A Second Income From Your Back Catalog: How MSN Works for YouTube Creators

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The back catalog already sitting on your YouTube channel can earn a second income on Microsoft's MSN, with nothing new to film. Outdoors with Erik, a yard-cleanup channel with 499,000 subscribers, now makes about as much from MSN each month as it does from AdSense, all from the videos it had already published. A home-and-DIY channel earned $74,951 from its existing archive in six months.

MSN (the Microsoft Network) is Microsoft’s news and video feed, shown on msn.com and built into Windows and the Edge browser. Official partners place creators’ YouTube videos in that feed, and MSN pays for the interactions they get there, separately from AdSense. Access works by invitation, though, and the approval bar keeps rising. So essentially, whether MSN is worth it for your channel comes down to the kind of library you have and whether it clears that bar.

Is MSN Worth It? Back Catalogs That Paid $41,779 and $74,951 in Six Months

Outdoors with Erik films yard cleanups and sent 376 of its existing videos to MSN. Between January and June 2026, MSN paid the channel $41,779.06, an average of $6,963 a month, while its AdSense ran at $5,000 to $10,000 a month. None of the videos was re-cut or re-uploaded.

A home-and-DIY channel has built a 1,600-video archive of repair guides and craft tutorials over a decade. Between December 2025 and May 2026, MSN paid the channel $74,951 from that archive. Monthly payouts rose from $6,852 in December to a peak of $26,679 in April, when the catalog drew 455 million interactions, and fell to $5,721 in May.

Earlier channels in AIR's MSN program earned from their existing videos too:

• A cooking channel earned $1,300 on MSN, three times the $410 the same videos made on YouTube.
• A DIY inventions channel drew 17.2 million MSN views between October and December 2024, while the channel had 134,500 YouTube views in December.

The rest of that early group, from action comedy to handmade jewelry, is covered in AIR's six creator stories on MSN earnings.

Not every channel gets numbers like these, and not every month either. That same DIY archive made $26,679 in April and $5,721 a month later. Across the channels in AIR's 2026 MSN report, niches with less advertiser demand, non-priority languages and uneven production earned noticeably less.

Where MSN Shows Your Videos to 700 Million+ People

A video distributed through MSN can reach people in any Microsoft product that carries the MSN feed:

• On msn.com, partner videos run in the feed next to the day’s news.
• The MSN app, known as Microsoft Start until late 2024, carries the same feed on phones.
• Bing shows MSN videos in its search results and on its video tab.
• Microsoft Edge puts the MSN feed on its new-tab page.
• Windows 11 shows the feed in its widgets panel, where Microsoft has been testing an AI-curated version called Copilot Discover that still opens stories on MSN.

MSN alone has more than 700 million users a month, according to AIR's 2026 MSN report.

That audience sits outside YouTube: people come across your video inside Microsoft’s products, well beyond the subscribers who have already watched it. So in practice, distributing videos on MSN lets a video that stopped getting views on YouTube start collecting them again.

What Happens to Your AdSense When Your Videos Go to MSN?

AdSense is usually the income a creator protects first, so the terms behind MSN distribution matter as much as the extra revenue. MSN distribution runs on a non-exclusive contract, and the YouTube side of the channel stays as it is:

• AdSense remains entirely yours, since AIR’s revenue share covers MSN earnings only.
• Ownership of your videos doesn’t change.
• Your upload and filming schedule stays the same, because MSN works with videos you’ve already published.
• Your library stays free to go to other distribution partners as well.

You see the exact split in the agreement before you sign, and AIR's share comes out before the money reaches you. The money comes through MilX. You can withdraw it in 54 currencies through 30+ payout methods, or in BTC, USDT and USDC, and the app itself is free. How much MSN pays depends on the category. In AIR's 2026 data, DIY and tech brought in $2–$6 RPM, more than general entertainment.

Does Your Channel Fit MSN in 2026?

Channels get onto MSN only after a review, and that review got stricter through early 2026. Video reaches MSN either from publishers Microsoft invites to Partner Hub or from the official content partners listed in its public directory. For a single channel, the usual answer to how to get YouTube videos on MSN is the partner route, since Microsoft sends Partner Hub invitations to publishers it selects.

The bar is easy to check against your own channel. Early in 2026, MSN took channels with 10,000+ subscribers, or 7,000 with strong views, at least 100 videos and one to four uploads a week. The videos need topics that won't date, pictures that carry the story and nothing an advertiser would avoid, and the rights have to be fully yours. Channels in English, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, and Italian get priority. If you want the details on each point, it's in our guide to who can get on MSN in 2026.

The Niches MSN Accepts in 2026

A video fits MSN when its topic won’t date and it makes sense to viewers outside the creator’s own country. Recipes and repair guides clear that bar easily, while news coverage stays out because MSN’s editorial team handles current events itself. MSN adjusts this list as the platform grows, so treat it as current rather than permanent:

Source: AIR Media-Tech approval data, Q1 2026, from MSN Video Distribution in 2026.

For a mixed channel, read the table by format: a tech channel's how-to videos match the science and technology row, while its launch-day news coverage matches the news row.

For Agencies and Media Companies

Agencies can earn from a whole roster's back catalogs on MSN without commissioning new videos. They can launch every channel at once or start with a pilot on a few flagship channels, the route Jake Rosen Entertainment took with Bus Life 4 Me in February 2026. AIR checks each channel against MSN's approval criteria and can run the MSN program for agencies under the agency's own brand, with payouts for the whole roster consolidated through MilX. The whole agency route, from the first fit check to a single payout split by creator, is in our guide on how to get YouTube videos on MSN as an agency.