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Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

youtube-creators.googleblog.com

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Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#21

Post by jakebasile »

jeffmould wrote: post #13

As one of the people whose channel is affected by this policy change, I have to say I am not happy. There are a few issues I have with their new policy: 1) They should not have made this change retroactive to channels. If you already met the criteria you should be grandfathered into the new program. To terminate monetization entirely gives me no incentive to continue with YouTube. 2) For niche channels, like my own,…

> The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators.

This is a great observation. They're punishing the small, niche channels for the terrible shit pulled by the huge channels, with Logan Paul just being the most recent and which is probably the precipitating event here.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#22

Post by jdietrich »

It's not a grossly unreasonable move, but it doesn't exactly smack of creator-friendliness.

It does nothing to address the ongoing grievances of YouTubers about monetisation. At this stage, it seems like getting paid is a complete crapshoot. Sometimes your videos will be classified as "not suitable for most advertisers", despite not breaching any of YouTube's policies. Sometimes your video will be taken down or demonetized by a completely bogus copyright claim. Sometimes you'll get lucky and actually see some ad revenue for a video. If you've got a problem, you're stuck with the usual Google tech support system of "personally know someone who works at the Googleplex, otherwise you're SOL".

Pretty much every sane YouTuber is moving towards a Patreon-first business model and treating ad revenue as a bonus. If someone solves the discoverability problem for videos hosted on other platforms, YouTube are done. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, lose all of your content creators because you've treated them like criminals for years.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#23

Post by pwaai »

joelrunyon wrote: post #11

When is there going to be a legitimate YouTube contender? Seems like it's ripe for a replacement...

wait, so I need to navigate away from youtube to watch some highly niche content? This is what people on youtube thinks and the perceived opportunity cost is not enough to force people to switch....unless its content that is downright banned on youtube

Basically niche videos will just be replaced by other people who will find ways to monetize it...or not even motivated by money at all but just to put content out there and for people to enjoy.

So far, all the comments on HN are about how they won't get paid, they will be replaced by people who do it without monetary rewards or saavy enough to monetize through external revenue sources.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#24

Post by Nition »

Scoundreller wrote: post #19
Nition wrote: post #14

Everyone's talking about how this is bad for small channels, but surely this is a big hit to YouTube itself as well. Since they've decided they need to vet all channels before ads are shown, and they can't do that to every channel, they've had to set an arbitrary view/subscriber limit. But now they're going to lose out on ad revenue for millions of previously-monetised videos, while still having to host them for free…

Isn't google's advertising cut 30-40%? How many dollars does it cost them to vet a channel? My 3 minute video makes me ~.3 cents per view. It's actually less than 3 minutes, most don't watch the whole thing. 4000 hours in a year = $240 revenue. So, advertisers are paying $360. If you have just 2000 hours of views per year, Google is throwing away $60/year in revenue. My linked gmail account alone with 10+ years of da…

I don't think they're worried about whether you're a legitimate account, they're worried about whether your videos are advertiser-friendly, and they've decided that to verify that they'll need to manually check your channel. Which would take forever if they didn't set some threshold.

They tried to crowdsource it with YouTube Heroes. I guess that didn't end up being enough.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#25

Post by jdietrich »

joelrunyon wrote: post #11

When is there going to be a legitimate YouTube contender? Seems like it's ripe for a replacement...

There are a million better options for video hosting. The problem is discoverability - YouTube's search box and recommendations bar have a near-monopoly on discovering new video creators. If you're not on YouTube, you'll have a huge uphill struggle to build an audience. It doesn't help that Google also have a near-monopoly on search, so they can strangle traffic to any competing service through opaque algorithm tweaks.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#26

Post by Scoundreller »

farnsworthy wrote: post #15
joelrunyon wrote: post #11

When is there going to be a legitimate YouTube contender? Seems like it's ripe for a replacement...

Someone please do this. (You'll probably need a lot of money.) In the meantime, download anything you enjoy today, because it may not be there tomorrow.

It sounds like there will be a huge opportunity for howto/DIY videos that people don't really subscribe to.

Google isn't removing any videos, but they are using the demonetized videos as bait to get you to watch their monetized videos.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#27

Post by anonytrary »

A signed suicide note by YouTube. It's those peanuts that motivate actual content creators to post content and grow. This is the problem with "free and always will be", smh.

You get a centralized broker. In Google's case, between sellers and viewers, who are cast as buyers. This all happens under the shadow of "video content". Google feeds off of the creativity of everyone on YouTube, its own Hollywood. Then they decide who is worthy of reaping the rewards with their rules.

Something as simple as an organic comment promoting a product can actually drive real sales, and the John Doe that posts such a comment gets zilch. Why does he get nothing? Is it too difficult for Google to index all of John Doe's comments, crunch the impressions and counts and then give him the few dollars he would have accrued over the past few weeks? This should all just "work" without having to download Google Surveys, or whatever their community feedback/rewards app is.

If they can index the web, they can do some math on behalf of me and count me in their little MLM payouts equation ffs. /ranty This is the perfect move to put more YouTubers past the tipping point.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#28

Post by robertelder »

I just got an email that my channel will de-monetized by this. I thought it was pretty funny actually. There are all these huge content creators losing out on their livelihoods because of Google's unpredictable de-monetization behaviour, and then Google even decides to demonetize even my tiny channel with only a few videos (that are over 9 years old).

I turned on monetization a few years ago and I think I've made maybe $20 so far. For a while, I actually considered investing time in making more videos with the idea that the present value of a large number of videos might be pretty considerable over the long term (say 30 years or so).

A few years ago one of my most popular videos (tens of thousands of views) was flagged as being 'not family friendly'. The video was a screen capture of me scrolling through a notepad.exe list of documentary titles with no audio. It was just a list of nature/space documentaries that were already on YouTube. Nothing offensive or controversial.

I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for my YouTube career.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#29

Post by rmrfrmrf »

jeffmould wrote: post #13

As one of the people whose channel is affected by this policy change, I have to say I am not happy. There are a few issues I have with their new policy: 1) They should not have made this change retroactive to channels. If you already met the criteria you should be grandfathered into the new program. To terminate monetization entirely gives me no incentive to continue with YouTube. 2) For niche channels, like my own,…

> 3) The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators.

Not quite:

* Paying for views/subs is a huge issue. The lifetime view count makes it so that you only need to pay once to reap the benefits of YPP. Making the requirement continuous gives less financial incentive.

* Elsagate and content aimed at children was a smaller but frequent controversy last year. I’m guessing they need more time/resources to vet that content and slow down the rate that spammers and low-effort content providers try to game the system.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#30

Post by dragonwriter »

dvt wrote: post #18
farnsworthy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone please do this. (You'll probably need a lot of money.) In the meantime, download anything you enjoy today, because it may not be there tomorrow.

If you have traction, the money will come. But really, what can you do that's better than YouTube? Honest question. I think that YouTube has reached Google levels of optimization. Sure, it could be better, but not better enough that people are willing to switch.

> But really, what can you do that's better than YouTube?

For any specialized market, probably a lot; YouTube may be the ultimate least-common-denominator user-submitted-video streaming service, but it's not the only one there is room for.

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