YouTube Question What happens if dont get 1000 sub and 4k watch hr in 12 months

[Calif Coder]

Hello all
My question is
ΓÇ£What happens if dont get 1000 sub and 4k watch hr in 12 monthsΓÇ¥

i mean we need to start again in next year from zero subs and zero watch hours .

 

[kitchen c/o ammama]

You need Over 4000hr public watchtime In the last 12 months and over 1000 Subscribers. ThatΓÇÖs the rule .

So , let me assume that you started your Channel this July and watch hour for this July is 50hrs .

Now, next July you would be having , letΓÇÖs say 3850 ... you did not meet and you go on to August .. at that point you lose 50hrs of watchtime of last July because now it will calculate August to August ( last 12 months ). Hope I am not confusing .

so , you donΓÇÖt need to start from zero if your channel is on consistent growth .

let me know if you still have doubts .

 

[Gary L]

You need Over 4000hr public watchtime In the last 12 months and over 1000 Subscribers. ThatΓÇÖs the rule .

So , let me assume that you started your Channel this July and watch hour for this July is 50hrs .

Now, next July you would be having , letΓÇÖs say 3850 ... you did not meet and you go on to August .. at that point you lose 50hrs of watchtime of last July because now it will calculate August to August ( last 12 months ). Hope I am not confusing .

so , you donΓÇÖt need to start from zero if your channel is on consistent growth .

let me know if you still have doubts .

You mean, it's a rolling 12 months?

 

[Tito Tim]

You mean, it's a rolling 12 months?

I am pretty sure it just goes back one year from today (and "today" is always a new day), not any particular calendar year. So anytime you hit the threshold, within any 12 month period, you can apply for monetization.

 

[Travel Interesante]

Correct a rolling 12 month look back for the 4,000 watch hours. Generally speaking as you push closer to 1k subs and have more and more views a year down the line, losing 30-50 hours or whatever small amount in a month won't be all that noticeable.

 

[Papa Joejo]

You need Over 4000hr public watchtime In the last 12 months and over 1000 Subscribers. ThatΓÇÖs the rule .

So , let me assume that you started your Channel this July and watch hour for this July is 50hrs .

Now, next July you would be having , letΓÇÖs say 3850 ... you did not meet and you go on to August .. at that point you lose 50hrs of watchtime of last July because now it will calculate August to August ( last 12 months ). Hope I am not confusing .

so , you donΓÇÖt need to start from zero if your channel is on consistent growth .

let me know if you still have doubts .

I now understand it so better.

 

[Beanie Draws]

Hello all
My question is
ΓÇ£What happens if dont get 1000 sub and 4k watch hr in 12 monthsΓÇ¥

i mean we need to start again in next year from zero subs and zero watch hours .

You retain the subscribers, so you don't have to worry about that, and you have to make sure that the next months you gain MORE watch hours... which you should in theory as you add more videos to your collection.

It does come with some issues however...

Here's a completely imaginary senario, which COULD happen in theory... You somehow gain a million hours of watch time... you have a video that blows up in January... but you don't get the subscriber numbers you expected... and I have seen some channels with one hit wonders, they get a trending video with 2 million views, but the channel it'self has 200 subscribers.
So in that situation, you need to gain the 1000 subscribers before the year ends...

To add to this imaginary senario... that 1 million watch time video drops down in popularity... it's ran it's course, and by febuary/march, it's not getting any views at all.... so in theory, if April the next year, you have maybe 700 subscribers... that means the 1 million watch time from the month of January, no longer counts to the 12 months (as it's a rolling 12 months) and let's say your videos have struggled in watch time since that one hit... which is very possible as I've seen channels with one million view video, and the rest struggle to hit a hundred views or more... so in this situation, say you hit your 1000 subscriber milestone by May that year... the 1 million watch time from the january the year before, no longer counts... and the rest of your videos haven't been performing... essentially that means you have to try and keep building the hours over those rolling months.

That's always been my biggest issue with the rolling 12 months rule. I mean, most get it... but there are special cases like the situation above, where the rule ends up hurting a channel.
So just because you get a one hit viral video, means absolutely nothing in terms of monetisation if you can't get the subscribers as well.

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

Even Tom came out on the Insider channel and said they wished YouTube could get rid of subscribers in general, and having that as a rule seems to be more detrimental than not. Just run with the watchtime requirement. It's the 'harder' of the two, and the sub requirement just causes more sub4sub. People think they'll subswap up to 1k and then make five videos that will get the watchtime requirement due to that audience size.

 

[Beanie Draws]

Even Tom came out on the Insider channel and said they wished YouTube could get rid of subscribers in general, and having that as a rule seems to be more detrimental than not. Just run with the watchtime requirement. It's the 'harder' of the two, and the sub requirement just causes more sub4sub. People think they'll subswap up to 1k and then make five videos that will get the watchtime requirement due to that audience size.

They won't admit it, but the only reason the 1k subs and 4k watch time was implemented, was in the hopes that "bad actors" (channels exploiting the system for ill or even illicit intent) couldn't be monetised. They hoped the "Bad actors" wouldn't be able to accumilate 1k subs and 4k watch time to be able to make videos that were against terms of service, and get paid for it, because the more far reaching implications, is if you YouTube pay everyone ad revenue, despite their subscriber count... they're essentially "paying" potentially very bad videos. And in some situations, can be seen as funding organisations using YouTube as a platform to promote illegal activity, and thus, funding crime. This was pointed out during the "elsa gate" and the first range of restrictions came through basically after that, and after pewdiepie did his naughty video, and advertisers started pulling their support of YouTube because they SAW their ads were being shown on these "elsa gate" videos and other questionable videos.
It's hard to get 1k subs, thus people can't get paid as easily for uploading just about anything regardless of it's content.

It has impacted a lot of innocent channels... BUT if you don't keep it, the 1% of bad actors can just make a channel in a few minutes, and start making ad revenue off any type of content that shouldn't be on YouTube. So Susan and the higher ups would never admit that was the purpose, but it's pretty obvious that was the reason.

The restrictions have even harsher after what happened with Logan Paul and the forest. They didn't outright say that was why, but youtube were playing the reaction and catch up game. Putting restrictions in to make it look like they were taking action against that kind of content being easily made and monetised in the future.

And the restrictions on mobile streaming (yes, you can use other streaming apps to stream to youtube mobile to bypass the 1k requirement for mobile streaming) but the NATIVE streaming method was restricted after what happened in NZ when someone livestreamed horrible events, because up until then, anyone could jump on mobile and livestream regardless of their subscriber count. It was the first time to ever happen (the guy even said "subscribe to pewdiepie") but that one time was enough to push YouTube to have to act so it looked like they were taking action, and as painful as it was for smaller channels, it was a good move overall, because if YT didn't take action, the government would have stood in, and then we'd have far more than 1ksubs and 4watch time to worry about... if the government stepped in, you'd see creators needing media licences in order to be legally allowed to distribue digital media on a platform with little to no government regulations.

So really, we got off increadibly lightly. But YouTube never mentioned these as the reasons, but it's not hard to see the timing all lining up.

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

I totally agree. I remember that whole NZ streaming issue, always kinda baffled me why they would continue to let other aps do it. I wasnt aware of elsa gate, but i knew it had to have been something like that. And im not against it. Its a bump in the road, but i've never been a believer in the 'overnight success' nonsense and working towards those requirements 'builds character' (ad my dad would say). So while i may have done things different (for better or for worse) i can not blame them for doing what they are doing.

 

[Beanie Draws]

I totally agree. I remember that whole NZ streaming issue, always kinda baffled me why they would continue to let other aps do it. I wasnt aware of elsa gate, but i knew it had to have been something like that. And im not against it. Its a bump in the road, but i've never been a believer in the 'overnight success' nonsense and working towards those requirements 'builds character' (ad my dad would say). So while i may have done things different (for better or for worse) i can not blame them for doing what they are doing.

Well luckily those situations rarely ever happen, but when they do, the platform is usually very quick to shut those streams down, especially with facebook, but YouTube wanted to finally be pre-emptive rather than reactionary. They saw what happened on Facebook live, and soo the potential for that to happen on YouTube, so took away one easy avenue and was a smart move I think.
I agree with what you've said.

Prevention is better than cure, and YT have been doing a lot of finding a cure, and these limitations are now the prevention steps.

 

[JourneyVerse]

I was thinking the same glad you made the thread and people have Clarified this

 

[Kari B]

I can see YT setting a minimum channel age to the restrictions in the not too distant future as well. Not only will you need to have 1000 subs, 4000 hrs watch time but to stop people sub4subing or buying subs and being an instant 'success' your channel will need to be over 6 months or a year old and have at least x number of videos on it within that period and you'll need to be a regular uploader.