YouTube Partnership Program Changes (plus some thoughts)

[Mr. Analog]

If you run a small channel like me you're about to lose your YouTube partnership status. They're changing monetization so that channels must have more than 1000 subscribers + 4000 watched hours of content in the last 12 months.

On one hand it makes sense, why bother with all the overhead of paying out a few bux a month to smaller channels but on the other hand it closes the door to any financial incentives to maintain less active channels like Dead Game News https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzZ8jigea0Ph0pgUgrX5U-Q

YouTube has gone through a lot of changes since Alphabet Inc split off Google into a subsidiary and certainly a lot of their automation, monetization and content stewardship choices raises questions about what YouTube is to become.

The site started out as a video hosting service geared toward little guys, average people who wanted to share video, a service also without cumbersome plugins (well, beyond Flash). This grew fast and it became dominant. Over time we've seen YouTube develop its own celebrity system as well as cozy up to big media conglomerates. We've seen it incorporate advertising. We've also seen the direct impact of paying creators (both positively and negatively). We've seen the development of automated content detection, moderation and censorship. We've seen YouTube create paid tier system for "exclusive" content. YouTube today is nothing like YouTube of 2005, in both good ways and bad, from my perspective we're seeing YouTube try to become the thing it expressly didn't start out as; another Cable company.

I feel like this may be the point where YouTube has peaked (if it hasn't already). I've seen a lot of channel personalities migrate to Twitch, I feel like a lot of bridges were burnt with automated content flagging that made incorrect or inappropriate choices based on opaque parameters, finally the drama around YouTube celebrities' flagrant abuse of community policy and YouTube's lack of response... from on the ground it looks like the rules are very different if a channel pulls in a lot of ad revenue or it belongs to a big media conglomerate.

Does YouTube have a future? Probably. Is it more commercialized? Absolutely. Is it relevant to small-time creators anymore? I say No.

Anyway, here's the first YouTube video!
https://youtu.be/jNQXAC9IVRw

[Tom]

Yeah. They've had to start bowing much harder to advertisers now that they are willing to just stop buying ads on a dime. Its deffinitely going to be harder for new/small guys to climb up the ranks.

[Mr. Analog]

Here's another article on the subject that goes into some more detail:
https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/18/16906036/youtube-monetization-small-creators-top-creators-changes

Yeah. They've had to start bowing much harder to advertisers now that they are willing to just stop buying ads on a dime. Its deffinitely going to be harder for new/small guys to climb up the ranks.

The funny thing for me is that in the midst of these changes they had multiple content scandals with big channels. I mean the timing of it all was perfection.

Anyway guess I should start using that Patreon account I created a billion years ago...

[Lazybones]

Anyway guess I should start using that Patreon account I created a billion years ago...

Nearly every channel I watch frequently also has Patreon..

Sadly I am CHEAP and both tend to skip ads and not fund via Patreon.

However another popular option is merchandise which might be a really good option for an art driven channel.

There are a lot of on demand / run your own micro store T-shirt / merch companies out there where you can upload an image and BAM offer stuff to purchase.

I have a Size does matter shirt from the 8-bit guy for example http://www.the8bitguy.com/product-category/t-shirts/

[Mr. Analog]

Anyway guess I should start using that Patreon account I created a billion years ago...

Nearly every channel I watch frequently also has Patreon..

Sadly I am CHEAP and both tend to skip ads and not fund via Patreon.

However another popular option is merchandise which might be a really good option for an art driven channel.

There are a lot of on demand / run your own micro store T-shirt / merch companies out there where you can upload an image and BAM offer stuff to purchase.

I have a Size does matter shirt from the 8-bit guy for example http://www.the8bitguy.com/product-category/t-shirts/

Yup, that's definitely an option too particularly when I can do my own arts and such

The irony is of course I was just gearing up to start producing regular videos again. I've done a few art livestreams testing out new drivers and restream.io so far so good

[Darren Dirt]

To quote an infamous blowhard:

@%&#ING THING SUCKS!


It is amazing how fast things change, what YT started out as vs its prrsent state of essentially just a repository of "acceptable" content (plenty of vulgar VEVO music videos and late night talk show clips though!)

And in December VID.ME gave up the fight. Financially impossible to compete with the bottomless wallet of teh Google