 dollars. So let that sink in for a second. One channel got 1.6 billion views, and the other got 19 million. That's roughly 84 times more views, and they're making about the same amount of money. And that's just from AdSense alone. If The Organic Chemistry Tutor is monetizing correctly, they'll easily be able to sell other things from their channel, and likely make twice as much. And on average an educational channel like this will be making anywhere between 10 and $20 per 1,000 views, which would mean this channel is likely making 190 to 380,000 dollars a month. And that's from all forms of monetization. Whereas shorts channels can almost never make money from anything outside of just AdSense alone. So, let's put this in perspective. Zach D. Films is not some average shorts creator. He is arguably the best shorts creator in the entire world. 26 million subs, billions of views. If the best shorts creator on the planet is making about the same money as a long-form educational channel that gets a fraction of the views and is nowhere near being the best on the planet, what does that tell you? It tells you that the game is rigged. Not against you, but against the format. Shorts just don't pay. And the average shorts RPM right now is somewhere between 1 to 7 cents per 1,000 views. Whereas long-form educational content, generally speaking, makes about 10 to $20 per 1,000 views. And on my channel, I'm making over $400 per 1,000 views. So, for me, a million views on a long-form video makes over $400,000. And a million views on a short makes maybe $50. And that is not me making fun of shorts, that's just the math. And if you're trying to build a real business on YouTube, you have to look at the math. Now, if you're looking at those numbers and thinking, "How in the world can you make that much money?" Well, a lot of it comes down to the niche that I pick as well as the actual video ideas themselves. I pick niches and video ideas that have what's known as user intent. Meaning, people are actively searching for a solution to their problem and they're likely to buy something that solves their problem. And if you want to know exactly how I do that, I'm actually having a live training this week where I will reveal exactly how to do that. And I'm also going to be giving away an AI that helps you do this as well. So, click the link in the description and the pin comment below to attend that. So, if shorts aren't the answer, then what actually is? Now, there's two other things that I quickly want want talk about. First, you might be thinking, "Well, Shane, I know that shorts don't pay that much money, but shorts are a great way to get attention and then send those people to your long-form content." And this is true in very, very rare cases. The vast majority of the time, your shorts audience and your long-form audience are completely different. The value proposition of your shorts and what your audience watches your shorts for is very rarely the same value proposition as your long-form content. Because in general, people watch long-form content for completely different reasons than them watching shorts. And so, bridging the gap between your shorts and your long-form content is very, very difficult. And most channels out there that try to do it don't do it well. And so, essentially, what you're doing is you're doing twice the work because your shorts audience and your long-form audience are completely different. Now, the second thing I want to talk about is there is a ton of people out there that have said that when they started doing shorts on their channel, it actually decreased the views that they were getting from their long-form content. I have heard this over and over and over again. So, you may actually be putting your long-form content at risk by posting shorts, especially if you don't do it in the right way. So, next, let's talk about what you should actually be doing. So, if shorts aren't the answer, what is? Well, it's long-form content. And I know that's not what you wanted to hear. I know shorts feel easier, they're quicker to make, and you can get a lot of views fast. But if you're building your entire strategy on a format that pays pennies, it's like working a job that pays you in exposure. Sure, people know your name, but you still can't pay the rent. Now, don't get me wrong, shorts aren't useless, they're actually a great discovery tool if used in the correct way, which we'll get to here in a minute. People find you through a short, they check out your channel, and then they watch your long-form content. And that's where shorts make sense, as a funnel, not as the main event. Think about it like a free sample at Costco. Nobody goes to Costco just for the free samples. You go for the the cart of groceries. The free sample just gets you to stop walking and pay attention. And that's what shorts should be for your channel. The sample that gets people to stop and check out the real thing. Because long form is where the real thing happens. Long form is where AdSense actually pays. And it's where you can sell products and services. Plus, it's where people spend 10 to 20 minutes with you and start to actually trust you. And trust is what turns a viewer into a customer. And you just simply cannot build that in 30 seconds. And one of my clients started with nothing but simple long form videos, no fancy gear or anything like that. Just loom reportings. And almost every single client who hired him watched his long form YouTube videos first, not his shorts, his long form content. Because when someone watches 10 of your videos that are like 10 to 20 minutes long, they feel like they know you. They feel like they trust you. And they like you. And because of that, they're ready to buy from you. And that's something shorts will never give you. Now, the key to long form content is finding the right video ideas. And this is the thing that most creators get wrong. The video idea is the heaviest lever that you can pull. Get the right idea and everything else gets easier. Your thumbnail doesn't have to be perfect. Your editing doesn't have to be fancy. You don't need expensive gear. You just need to find the right idea at the right time. And there's a method that I use to do this every single time that I talk about in detail in other videos on my channel. But the short version is this. You're looking for videos that got way more views than the channel should have gotten. And it's called the icon method. And that is going to be far more important than you spending your time doing shorts or any of those other fancy tricks that people talk about. Finding the right ideas and having the right niche in general in the first place is going to do the vast majority of your heavy lifting. So, if you don't have that down, you should pretty much just ignore shorts until you do. Now, let's talk about a few examples of when you should use shorts and how you should use them as well. One thing you can do is simply just clip your long form content with a tool like Opus Clips, and that will give people a sample of what you're doing in your content. And then you can link your content to that. And if people want more of it, they can watch your long form content. This ensures that the value proposition of your short form content is going to be the same as the value proposition of your long-form content. The second reason that you should use shorts is if you care about social proof. So, if you're in a situation where let's just say you have a business, and when people search you on Google, you want a YouTube channel to pop up that has views and subscribers, and has some pretty decent content that they can consume to get to know you and your brand better. If you have a channel that only has 32 subscribers, chances are they're not going to watch your videos. But, if you have a channel that has a few thousand subscribers, they're going to be much more likely to do that. And so, posting shorts just to get your first initial few thousand subscribers, in the right situation, if you're concerned with social proof, can be a good tactic. Now, the next thing is YouTube has been saying for a very long time that they're going to do certain things to bridge the gap between short-form content and long-form content, and they're also going to make shorts more valuable. So, for instance, being able to buy stuff from people directly on the short, or being able to actually direct message people, like you can do on Instagram, would make it a lot more valuable because it would be significantly easier to sell them your product or services to solve their problems. But, so far YouTube hasn't really done that yet. If they do it, this could be a completely different conversation, and when the facts change, I will change. So, basically, using shorts can be good for the right type of person, the right type of situation, but for many people, it's probably best for you to just post long-form content. And if you go and look at the people that are the biggest in their niche, and you use a tool like ViewStats, you can actually see the ratio of their short to long form views, and most of the channels don't even bother with shorts. So, if the smartest people on YouTube, the people that are number one in their niche, usually don't even bother with shorts, that tells you something. It's because right now, the juice just isn't worth the squeeze for most people. But, in the right type of situation, for the right type of person, as long as you're doing it for a reason, right, you're doing it to achieve a certain outcome, it can be a good decision. So, if you want help figuring out if it's a good decision for you, if you're like a business owner, or if you're a busy professional, or if you're a YouTuber who's crushing it but you want to crush it more, or if you're a YouTuber who's getting views but you want to figure out how to monetize your content better, then go ahead and book a call by clicking the link in the description and the pin comment below. And on this call we'll figure out where you are right now, where you want to be, we'll make a plan to get there, and we'll see if we're a good fit to work together or not. We only work with a limited amount of people in this one-on-one capacity, and we also even have done-for-you type services that we offer for the right type of person in the right situation. So, if that sounds like something that's interesting to you, go ahead and click that link in the description and the pin comment below. But I understand that 99% of you are just going to want to consume the free content, and that's completely fine. You don't want to shell out the money to work directly with my team, and that's totally fine. For you, I've got this content, but I've also got free live trading sessions which I do pretty much every week. So, click the link in the description and the pin comment below to attend that as well. And also check out this video right here where I talk about how I was able to help this client grow from absolute zero to making over $20,000 a month.