YouTube Shorts vs long form for a faceless channel

If you are starting a faceless channel, the format question comes first: do you spend your week making one 10 minute video, or seven 40 second Shorts? Every guide says "do both", which is true and not very useful when you have ten spare hours a week.

The short answer: if you want income, long form is the main format and Shorts are the advertising for it. Shorts are easier to make and easier to get views on. Long videos are what pay. And from February 1, 2027, YouTube's own rules push faceless creators further toward long form.

This guide gives you the numbers behind that answer, the new rules, and a plan that splits your hours sensibly.

What counts as a Short and what counts as long form?

A Short is a vertical video up to 3 minutes long that plays in the Shorts feed. Long form is any regular horizontal video, and for a faceless channel it usually means 8 to 20 minute explainers, stories, list videos or compilations. The difference that matters is not length but how each one earns: long videos carry ads that are tied to your video, while Shorts earn a slice of a shared pool.

Two more terms you will see below:

• RPM (revenue per mille) is what you actually receive per 1,000 views, after YouTube's share.
• YPP is the YouTube Partner Program, the club you must join before ads pay you anything.

Shorts vs long form: the side by side comparison

Long form beats Shorts on pay per view, loyalty and how easy it is to reach YPP. Shorts beat long form on speed, reach and effort per upload.

Sources: YouTube Help for the thresholds and the 45% share; RPM ranges as reported by Virvid's revenue breakdown and creators in r/PartneredYoutube. Time per upload is a typical range from creator reports, not an official figure.

How much do Shorts pay compared with long videos?

Long videos commonly pay 20 to 100 times more per view than Shorts. That gap comes from the payment model, not from YouTube being stingy with one format.

On Shorts, YouTube pools the ad revenue from the Shorts feed each month, allocates it to creators by their share of engaged views, and lets creators keep 45% of their allocation, according to YouTube's Shorts monetization help page. On long form, ads run on your own video and you earn from those directly.

Here is an example with round numbers (our arithmetic, not a forecast):

1. A Short gets 1,000,000 views at a $0.05 RPM. $0.05 times 1,000 = $50.
2. A long video gets 100,000 views at a $4 RPM. $4 times 100 = $400.

The long video earns eight times more with a tenth of the views. The faceless creators in r/YT_Faceless put it bluntly: "shorts RPM is tiny compared to long form, like we are talking pennies. use shorts to funnel people to your long form channel but dont make shorts your main play."

Watch out: views are not paid views on long form either. One r/PartneredYoutube creator's 8 minute video hit about 1 million views in 24 hours, yet only 37,000 were monetized playbacks and it grossed $365 in two days, roughly a $1 RPM. The same video did bring 40,000 watch hours and took the channel from about 2,000 to 9,600 subscribers.

For the full earnings picture by channel stage, see how much faceless YouTube channels make per month.

What changes on February 1, 2027?

YouTube is raising the bar for new channels and adding a Shorts earnings floor for existing partners. Both changes favour long form.

According to YouTube's official blog post on the 2027 YPP updates:

• New applicants need 1,000 subscribers plus either 8,000 qualified watch hours in the last 365 days or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days. Today it is 4,000 hours or 10 million Shorts views.
• Existing partners stay in YPP, but only channels with 10 million qualified Shorts views over the last 90 days earn ad and Premium revenue on Shorts. Below that, long form keeps paying and Shorts revenue resumes once the channel crosses 10 million again.
• Fan funding and shopping thresholds are unchanged.
• YouTube's help page says creators must accept updated terms in YouTube Studio by January 31, 2027 to keep fully monetizing.

The reaction in r/PartneredYoutube was clear. The top reply on the announcement thread: "8000 watch hours is significantly easier than 10 million shorts views and it pays way more." A mostly long form creator in the same thread said Shorts brought in "$30 to $50 a month", about 5% of their AdSense, which they now expect to lose.

What this means for a new faceless channel: 20 million Shorts views in 90 days is a full time job, while 8,000 watch hours is, for example, 40 videos that each get 2,000 views at 6 minutes of average watch time (40 times 2,000 times 6 minutes is 480,000 minutes, or 8,000 hours).

Which format grows a faceless channel faster?

Shorts grow view counts faster; long form grows the audience that pays. The common experience in r/NewTubers is "Long form is harder to get views but easier to get monetized, shorts are easier to get views but harder to get monetized."

The bigger problem is crossover. Shorts viewers swipe; they did not choose you. One reply in r/NewTubers, on a thread asking whether to start with Shorts: "Your audience from YouTube shorts won't watch your long from videos, just keep that in mind." Another creator in a different thread got more views on Shorts but "more engagement and subs from Long form".

There is a real counter case. A creator in the same thread started with Shorts in a community heavy niche, then launched long form to a ready audience and now knows roughly what each upload will do. And in r/PartneredYoutube, a Shorts only creator reported getting monetized in two months by posting one 1 minute Short a day, about 30 minutes of work each, and making about $4,500 in 45 days. That is an outlier that took 20 tested hooks, and it was filmed with real footage of a job, not a faceless template.

Tip: if you go Shorts first, make every Short about the exact topic your long videos will cover. Random viral Shorts build an audience you cannot sell long videos to.

Revenue per hour: the number that should decide it

Divide expected earnings by hours worked, and long form usually wins for faceless creators. Shorts look cheap per upload but need huge volume.

One r/PartneredYoutube creator posting about 20 edited Shorts a month, with 30,000 to 1.2 million views each, reached 8.6 million engaged views in 90 days, still short of the new 10 million floor, at about 0.20 pounds per 1,000 engaged views.

Run your own version before you choose (example numbers, swap in yours):

And under the 2027 rules, the Shorts plan's 9 million views per 90 days would earn nothing from Shorts ads at all. Long videos also keep earning from search for months, and they carry affiliate links and sponsors far better. The Faceless YouTube pack walks through this revenue per hour worksheet with real creator numbers so you can pick a niche and format before you spend a month making videos.

Should a new faceless channel start with Shorts or long form?

Start with long form as the core and add Shorts cut from it. Pick Shorts first only in the situations below.

• Choose long form first if your goal is income, your niche suits explainers, stories or tutorials (history, finance, tech, true crime, documentaries), and you can make one solid video a week.
• Choose Shorts first if you have under 5 hours a week, you want to test which topics land before investing, or your niche is quick visual payoffs (facts, satisfying clips, memes). Treat it as research, not income.
• Do both from day one if you can repurpose: one long video, then two to four Shorts from its best moments.

If you are still picking a topic, these faceless YouTube channel ideas are sorted by how well they fit each format.

How to run Shorts and long form together

Make the long video first, then cut Shorts that point back to it. This keeps one production pipeline and one audience.

1. Script one long video a week around a question people search. Put the payoff in the first 15 seconds.
2. Mark three or four moments while scripting that stand alone: a surprising fact, a twist, a number.
3. Edit the long video, then export those moments as vertical Shorts of 30 to 60 seconds with captions.
4. Link each Short to the long video using the related video feature, so viewers have somewhere to go.
5. Space them out: long video on day one, one Short every two days after.
6. Check analytics after 30 days. If Shorts viewers never reach long videos, cut Shorts to one a week and spend the time on long form.

A tip from a creator with about 800k subscribers, relayed in r/NewTubers: use Shorts early to show the algorithm who your audience is, then reduce them once long videos start getting recommended. The commenter admitted they could not verify it, so treat it as a test, not a rule.

Mistakes faceless creators make with this choice

The most common mistake is judging success by views instead of paid views. Here are the others creators report.

• Splitting effort 50/50. Shorts views and watch hours do not combine toward YPP. Half effort on each can leave you short on both paths.
• Mass producing template Shorts. Creators in r/PartneredYoutube blame "get rich quick from faceless AI content" for the tighter rules. Reused and low effort content is what YouTube's monetization reviews reject, as covered in does YouTube monetize AI videos.
• Ignoring audience country. A faceless topic that pulls low RPM countries can pay $1 per 1,000 long form views no matter how long the video is.
• Overspending before you know the format works. Keep tools cheap for the first 90 days; here is what a faceless channel really costs.
• Quitting at month two. Long form is slow. Most channels in these threads took many months to reach the watch hours.

Where to go from here

1. Pick a niche where viewers search for answers and advertisers pay.
2. Run the revenue per hour table above with your own numbers.
3. Commit to one long video a week for 12 weeks, with two to four Shorts cut from each.
4. Review your analytics at day 30, 60 and 90, and adjust the Shorts ratio.
5. Plan for the February 2027 rules: aim for the 8,000 hour path, not 20 million Shorts views.

The Faceless YouTube pack adds what this article cannot fit: the full lessons on scripting, thumbnails and retention, the revenue worksheet, templates and the channel protection checklist, for $19, or all 16 Money Printer packs for $39.