- 2,603
- 25
- Subscriber Goal
- 250000
On Tuesday, June 13 YouTube came out with a grand announcement; they were reducing and re-working the requirements to get accepted into the YouTube Partner Program. This effectively opened the doors for thousands of creators to earn revenue on their YouTube channels, some of them foregoing years of hard work and perseverance in an instant. No longer were creators requires to toil through the quagmire of 4,000 hours of watch time. Gone were the restraints of a 1,000 subscriber milestone and the shackles of amassing 10 million views in a 90-day window. The new requirements:
500 Subscribers
3 Public Uploads in the Past 90 Days
And either 3,000 Watch Hours in the past 365 days or 3 Million views in the past 90 Days
Immediately creators began to celebrate and rightfully so; while the old requirements still remain in order to gain access to ad revenue these new requirements gave immediate access to the community and fan-funding elements available on YouTube… but it also gave us a message, and it’s one that nobody seems to hear.
Before we can address that message and what YouTube is telling creators we need to take a look at the history of monetization on the platform. While there have been ads on videos since YouTube’s 2006 inception it was a pair of decisions in December 2007 and early 2008 that saw YouTube provide a more central focus for creators to utilize their content in order to collect revenue. They started the original YouTube Partner Program and focused more heavily on the creator community and then later introduced the Creator Studio to give these creators insight into the performance of their videos so that they could improve their work based on the analytics and data provided.
It was the inception of the YouTube Partner Program that was of most interest here. Gone were the wild, wild West days of simply collecting ad revenue; creators were now required to earn 4,000 hours of video watch time in the previous 365 days and they had to amass 1,000 subscribers before they were allowed even to apply for access. This system sat in place for over a decade, a thorn in the side of so many fledgling creators. Viewership exploded; YouTube tripled the number of annual users from 2012 (700 million) to 2020 (2.3 billion). Hot names like PewDiePie, Markiplier, the Paul brothers Jake and Logan and Mr. Beast began to create a dreamy sense of what life could look like as a YouTube star and more and more creators began to jump on to the platform. The competition between creators became fierce. Many YouTube creators cite a very big difference in what growth looked like on YouTube in 2015 versus 2023 and while there have been changes to the YouTube Search and Discovery Systems (what everyone calls ‘the algorithm’) the real culprit has been the flood of new creators swarming the platform and making discovery in general a far more difficult undertaking than it had ever been. But this was just the beginning.
Known as Douyin in China, the 2016 introduction of Tik Tok gave a meteoric rise to a once dead form of content: the short form video. And the landscape of content creation changed overnight. Tik Tok landed in the U.S. in 2017 and was an instantaneous sensation; it was the most popular app of 2019 and 2020 and despite only have been in existence for two years Tik Tok was the 7th most downloaded app of the 2010’s. Later Tik Tok would surpass YouTube for the most ‘Average Watch Time’ on the internet. Many questioned whether the media behemoth could hold on against the upstart app and their glitzy, flashy approach which aligned well with younger viewing audiences. The argument could still be had today, were it not for a distinct ruling in the world’s largest market.
In the wake of a clash with the Chinese military (over border disputes in the Himalayan Mountains) and citing privacy and security concerns India banned several Chinese apps in the summer of 2020, the most notable being Tik Tok. YouTube seized the opportunity gain a drastic foothold on the world’s largest viewing audience and in what felt like mere moments after the ban introduced their own take on the presentation of short form content, YouTube Shorts. The introduction of this reinvigorated the creators on YouTube. The format was proven and now it was available to help spark a creator’s growth on a platform that paid far more. But with the inception of this new form of viewing came problems; creators could easily surpass the YouTube Partner Program requirements with a single video, and this threatened to alienate the hundreds of millions of long-form creators who had spent years laboring with content that was still the foundation of the platform.
So YouTube introduced a new set of requirements specifically for Shorts creators. Creators were now given the option of being able to apply for the YouTube Partner Program either by following the original requirements or by gaining 10 million views in the previous 90 days and 1,000 subscribers.
And this is where things get interesting. While the change itself meant very little (creators who were monetized in this fashioned typically earned CPM’s of $0.04 - $0.08 per 1,000 views versus the platform average of nearly $18 per every 1,000 views) the nature of the change itself excited creators in a way that few platform advancements had. It has never really been the actual earnings that enticed creators, rather it was the dream that their art could earn revenue. And if it could earn revenue then they might be able to make a living off of the things they enjoy most.
With the dazzling response YouTube received after this update the team went on to look into other ways they could improve revenue on the platform. The recent monetization adjustment unearthed a glaring fault in the system; long-form and short-form creators were now both represented well in a system that supported their ability to earn revenue… but creators who focused on livestreaming were not. Due to the conversational and engaging nature of a livestream these creators are known to pull large audiences while a stream is live, but often these streams hold little or no value afterwards and often fail to produce the long-term views and watch time needed for a creator to attain the 4,000 hour watch time requirement. Those who are monetized make the majority of their revenue from fan-funding sources like super chats, donations and channel memberships. And despite what can amount to some fairly large audiences for some of these unmonetized streamers their ability to collect revenue is still beholden to that watch time requirement.
That is what June’s update addressed. The new requirements did three things:
1. They allowed for less-strict requirements on subscriber counts and watch time hours in order to allow creators to collect revenue from fan-funding sources.
2. It lowered the threshold for Shorts creators to begin earning revenue.
3. It sent a very loud message to creators regarding what YouTube wants in return.
That last part is key for all creators, not just those who have now been ushered into the YouTube Partner Program. Let’s take a deeper look at what YouTube did with this update. They cut the number of Subscribers required to gain revenue in half. That was always the easier part of the equation, and what used to take most creators a year and over 100 videos to accomplish now feels like it can be earned over a weekend. But look at what they did to the watch time requirement. It was reduced by 25%. It was not cut in half. It was effectively reduced by half of one-half. And this speaks volumes. This tells us exactly what YouTube wants from their creators. They don’t care about subscriber counts… YouTube wants watch time. They want eyes on content. They want you to be a current and consistent creator (hence the 3 videos in the previous 90 day rule), they want you to bring viewers onto the platform and keep them here.
The reduction in requirements for monetization are being widely accepted as a big-hearted and generous offering to creators struggling through the formulative years of their YouTube channels and rightfully so. Access to fan-funding revenue sources only serves to benefit everyone. But the lack of reduction in this requirement is flying far below the radar. It is still the most difficult part of the process when it comes to monetization… and this is a good thing. Creators are happy, and at the end of the day only those who are able to create content which is engaging and interesting will be able to take advantage of this. It does nothing but provide encouragement to the scores of creators dumping mindless dribble on the platform in the hopes of making a few quick bucks and vanity clout. Those videos were never going to get their creators monetized and thanks to this update it still won’t… only these creators will figure that out faster. They’ll reach their 500 subscriber threshold only to discover that the real barrier for entry was always going to be the quality of their content. Because that is what makes a successful channel. That is what YouTube wants.
Honestly… it is what we all wanted all along. We want to watch quality content. And if we succeed as creators we want it to be because our content is the quality that aligns with that we have come to love from our peer creators.
So go make something great.
500 Subscribers
3 Public Uploads in the Past 90 Days
And either 3,000 Watch Hours in the past 365 days or 3 Million views in the past 90 Days
Immediately creators began to celebrate and rightfully so; while the old requirements still remain in order to gain access to ad revenue these new requirements gave immediate access to the community and fan-funding elements available on YouTube… but it also gave us a message, and it’s one that nobody seems to hear.
Before we can address that message and what YouTube is telling creators we need to take a look at the history of monetization on the platform. While there have been ads on videos since YouTube’s 2006 inception it was a pair of decisions in December 2007 and early 2008 that saw YouTube provide a more central focus for creators to utilize their content in order to collect revenue. They started the original YouTube Partner Program and focused more heavily on the creator community and then later introduced the Creator Studio to give these creators insight into the performance of their videos so that they could improve their work based on the analytics and data provided.
It was the inception of the YouTube Partner Program that was of most interest here. Gone were the wild, wild West days of simply collecting ad revenue; creators were now required to earn 4,000 hours of video watch time in the previous 365 days and they had to amass 1,000 subscribers before they were allowed even to apply for access. This system sat in place for over a decade, a thorn in the side of so many fledgling creators. Viewership exploded; YouTube tripled the number of annual users from 2012 (700 million) to 2020 (2.3 billion). Hot names like PewDiePie, Markiplier, the Paul brothers Jake and Logan and Mr. Beast began to create a dreamy sense of what life could look like as a YouTube star and more and more creators began to jump on to the platform. The competition between creators became fierce. Many YouTube creators cite a very big difference in what growth looked like on YouTube in 2015 versus 2023 and while there have been changes to the YouTube Search and Discovery Systems (what everyone calls ‘the algorithm’) the real culprit has been the flood of new creators swarming the platform and making discovery in general a far more difficult undertaking than it had ever been. But this was just the beginning.
Known as Douyin in China, the 2016 introduction of Tik Tok gave a meteoric rise to a once dead form of content: the short form video. And the landscape of content creation changed overnight. Tik Tok landed in the U.S. in 2017 and was an instantaneous sensation; it was the most popular app of 2019 and 2020 and despite only have been in existence for two years Tik Tok was the 7th most downloaded app of the 2010’s. Later Tik Tok would surpass YouTube for the most ‘Average Watch Time’ on the internet. Many questioned whether the media behemoth could hold on against the upstart app and their glitzy, flashy approach which aligned well with younger viewing audiences. The argument could still be had today, were it not for a distinct ruling in the world’s largest market.
In the wake of a clash with the Chinese military (over border disputes in the Himalayan Mountains) and citing privacy and security concerns India banned several Chinese apps in the summer of 2020, the most notable being Tik Tok. YouTube seized the opportunity gain a drastic foothold on the world’s largest viewing audience and in what felt like mere moments after the ban introduced their own take on the presentation of short form content, YouTube Shorts. The introduction of this reinvigorated the creators on YouTube. The format was proven and now it was available to help spark a creator’s growth on a platform that paid far more. But with the inception of this new form of viewing came problems; creators could easily surpass the YouTube Partner Program requirements with a single video, and this threatened to alienate the hundreds of millions of long-form creators who had spent years laboring with content that was still the foundation of the platform.
So YouTube introduced a new set of requirements specifically for Shorts creators. Creators were now given the option of being able to apply for the YouTube Partner Program either by following the original requirements or by gaining 10 million views in the previous 90 days and 1,000 subscribers.
And this is where things get interesting. While the change itself meant very little (creators who were monetized in this fashioned typically earned CPM’s of $0.04 - $0.08 per 1,000 views versus the platform average of nearly $18 per every 1,000 views) the nature of the change itself excited creators in a way that few platform advancements had. It has never really been the actual earnings that enticed creators, rather it was the dream that their art could earn revenue. And if it could earn revenue then they might be able to make a living off of the things they enjoy most.
With the dazzling response YouTube received after this update the team went on to look into other ways they could improve revenue on the platform. The recent monetization adjustment unearthed a glaring fault in the system; long-form and short-form creators were now both represented well in a system that supported their ability to earn revenue… but creators who focused on livestreaming were not. Due to the conversational and engaging nature of a livestream these creators are known to pull large audiences while a stream is live, but often these streams hold little or no value afterwards and often fail to produce the long-term views and watch time needed for a creator to attain the 4,000 hour watch time requirement. Those who are monetized make the majority of their revenue from fan-funding sources like super chats, donations and channel memberships. And despite what can amount to some fairly large audiences for some of these unmonetized streamers their ability to collect revenue is still beholden to that watch time requirement.
That is what June’s update addressed. The new requirements did three things:
1. They allowed for less-strict requirements on subscriber counts and watch time hours in order to allow creators to collect revenue from fan-funding sources.
2. It lowered the threshold for Shorts creators to begin earning revenue.
3. It sent a very loud message to creators regarding what YouTube wants in return.
That last part is key for all creators, not just those who have now been ushered into the YouTube Partner Program. Let’s take a deeper look at what YouTube did with this update. They cut the number of Subscribers required to gain revenue in half. That was always the easier part of the equation, and what used to take most creators a year and over 100 videos to accomplish now feels like it can be earned over a weekend. But look at what they did to the watch time requirement. It was reduced by 25%. It was not cut in half. It was effectively reduced by half of one-half. And this speaks volumes. This tells us exactly what YouTube wants from their creators. They don’t care about subscriber counts… YouTube wants watch time. They want eyes on content. They want you to be a current and consistent creator (hence the 3 videos in the previous 90 day rule), they want you to bring viewers onto the platform and keep them here.
The reduction in requirements for monetization are being widely accepted as a big-hearted and generous offering to creators struggling through the formulative years of their YouTube channels and rightfully so. Access to fan-funding revenue sources only serves to benefit everyone. But the lack of reduction in this requirement is flying far below the radar. It is still the most difficult part of the process when it comes to monetization… and this is a good thing. Creators are happy, and at the end of the day only those who are able to create content which is engaging and interesting will be able to take advantage of this. It does nothing but provide encouragement to the scores of creators dumping mindless dribble on the platform in the hopes of making a few quick bucks and vanity clout. Those videos were never going to get their creators monetized and thanks to this update it still won’t… only these creators will figure that out faster. They’ll reach their 500 subscriber threshold only to discover that the real barrier for entry was always going to be the quality of their content. Because that is what makes a successful channel. That is what YouTube wants.
Honestly… it is what we all wanted all along. We want to watch quality content. And if we succeed as creators we want it to be because our content is the quality that aligns with that we have come to love from our peer creators.
So go make something great.
