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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

#241

Post by munificent »

Nition wrote: post #43
mc32 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>) For niche channels, like my own, it can be easy to have the views but difficult to have the subscribers. These two should not be tied together for purposes of monetization. I completely agree. I've saved hundreds of dollars [and time] on car maintenance/repairs and plumbing by watching some guy or gal on youtube with very specific information (for a given make/model/year) for example. I hope these kinds of instruc…

Honestly I think people will keep making those sorts of videos anyway. We never get paid anything for posting on Stack Overflow or Hacker News yet here we are. And YouTube had lots of good videos before it had monetisation.

Would you still be here or on StackOverflow if you knew that some of the contributors were "gold members" who got directly paid while you didn't?

We participate in these places for the intangible rewards and one of those, I believe, is feeling that we are helping to foster an egalitarian community. When the community is explicitly tiered and money-based, is that still something people will want to chip in to out of the goodness of their hearts?

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#242

Post by jacksmith21006 »

z3t4 wrote: post #160
x0x0 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because youtube attracts a lot of brand advertisers: think Cheerios, Volvo, Swiffer, etc. These ads are designed to create awareness of the products and to create warm feelings for the brand. Hence cute kids eat Cheerios or Volvo brags about safety or Swiffer shows how easy it is to have an immaculate mansion. All of the above dread showing up next to eg some jackass going to a suicide forest and showing a dead perso…

Those brand advertisers really destroyed advertising on the web, with the help of bot clickers ... Pay per click !? Great we don't want clicks ... I got 1000 clicks! Nope, all bots! Advertising went from fully automated to fully manual. There's billions of dollars wasted on manual marketing, and I know many have tried, but if you can make advertising fully automatic again, there's your unicorn startup!

It is hard with video because of the bandwidth needed to fake video views. Plus Google has logged in accounts often for YT which helps with detecting if a bot.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#243

Post by reader5000 »

notatoad wrote: post #231
protonfish wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is their reasoning, then it is YouTube that is missing the forest if they think destroying the environment that fosters and encourages small content creators is a smart move. All of the big players started there once. As the taste for content matures and viewers search for higher-quality content, hacks like PewDiePie dwindle and pros like Binging with Babish rise. Locking into the cesspool of current popular…

From their blog post, the majority of the smaller creators that are affected by this change are earning less than $100 per year. There's three types of creators that are impacted by this: - people who will never earn more than this off youtube, but aren't motivated by earning money. - people who are currently earning less than this, and are motivated by money but are on a trajectory to quickly exceed 1000 subscribers…

I wonder what the data is on hitting 1000 subs from scratch. I can see it taking 6+ months and if you're putting out daily or weekly content thats a lot of unpaid labor till you get some of that sweet ~$1 per 1000 views. But yeah I think most tubers monetize through patreon/merchandise/non-yt ads so this might not affect things too much.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#244

Post by reader5000 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #213
rubinelli wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisement is a bad model for niche content creators anyway. Selling "premium" content, contract work, and donations are how most are paying their bills. EDIT: And PewDiePie won't disappear. He provides the perfect wish fulfillment for kids that would love to stay in their bedrooms and be paid to play videogames all day long.

No way can he sustain the attention beyond his 30's. His demo will grow up and he'll eventually be a creepy old guy the next generation isn't interested in.

This is true of literally every celebrity.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#245

Post by x0x0 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #143
x0x0 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because youtube attracts a lot of brand advertisers: think Cheerios, Volvo, Swiffer, etc. These ads are designed to create awareness of the products and to create warm feelings for the brand. Hence cute kids eat Cheerios or Volvo brags about safety or Swiffer shows how easy it is to have an immaculate mansion. All of the above dread showing up next to eg some jackass going to a suicide forest and showing a dead perso…

Yeah, but wasn't jackass in suicide forest a high-performing video?

And as per the article, Google is now going to have a human being watch all those videos.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#246

Post by Nition »

kevingadd wrote: post #155
Nition wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And although it sucks for small content creators to not get any revenue from their videos anymore, it sucks even more for Google because not only do they get no money from advertising on those videos, it costs them to host the video. I'm sure they're hoping fervently that this plan leads to more lucrative ad deals considering how knife-edge YouTube's chance at profitability has always seemed.

You seem to misunderstand: Ads aren't necessarily going to go away. The uploader just won't get paid anymore.

YouTube has never shown ads on non-monetised videos. If I choose the no monetisation option on a video, it has no ads. So if YouTube is saying these small channels can no longer monetise their videos, it would be a whole extra policy change to say that non-monetised videos will now show ads.

Any YouTube video that currently shows an ad, the uploader has chosen to do so in order to make money from it.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#247

Post by DanBC »

yeukhon wrote: post #95

> Starting today we’re changing the eligibility requirement for monetization to 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. Is this an annual check? Or is it a one-time enrollement eligibility? The 4000 hours is a big entry bar... it’s already hard enough to gain subscribers. Indeed the small creators - those who get maybe 5k views per video + 1000 subscriber + 5 mins videos won’t be mak…

Doesn't 4000 hours rule out massive channels like SlowMoGuys?

EDIT: 4000? That's 70 hours per week.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#248

Post by xster »

sgentle wrote: post #64

I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Despite what the PR says, this has very little to do with the relationship between YouTube and creators, and everything to do with the relationship between YouTube and advertisers. YouTube is renting out billboards at a music festival, and the advertisers, predictably, want to know who's playing. "Well, I dunno, like, whoever shows up" has proven to be an answ…

Sounds reasonable in isolation but you can pretty much apply this line of thinking to all of capitalism.

Health insurance can be divided into the healthy-young-professional-who-pay-premium-and-never-get-sick package and the old-sick-people-costing-us-money package. Now one group is subsidizing the other and the premium the sick people package would have paid is so shit it makes the current premium look like winning the lottery. What to do? Drop the weakest performers.

Airlines make most of their money from first class which is essentially subsidizing all coach tickets? What to do? Just get rid of the average rider.

Politician X spent 1.2B$ campaigning for presidency and most of that money didn't come from private citizens? Now you have a rich voter coalition and a normal citizen coalition and the new normal citizens' influence on politicians would be so shit that the current resemblance to democracy start to look like normal citizens winning the lottery. What to do? Just get rid of universal suffrage.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#249

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

sgentle wrote: post #64

I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Despite what the PR says, this has very little to do with the relationship between YouTube and creators, and everything to do with the relationship between YouTube and advertisers. YouTube is renting out billboards at a music festival, and the advertisers, predictably, want to know who's playing. "Well, I dunno, like, whoever shows up" has proven to be an answ…

> The advertising industry isn't logical, it's 18 layers of ticket-clippers and con men playing telephone with money. It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation.

The advertising industry is hardly a small market; are you arguing that billions of dollars in profit opportunities are just lying there untaken simply because the industry operates on trends? What's stopping the nerds from taking this money?

I think it's more likely that the ad industry simply knows what a liability those small channels present; your product could be associated with all manner of odious content, and YouTube has thus far failed to exclude that at scale.

Re: Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

#250

Post by notatoad »

reader5000 wrote: post #243
notatoad wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From their blog post, the majority of the smaller creators that are affected by this change are earning less than $100 per year. There's three types of creators that are impacted by this: - people who will never earn more than this off youtube, but aren't motivated by earning money. - people who are currently earning less than this, and are motivated by money but are on a trajectory to quickly exceed 1000 subscribers…

I wonder what the data is on hitting 1000 subs from scratch. I can see it taking 6+ months and if you're putting out daily or weekly content thats a lot of unpaid labor till you get some of that sweet ~$1 per 1000 views. But yeah I think most tubers monetize through patreon/merchandise/non-yt ads so this might not affect things too much.

I suspect your patreon, merch, or other ad revenue is also going to be pretty inconsequential if you're under 1000 subscribers
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