YouTube Shopping needs 500 subscribers: make your first tagged Short

Yes: on YouTube's own announcement, Shopping is open to creators in the YouTube Partner Program with at least 500 subscribers who also meet its eligibility guidelines. The subscriber count alone is not enough. Once you qualify, you can tag products in Shorts, so a 9:16 clip of the product is the first thing to make. Sume can build that clip from one product photo with the video API.

What exactly did YouTube say?

Both rows come from YouTube's pages as read on the date in the caption.

How do I turn one product photo into a Short?

Send the photo as frame_images with frame_type: first_frame to POST /v1/videos. The image must be a public HTTPS URL. Ask for aspect_ratio: 9:16. seedance-2.5 takes 4 to 30 seconds, so one job covers a typical Short. Check GET /v1/videos/models for what the model you pick accepts, then poll polling_url until completed.

The 1080p ceiling from YouTube matches the 1080p tier in the same request, so there is no reason to pay for more pixels than you can upload. Details are in Video Generation.

Shorts are short, so you rarely need the full range. A single 8-second shot with one clear motion is enough to show the product moving; add a second shot only if the product has a second thing to show.

{
  "model": "seedance-2.5",
  "prompt": "Slow push-in on the bottle on a kitchen counter, hand lifts it, soft daylight",
  "aspect_ratio": "9:16",
  "resolution": "1080p",
  "duration": 8,
  "frame_images": [{
    "type": "image_url",
    "image_url": { "url": "https://cdn.example.com/bottle.jpg" },
    "frame_type": "first_frame"
  }]
}

What do I still do by hand?

Check the finished file before upload. Video frames pulls stills at the timestamps you choose (at[], 1 to 24 values) so you can compare the product with your photo. The route always answers 202; poll GET /v1/video-frames/{id} until resource_status is ready.

Sume makes the file. You upload it to YouTube and add the product tag in YouTube's own tools, because tagging lives there. Read YouTube's current eligibility guidelines first, since the page above only names them.