Color me surprised.
It seems awfully convenient that, in the wake of the whole Logan Paul thing, YouTube has decided to make some changes in their partnership program. Changes that are meant to keep “spammers, impersonators, and other bad actors” from getting too far on their platform.
As Susan mentioned in December, we’re making changes to address the issues that affected our community in 2017 so we can prevent bad actors from harming the inspiring and original creators around the world who make their living on YouTube. A big part of that effort will be strengthening our requirements for monetization so spammers, impersonators, and other bad actors can’t hurt our ecosystem or take advantage of you, while continuing to reward those who make our platform great.
Back in April of 2017, we set a YPP eligibility requirement of 10,000 lifetime views. While that threshold provided more information to determine whether a channel followed our community guidelines and policies, it’s been clear over the last few months that we need a higher standard.
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. We’ve arrived at these new thresholds after thorough analysis and conversations with creators like you. They will allow us to significantly improve our ability to identify creators who contribute positively to the community and help drive more ad revenue to them (and away from bad actors). These higher standards will also help us prevent potentially inappropriate videos from monetizing which can hurt revenue for everyone.
This is, ironically, something that larger channels like, oh, I don’t know, those shitheads the Pauls, wouldn’t really have to worry about. They have enough subscribers and viewers that they could leave to take a crap and come back with the requirements met. Meanwhile, it makes it incredibly hard for people just starting out on YouTube to meet those requirements. It’s a bit harder to get those 4000 hours of watchtime when you don’t have many viewers or subscribers. Or if you’re simply a niche uploader.
Existing channels have a grace period of a month to get in line with the new standards. YouTube plans to pay out what’s owed to those that can’t meet those new standards at the end of that period. And everyone else gets screwed. The smartest thing you can probably do to monetize your content otherwise is make quality videos and start a Patreon. Or make simpering garbage that idiots lap up and start a Patreon. Either way…
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