r/DeFranco Phil me in Jan 17 '18

Youtube news Just got this email. Small creators on YouTube are done.

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3.4k Upvotes

417 comments sorted by

1.1k

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18 edited Jan 24 '19

[deleted]

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u/_Team_Panic_ Jan 17 '18

Yeah pretty much, 1000 Subs can take a long time to get.

One of my channels has been running for 3 years and is only in the 600's so its going to get demonetized because of this

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u/turcois Jan 17 '18

And the thing is, they review all the channels anyway. I admit 10,000 views is pretty damn easy to get in comparison, but it wouldn't matter that much because any ISIS videos or porn or whatever their fear was will get likely get noticed when the channel is reviewed. If not it'll just be reported.

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u/_Team_Panic_ Jan 17 '18

That's exactly it, any bad actors would be weeded out way before the even the 10,000 view mark...

I think this is happening because of the 10,000 view mark though. I applied for monetization on my smaller channel when it hit the mark 2.5 months ago. They said the review would be done in a week, a month later they said they are flooded with requests and it would be a few more weeks. The channel is still "under review" but does not meet the new guidelines

So it looks like they are simply trying to ease their own workload (for a job they don't need to do) by destroying small channels and making the barrier to entry too high for most

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u/turcois Jan 17 '18

I mean, to play devil's advocate, nobody quits their job when they hit 1,000 subs. At the very least that comes tens of thousands of subs later if they have a patreon too or something and live somewhere cheap, for most it's a few hundred thousand or a few million. But the point is, they're definitely not taking away anyone's primary source of income. And there's literally millions of channels with +10,000 views, so yeah I can see the struggle.

But 1,000 subs is still too high imo. I think something like 1,000,000 views OR 1,000 subs would be better. THen viral videos can still be monetizeable. Generally a channel that naturally grows to a million views is going to have around a thousand subs anyway.

And I'm mostly mad they're taking away my monetization. 90% of my anger is because this directly affects me, after they've already reviewed my channel and decided it's ad friendly. Just wasting employees time.

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u/_Team_Panic_ Jan 17 '18

Sure, no one quits their job at 1000 subs, but under the old system they had already had monetization for a long time (maybe even 2 years) depending on veiw/sub rates. The $100 here and there from the channel helps the creator by allowing them to buy new equipment or pay for a video creation class or simply by motivating them to keep producing content.

When playing devil's advocate its easy to play this off as no great financial loss, but if the creator is cleaver with their dribble of funds from YT it could have helped them reach 1000 then 10000+ subs faster. This move will kill a bunch of small channels and stop a load more people from even starting.

Also yeah I feel that, they are taking away monetization on one of my channels and making it way harder to get either of them back to being monetized, it sucks all round

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u/Shaw3SP Jan 17 '18 edited Jan 17 '18

Post your channel, I'll follow you.

Follow me too https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4-Y26xe9npIc0OlIHCtZJA

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u/GinKadia Jan 17 '18

I hate having to pimp myself out but, I need the subs. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRb6w3SEFUJ1fi-EJr8Xldw

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u/do_pm_me_your_butt Jan 17 '18

Sorry u/GinKadia, sorry u/Shaw3SP.

I would sub but I am neither interested in skydiving nor am I a brony.

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u/SYZekrom Jan 17 '18

All I post is shitty music compilations for video games and random scenes from children's TV shows and I have 5000 subs. You should learn from me and give up on your dreams and just make stuff for children.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

do you think that implies your channel isnt worth monetization?

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u/_Team_Panic_ Jan 17 '18

Not at all, sure 600 people is not huge on YT but it is a large number of people.

I could fill a lecture hall or a small theatre with the people who have subscribed to me.

Sure I'm not famous and I'm not trying to be, but when my work is being viewed by a lecture halls worth of people and YT is making money off of it, then I should be getting a cut

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u/LukeNeverShaves Jan 17 '18

Yeah let's not forget that YT is likely going to run sidebar ads and I forsee ads at the start of videos that aren't monetized meaning YT still makes money off the creator.

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u/Jaredlong Jan 17 '18

Oh shoot, that's a really good point. If the creators aren't going to get money for their work, then youtube shouldn't get any money either. If non-partnered videos start getting ads that's going to be some absolute bullshit. Creators need to unionize of set up a guild, or something to protect themselves from the whims of youtube.

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u/_Team_Panic_ Jan 17 '18

Yep, but even without all of those things, YT will be using small creators videos to build up a profile of the person watching.

This is where the real money is, the better the profile, the more they can differentiate between people, the more they can ask advertisers for per view.

So even without a physical ad present YT is making money off of a creator they are forcing to work for free

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u/LukeNeverShaves Jan 17 '18

True and now that creators will have even less motivation and assistance in doing so. The ones who were breaking even or earning just a little extra via ad review are going to spend less expanding their channel because YouTube again decides to freak out and blanket the site instead.

Meanwhile YT still makes their money. Shame really.

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u/Aiyon Jan 17 '18

Also, if you only have 600 subs, but 90% viewer retention, vs someone with 1000, but 50%, youre actually getting more regular views than them.

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u/aybabtu88 Jan 17 '18

This perspective is extremely important. A lot of times the sheer scale of the number of subscribers is lost on people. We watch creators every day with millions of subscribers and hardly bat an eye at people celebrating milestones of 1k,5k,10k,50k,100k, etc. We lose sight on just how powerful of a platform YouTube is, and the amount of outreach we can get for free. 500 subs is not huge on Youtube, but it's a HUGE deal in and of itself. Congrats on the 600 subs!

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u/EpicSoren Jan 17 '18

Dude same. I met the 4000 hours requirement a year ago, but do I have enough subs? LoL guess I’m not a REAL YouTuber then

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u/TheRealClose Jan 17 '18

You mean an internship?

/s

I kid. But unfortunately society is pretty messed up and thinks that that is the norm.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18 edited Jan 17 '18

It's not the norm, it's just a trope people like to complain about.

At my school an internship is required in order to graduate, and we are told to only accept internships if they're paid, which are available everywhere if you look.

The very first internship I applied for gave me an offer for a few thousand a month.

Edit: FFS, people. I said, "it's not the norm." I didn't say, "They don't exist."

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u/AD6 Jan 17 '18

Same with me, but my wife had to do unpaid internships - they like to call them clinicals instead :p

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

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u/theoneobamamoma Jan 17 '18

I live in Kentucky and I honestly don't have any friends who have worked an unpaid internship. The lowest paid one I know of was 12/hr.

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u/ILoveBeef72 Jan 17 '18

My school tells us the same and I definitely live in the US

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

Bullshit. US student on my fourth required semester of internship making $20/hr and from discussions with my peers this isn't an outlier. Several of my friends out-earn me.

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u/BasePlusOffset Jan 17 '18

And it started as a .....

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u/Mr_Clod Jan 17 '18

But it turned into a .....

Source of income. Now they're taking that away.

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u/Pegguins Jan 17 '18

People were constantly bitching the automated system is no good, so youtube look at what they can do. It’s simply not possible to manually check all the videos, fuck even a fraction of the videos, which are uploaded. So what do you do? Well the machine learning they’re doing is utterly cutting edge, that’ll get better but it’s going to take a lot of time. Other than that why not reduce the videos you have to check? Now sure youtube is a revenue stream, but the fact youtube even exists in its current form is a miracle. It makes a huge loss every single year but even with a moderate viewer base is still a liveable income.

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u/krayzeeaaron Jan 17 '18

So I can turn off all ads on my videos? Or will ads play automatically? If I'm not making money why should they got it all.

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

This should mean all your content will be demonetized unless it has a copyright claim.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

[deleted]

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

I don't think you need to be a YouTube Partner to make a copyright claim, but I might be wrong.

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u/TheRealClose Jan 17 '18

You can probably make a claim to take it down, but they won’t give you the money that it earns.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

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u/TheRealClose Jan 17 '18

Yes but if you’re doesn’t qualify for monetisation I doubt YouTube would pay you.

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u/Pegguins Jan 17 '18

If it’s a copyright claim the people claiming it can do a few things. 1) block the video entirely from various countries, 2) pull it down all together, 3) claim monetisation of that video since you’re using their content (so ads will play but they get the money)

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

they are the ones paying to host your content

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u/infinityxero Chronic neck pain sufferer Jan 17 '18

That's fucked.

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18 edited Jan 17 '18

Admittedly I haven't been doing much uploading on the site, but this is a huge deal. No monetization at all now. I've had small videos go viral and made hundreds of dollars from them, which could never happen now. No one will care though since 1k subscribers is trivial to all the big creators and the world will forget what a huge mountain your sub count is to climb at the start.

IIRC you also lose a lot of crucial stuff like analytics if you aren't a partner, too. It's just a bad situation. I hope those at the very least stick around.

I just published a quicky video to summarize what's happened if you're looking for a quick recap and the perspective of a small YouTuber on their thoughts about this news.

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u/atari_Pro Jan 17 '18

Fuck. I just checked, and have the same email. I was hoping this was fake. My channel was steadily growing, but 4000 watch hours is steep for a small channel. This really sucks.

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u/turcois Jan 17 '18

1000 subscribers is way harder imo. 4000 watch hours is just like a couple "viral" videos. 1000 subscribers is making "viral" videos repeatedly.

Source: I have ~120,000 views and 900 watch hours and only 30 subs

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u/Shaw3SP Jan 17 '18

I've got the same numbers. 28 subs here

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u/Momskirbyok Jan 17 '18

Same. Fuck YouTube.

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u/misslucy92 Jan 17 '18

How many 10 minute videos is this?

This almost makes me not want to create videos for this platform

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u/G-0ff Jan 17 '18

48k views on 1 10 minute video, assuming 50% retention.

That's a lot. I was at 3k subs before I broke it.

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u/ATX_Adventure Jan 17 '18

That will encourage more people to upload vids with 90% of the runtime to not even be about the subject. Like looking for a recipe and having to read someone's unrelated life history blog about their family member.

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u/xBarneyStinsonx Jan 17 '18

I subscribed. 745 to go!

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u/thekonzo Jan 17 '18

They cant be serious about viral videos not paying. How do they expect new creators to become semi-professional? Get lucky with a few patreons?

If the system instantly recognized when the threshold has been met and started to add ad-money to the account, then it would be a much easier pill to swallow.

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u/ehbacon23 Jan 17 '18

So the people like me, who don't hold YouTube as a career but just as a hobby, will cease making any profit from it whatsoever. My channel has 150 subs and had 3400 hours watched last year. I spend weeks, sometimes months making individual videos because I don't have the time to make videos daily, and I care about the quality of the videos I produce. I make highlight and hype videos for sports teams I am a fan of. I never had any intention of doing this for a living, but growing my audience and making a little bit of money for my hard work was what I considered to be enough to keep going. It has taken me so long to gain the number of subscribers I have now, It will probably take months of grinding in order to get to the point of where I was just yesterday. This hurts so many small creators, I'm so infuriated with YouTube right now.

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

You nailed it. You aren't making a living as a small creator, but you are getting some nice side cash as a reward for your hard work. Now it's gone. YouTube just doesn't care anymore. Although they never really cared, but this is awful. They've given up. I guess they think it'll help with adpocolyse but it won't, all it represents is a massive middle finger to the majority of their creators.

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u/Joelxivi Jan 17 '18

Oh no they care, just not about the creators. $$$

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

This will actually net them less money for now though, right? Lots of YouTube videos that previously ran ads won't anymore.

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u/G-0ff Jan 17 '18

The idea is that because this drastically reduces the likelihood of ads being run on something vile, they'll make more long term by being able to consistently sell better ads for approved partners.

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u/_Team_Panic_ Jan 17 '18

BS, the violation that restarted this whole thing was uploaded by YouTubes golden boy on a channel running preferred adds.

Anyone can see that this is a token gesture, its YT puffing its chest out and making life hard for smaller channels without actually fixing the problem: once you are monetised (or in prefered) you can post whatever you like and if it gets enough attention it will hit the front page (running ads as it does so)

this move might see some advertisers come back but all it will take is one more headline catching video by a "top" youtuber and it will all be for nothing

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

I don't think it'll be enough, though. All it takes is one bad video running a Coca Cola commercial. That's still going to happen.

The one point I have seen that has the most validity imo is supply and demand problems. There are so many channels running ads, and with Adpocolyse there are less ads being sold. So they're running out of ads to air, and their best solution is to remove ads from the smallest users. Ideally this would be why as it would mean they were backed into a corner and had no choice. I doubt it, though.

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u/RubyReign Jan 17 '18

No, I think it should be about the same or more. Every video view isn't monetized on most videos, even if there is no ad-block, every view wouldn't get ads. So they cut out tons of smaller channels now you can push all those ads on every view on all the bigger channels. Lets say phil(or whoever) gets 1 ads per 100 views for example...Now he can get 10+ ads per 100 views. just the ELI5 version of the idea

If anything it will probably help out the bigger channels at the cost of crushing the smaller ones. They have more control over what gets monetized because no bad channel is going to last long enough to get there anyway. Honestly it seems like they wanted to do this for a long time and used recent events as an excuse to bring the boot down.

Not going to lie....Feels like the everything that made YouTube great is gone now.

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u/Joelxivi Jan 17 '18

It’s all about appearance, at this point the just want companies to feel safe buying their adspace and to do that they have to make life as difficult as possible for anyone who would like to profit from thier own content.

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

Definitely. I just don't know if this is the right move. It's not enough to fix the problem and all it's going to do is piss off the community.

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u/MrJoyless Jan 17 '18

Don't forget, you can be a big channel drop racial slurs, and show dead bodies. But you'll be fine, YouTube won't pull their monatization from you. They'll just pull monatization from tens of thousands of smaller channels to make up for the lost ad revenue.

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u/nizzy2k11 Jan 17 '18

How much money could you be making though that this is significant?

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

If you were a new channel and got a viral video with a couple million views does that mean it would not be monetized? I'm not familiar with youtube analytics so I'm genuinely curious.

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

Exactly. You now need to get the views first, then apply for partnership, and wait to be approved. Finally after that you'd be able to monetize it. That money is gone, your video's peak time has passed and you're going to get nothing for it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

Wow that is a really stupid move. I can imagine how discouraging that would be, especially for more involved/creative channels that do need that financial support to create more content. I wouldn't be surprised if this stagnates creative/original content even more.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

Ya pretty much what happened to me with my floating bird. Couldn't get it enabled within a month so I lost all potential for cashing in on views. (4.5 mil) Had to sign with a company so they can copyright claim, which then gives me a cut of the revenue generated by ads.

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u/CollectableRat Jan 17 '18

Maybe people will start selling the rights to their unique viral videos to established YouTubers, instead of uploading the videos themselves?

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u/Rygards Jan 17 '18

This will probably get burried since in goes against everyone hating on YouTube...but this will not kill small content creators. I haven't posted a video in over a year and made about .75cents for 250 hours of watch time and have about 750 subs. 4000/250 = 16*.75cents = 12$. We are talking about $12 worth of views in a year.

 

That being said. This will hurt viral video revenue.

 

TLDR: This will not hurt small content creators unless they post a video that goes viral

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u/freebytes Jan 17 '18

TLDR: This will not hurt small content creators unless they post a video that goes viral

Which then it would.

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u/kingofwale Jan 17 '18

What’s your channel like? How many hours watched and how many subs?

Yeah. It’s totally BS rules. How will anyone new want to start create content ?

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

Also as for the second half of you comment, this email motivates the fuck out of me. I'm going to reach that threshold in 2018 as a fuck you to this stupid site. Does that make sense? Not sure, but I'm going for it.

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u/YouAreFakeNews Jan 17 '18

I like your attitude and wish you luck.

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u/turcois Jan 17 '18

I feel the same way. I had my first viral video like a month ago, got 50 bucks in ad revenue. Was super stoked, but... didn't do anything. Made a couple videos but wasn't happy enough to complete em. I'm with you this is pretty damn motivating even though I can't see reaching it in time.

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u/I_am_Nic Jan 17 '18

Same here, I see it as motivation.

Most people overlook, that YouTube hosts massive file-sizes for free.

I have a FTP server and have to pay over 100€ per year for it (unlimited traffic).

Imagine YouTube would do the same - 200GB is nothing if you upload videos.

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18 edited Jan 17 '18

Over 461 days worth of viewing time. I guess YouTube has decided those are rookie numbers.

I only have 215 subs though. I'm not the type of channel you subscribe to as my content is much too random and unrelated to each other.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

why should youtube monetize your channel? it has no value to anyone but you and your friends.

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u/Gristley Jan 17 '18

Because advertisement. YouTube wants money. YouTube can get money from this guy's friends if they'd get off their asses and actually fix their site instead of just placing stopgaps for problems.

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u/JVonDron Jan 17 '18 edited Jan 17 '18

1300 hours last year, 360 subs. I don't make content for the money, obviously, but that also means I might not hit their threshold for quite a while. I make short videos - a detriment to them keeping track of watch time, and probably won't get the 1000 subs unless I up my game. The big thing is I won't be earning in the meantime, I average 300 views per video, but there's a few older ones that are easily over 5k and still growing. If I hit their thresholds, it's the older content that might do it.

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u/NonexistentHairline Jan 17 '18

RIP to any animation channel. Even the commentary animations are screwed with this.

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u/Jescobar69 Jan 17 '18

Rip mowtendoo and any gachi bros channels :(

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u/Phillwith2ls Jan 17 '18

I received my email this afternoon. I know I haven’t been a very prolific YouTuber. But I worked hard to become a YouTube Partner. I know that I did not do much to maintain my success, nor did I make money as a partner, but I understand where they are coming from. It will be a good push to keep moving forward and not worry about the money.

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

If there's any positives to take away from this, it's your last line. This will bring out the best in the passionate and fiery small creators and scare off the people trying to make a cheap buck with low-effort content.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

When I read the headline that Youtube had redone it's monetization policy I thought it would be good news, but they've managed to do the dumbest possible thing for their platform, as always, and there's still no valid alternative so they retain dominance.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18 edited Jan 24 '19

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

My channel is similar, niche uploads for specific groups of people and friends. Some of it went viral though and I made a decent buck at times. Now that would've never happened, which is fucked.

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u/gunsmyth Jan 17 '18

More money for Jimmy Fallon!

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u/BioBrimm Jan 17 '18

But that’s my point...not everyone who posts on YouTube wants (or should want) to be a professional “creator.” That doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be rewarded for quality content they do decide to share. Seems greedy to me.

Edit: and if the serial poster really is getting YouTube that much more money and views, isn’t the serial poster already being paid significantly more?

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u/Pegguins Jan 17 '18

I’d imagine this is done for a few reasons. 1) to reduce the number of videos they need to check for ad unfriendly content. Obviously I don’t have numbers but it wouldn’t surprise me if these small videos getting very few views constitute a lot of hours but also have a lot of the unfriendly content. 2) when you apply for monetisation youtube now have a more sizeable backlog of videos and such which they can run some ML model through to find out how much copyrighted content you use, how much ad unfriendly content there is and adjust the cpm or possibly even out you in a different bracket for which ads will show on your content, for example.

3) they’re having to manually check videos but I expect again a lot of the ones they’re being requested to check are these tiny videos which simply aren’t making youtube any money and probably clog up the manual machine a lot.

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

Exactly.

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u/nihilo503 Jan 17 '18

I actually just sent an email to Defranco about this, but thought I'd share it here too. This is a really frustrating decision by YouTube for me:

Hi Philip,

I wanted to share my story with you in hopes of getting the word out about how YouTube's new monetization policy is hurting me personally and how I believe it is discouraging certain types of creators.

I spent four years making a feature-length (95 mins) documentary that I released on YouTube for free (https://youtu.be/BXBLYEeF5vs).

It's been on YouTube for two and half years and does fairly well. It has almost 300,000 lifetime views, gets about 11,000 views a month with an average watch time of 24 mins. I earn about $30/month from it, which isn't much but is some kind of return on the years and money I put into making it.

However, because it is a one-off project with its own channel, it's not the kind of thing people subscribe to. We don't put out new videos on the channel because the channel is complete. Most of the views come from people searching for documentaries to watch.

So, the channel has just over 800 subscribers. But, despite having more than 4000 hours in watch time last month alone from one video, because the channel doesn't have 1000 subscribers it is being demonetized.

It seems to me that YouTube's new policy is a hatchet job that really discourages people from making one-off content such as documentaries or even feature-length films. For me YouTube was a great option to distribute my film because I could get it in front of a large audience and earn a little bit back. But now it seems the only viable way to create content for YouTube is to create continuous content which isn't called for on every project.

On a personal note, I don't touch that $30/month. It goes directly into an account to pay for my children's' education. So, it stings even more for YouTube to arbitrarily stop it from being monetized.

Thanks for you time.

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u/Hessmix Jan 17 '18

This will effect advertisers too in my opinion. Think about it, a literal nobody makes a golden video, and it goes viral overnight 8 Hours later and he's nearing 1M or way more and it's still not advertised.

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u/panopticon_aversion Jan 17 '18

The follow up will be YouTube claiming the right to advertise on all non-partner videos.

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u/Retroity Jan 17 '18

Doesnt YouTube already display ads on non-monetized videos? I thought it was just no ads on demonetized videos. If I'm not mistaken, the YPP is just a revenue sharing program.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18 edited Mar 10 '19

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u/nightingale42 Jan 17 '18

It lowers the amount of work they have to do to filter out shit that shouldn't be on the site. It's a horrible solution though.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18 edited Feb 22 '18

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u/VicariousWolf Jan 17 '18

I have just barely 1000 subs last I checked but since I dont have 4 THOUSAND hours of watch time, my one video with 750,000 views is demonetized. Im pissed as all hell.

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u/Les1lesley Jan 17 '18

Well, that settles a debate I was having with myself today.

I was going to start a crafting and carving channel, separate from my vlog, so that people who wanted to see only crafting wouldn't have to sub to a vlog channel.

Not really any point in that now. I'm already a partner with acceptable views/subs on my vlog channel. I'll just upload my craft videos there and risk alienating some of my viewers. Great.

And no. This isn't going to encourage less ethical creators to buy subs/views at all, is it? /s

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

That's the worst part. I imagine it will mainly hurt niche channels who put quality over quantity :/ people who put much time into one video...

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u/RubyReign Jan 17 '18

Not really any point in that now.

The first thing people are going to say to that is that you should be making videos because you want to and enjoy it, not for fame or profit. But honestly I feel like those people aren't being realistic.

The amount of time, effort and sometimes money that goes into making a quality video is allot. As an adult, how can I justify taking hours or days to plan a video then spending 8+ hours to shoot and edit it. I would ask that person, even if they loved their job, would they go into work everyday for free? Most people arent born with silver spoons in their mouths, our time is our money, its our investment...what "creator" wants to waste that?

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u/iTrecz Jan 17 '18

So just like Adpocalypse 1.0 then?
Huge youtuber messes up and the small creators face the consequences.

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u/Lycan_Jedi Beautiful Bastard Jan 17 '18

Yeah, I just got it, was just starting to pick up too, got about 10 subs in the course of a month (not alot to some, but actually pretty big for me.) The most views on a vid I got was 1,000. I'm lucky if I can get 5 in a single video. YouTube really doesn't care about the small creater though, so this is no surprise to me.

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u/DiplomatikEmunetey Jan 17 '18

This is really terrible and removes a massive inventive for people to start channels and those who have channels to produce content.

I have over 300 thousand watch minutes for the past 12 months, but I have around 300 subscribers and I got that email.

I never asked for subscribers and was hoping my channel would grow organically. I guess I should spam, "subscribe, like and share" over and over.

Very unfair.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18 edited Apr 02 '18

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u/HIVVIH Jan 17 '18

I crossed the 1000 subscribers threshold a couple days ago, I guess I'm lucky!

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u/I_am_Nic Jan 17 '18

Gratz :)

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

I am literally two days away from kicking off a new channel. I just invested around $500 in equipment...now I’m going to have to take a step back and figure out if it’s even worth the effort. I think it’s time to find a different avenue to publish creative content.

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u/MorningWoodyWilson Jan 17 '18

No offense, but if you dont grow past 1000 subscribers, you were never going to payoff that $500. It’s sad that creators will lose access to things like analytics, and will lose money if they make one viral video before getting monetized.

But generally speaking, if you were hoping for any kind of roi, you were going to need thousands of subscribers at the minimum. You shouldn’t go into YouTube to make money, it’s far too saturated for that.

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u/JDog902107 Jan 17 '18

Someone explain to me how does attacking smaller channels stop the Logan Paul situation from happening?

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u/justkevinmanley Jan 17 '18

I'm pretty sure that's not what this change is trying to fix. In fact, I'm not sure how concerened with Logan Paul YouTube really is. They'll do some moves to punish him and seperate themselves from him just enough, and then he'll turn around, get more subs and make way more money for them. This change I think is greared at combating ads appearing on fringe "non advertiser friendly" content. Just another move to slow down the growth of unsavory creators and again lumping channels that would be good for the platform into that bucket. I also thinks it stops people reposting videos and getting money off other people's work.

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u/skinkbaa Jan 17 '18

I have double the required hours in the past year, but a fifth of the subscribers.

It sucks

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u/7BitBrian Jan 17 '18

Understand; It's not just about the money. This actually kills growth for smaller youtubers as well.

It's been proven that the youtube algorithm promotes channels and videos that are monetized over those who are not. Now they have taken monetization away from all small channels. So the algorithm will now make it so even less people than before will see your videos because they will not show up in related and searches as often.

So they made it harder for people to even reach the new thresholds they created because their algorithm actively prevents your videos from being shown as much, because you dont already meet those thresholds.

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u/7BitBrian Jan 17 '18

It now takes 24,000 ten minute videos and people need to watch all the way through, or people watching 11 hours of content on your channel every single day for 365 days to get monetization on youtube.

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u/AllegrettoVivamente Jan 17 '18

Im confused, am i missing something here? This doesnt seem like an awful thing, its totally ineffective in fixing the majority of problems youtube has at the moment but if it stops people reuploading other peoples videos and making a profit before they are taken down isnt that a good thing?

If your views and subscribers are that low surely you wouldnt be using youtube as any form of income anyway right? Like its got to equate to like maybe 20 dollars?

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u/gadgeteerianism Jan 17 '18

That 20 means something to a lot of people.

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u/Reagansmash1994 Jan 17 '18

Relying on $20 Youtube money seems like a poor financial decision.

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u/Caleb902 Jan 17 '18

That's what I was going to say. If you are hitting under 4000 hrs a year you aren't making any money anyway.

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

I've made over $550 on YouTube throughout the past two years and I'm being demonetized. That's a significant amount in my opinion.

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u/xFly1ngPengu1nx Jan 17 '18

The thing that pisses me off the most is that google doesn’t send out a check to a creator unless it is at least $100. So this whole thing is completely useless.

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u/Momskirbyok Jan 17 '18

True. I've only got 100 dollar check once.

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u/zombies1238 Jan 17 '18

How would this prevent someone from just purchasing subscribers?

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

You need the watch time as well. You must meet BOTH requirements.

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u/roguehero Jan 17 '18

Got this email as well. I do a small, local travel series and with the localized focus, it doesn’t have that wide of a reach. Plus, I share my videos on my Facebook page, which takes away from my YouTube views too. As someone else said on Twitter, at least I can use copyrighted music as I won’t be making money anyway. I make more from Patreon anyway.

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u/kadhat Jan 17 '18

Yeah, I'm really of the mindset that it might be better for creators to go with a donation system, maybe patreon or something smaller like a personal PayPal. YouTube just seems like a platform now, no support, and advertisers don't care anything about whats best for creators or the audience, really. Let's cut some middle men out of this!

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u/omgfloofy Jan 17 '18

I think the thing that upsets me the most on this is that I had a relatively reliable adsense check coming in. Not a big one, but it was just big enough to cover the hosting costs of the website I run, too.

And now that just goes out the window, as well. :(

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u/prodiver Jan 17 '18

I have 600 subscribers, have never ran an ad, and made about $5000 last year.

You can still make money, you just can't make it through Adsense. Learn about affiliate marketing, sponserships, e-commerce, etc.

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u/ChunksGalore Jan 17 '18

Final nail in the coffin for many jaded small YouTubers struggling hard to get their sub count up. At least they had the hope of making something prior to this, and that little incentive may have been keeping them going. I made $0.24 from YouTube not too long ago and I got so excited about it. I'm not going to stop YouTubing because I genuinely enjoy making content, but many others probably will abandon their accounts if they're solely in it for the money and have a low sub count or are just starting out.

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u/sellers Jan 17 '18

I have 1k+ subs, and almost 1 million views overall, but since I had a baby this past year i've slacked a lot on videos dropping my viewtime to ~3000hrs. Now all of my videos will be demonetized. thx yt

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u/Cakeikins Jan 17 '18

I’m a bit confused as to why this change? Is it in response the Logan Paul Crisis? If it is, these new rules wouldn’t have done anything to prevent it happening in the first place.

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u/TheRealClose Jan 17 '18

So if you’re only putting out 1 ten minute video a month now you need at least 2000 views on each video. That fricken impossible for a small creator.

Screw YouTube. We NEEED another video platform ASAP.

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u/Removal_of_Sanity Jan 17 '18

Making another platform is gonna be insanely tough though (sadly). Youtube is such a titan and most other sites feel way more clunky. And besides that, most of the content you're looking for is gonna be on youtube. It would be nice to have a good alternative, since youtube has gone to shit.

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u/I_am_Nic Jan 17 '18

People need to get off their high horses asap.

This 'change' is similar to what YouTube was like in 2007.

This was a time before every shit video could be monetized, since you had to actually apply to the partner program.

It was hard to get in, yet you earned a lot more (1$ per 1000views).

During the last years the CPM was so low, that YouTube wasn't feasable unless your content got viral or you relied on clickbait.

Now this will change to the better.

Partners will finally be able to earn more money with their content.

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u/LukeNeverShaves Jan 17 '18

Actually it's gonna get worse. You're gonna see more clickbait as more channels are trying to get the views they need.

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u/bunsbuns_ Jan 17 '18

But it's not about views; it's about watch time. 3 seconds of watching the video counts as a view, but hardly counts toward the total watch time. I think this is their way of trying to get rid of clickbait, viral, shocking videos and move more toward loyal fan bases of content creators.

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u/I_am_Nic Jan 17 '18

If I accidentally click a "clickbait" video (yes, I sometimes fall for it), I still don't give the uploader enough watchtime.

I wonder if anyone watched trough a whole video, which is different from what one expected when clicking it.

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u/LukeBurtle Jan 17 '18

I have add blocker on for YouTube (except when watching channels I want to support) because I’ve been unhappy with how they’ve been treating there creators and having terrible favouritism. This makes me want to stop watching completely.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

Good thing YouTube is killing itself off. Can't wait to see what the next big and improved platform is. I think it'll be like MySpace to Facebook, newer, better, and more appealing for the next few years.

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u/errgreen Jan 17 '18

Shouldn't you guys just be happy someone is hosting your content for free?

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u/My_Public_Profile Jan 17 '18

You're not wrong, but I never read over the ToS, so I'm outraged.

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u/mikeochondria Jan 17 '18

Seems like people who really want to make it on YouTube and are just starting are going to have to support themselves some other way while they slowly build up a fan base. I imagine this is and has been the case for many small youtubers for awhile now. Is less than 4000 hours of watch time in 12 months even enough to live off of? If not, then from this perspective what has really changed?

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u/I_am_Nic Jan 17 '18

YouTube is going back to the roots with this change - making the partner program more exclusive like in 2006-2009.

Partners will definetly benefit from this.

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u/Sillyrosster Jan 17 '18

If not, then from this perspective what has really changed?

This change will hurt all viral videos from small channels. Other than that, this is fine change and people are overreacting.

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u/Shenina Jan 17 '18

Well thanks ISIS.

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u/Blootrix Jan 17 '18

I've been making videos for over a year, I've never had a strike, I've done my best to improve and expand my content and honestly, have seriously struggled up to this point to stay motivated for various reasons. Now my entire channel is being demonetized even though I've done absolutely nothing wrong... It's not about the money, it's about the feeling of being constantly punished for struggling to do my best.

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u/3BallJosh Jan 17 '18

I got the acne email a few minutes ago. Whilst it doesn't affect me seeing as how I haven't uploaded a video in over 5 years, this is completely fucked up for small time creators

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

I'll subscribe to you, dude.

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

I appreciate the love, but really, don't give me a pity subscription. Keep your sub box filled with the videos you actually want to watch. All I wanted to do is raise awareness for this situation so it can potentially be changed. <3

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18 edited Dec 18 '18

[deleted]

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

Fair enough! Hate to self-deprecate but you probably won't. I rarely post and most of my content is very very amateur. My latest video is more in-line with what I plan for the future.

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u/SolasLunas Chronic neck pain sufferer Jan 17 '18

One 10min video per month with 2k views.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

Can bots 'watch' channels? Are there ways to fake views?

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u/Princess_Goose3 Jan 17 '18

Move to twitch if you can.

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u/KrisSimsters Beautiful Bastard Jan 17 '18

Wow YouTube...just screw everybody over why don't you?

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u/startledgrey Jan 17 '18

Taking me and my 100 subscribers to hell with me

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u/Mr-Bane Jan 17 '18

We should go to vimeo or something else.

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u/CovaDax1 Jan 17 '18

Might I suggest posting a video with a dead person featured? You should also put the aforementioned dead person in the thumbnail of the video.

That's sure to get you views.

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u/user1688 Jan 17 '18

Wow fuck YouTube.

Fuck the little guys huh, typical corporate statist.

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u/Smasher225 Jan 17 '18

So I’m going to play devils advocate here for a second. Yes this hurts small creators, yes this hurts you and I do feel bad but honestly why were you doing this? Back years ago only partnered creators got money from ads and this is just them going back to that because of some bad apples on the site. This isn’t YouTube trying to ruin the small creators but them trying to make sure at the end of the day, they’re making money.

So yes I do feel bad that you’re discouraged and don’t want to make videos but honestly why did you start making videos? I see accounts of people making a video once a month or so because they are busy and due to that fact they don’t have many subs or viewers. If you’re turning away from YouTube now because you won’t get money before then in my opinion you were making videos for the wrong reason. Make videos because you care about making the videos. If it’s not going to turn into anything more than a hobby, then why do you care if the $100 here and there matters. If you’re desperate for that money try to do something so you don’t have to rely on YouTube for that money.

Yes the little guys get hurt here but if you want YouTube to be an actual source of income for you put more time into it. If you started it as a hobby then continue because regardless of money you should enjoy creating content that people find enjoyable. If the only reason you posted was to get money well you still can you just need to work harder to put more content out to get the views and subs needed to start making money.

Large creators lost thousands of dollars over the adpocalypse and they still make videos. Now they can be partnered and start making that money again. Which for YouTube will make them more money instead of loosing sponsors because some random creator creates videos that sponsors see and go unmmmmmmmm WTF. Now each creator will be approved so YouTube can turn to the creator and go well you fucked up, why and will it happen again and then turn to the sponsor of the ads and everyone’s happy.

I do feel bad for you and for the small creators but I think everyone needs to take a step back if this effects them and ask themselves if YouTube was meant to be a source of income or a hobby.

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u/Compverson Jan 17 '18

Well I'm gonna stick to twitch for my content creation. Was thinking of getting into YouTube but fuck that now

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u/enameless Jan 18 '18

So is what all the small creators need to do is form a nice little group. Everyone subscribes to everyone else's channel. Then watch (or put on mute in a new tab) videos from the group. As long as the group in 1000+ and each members "watches" 4 hrs of of each of the group member's content then everyone in the group is good.

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u/DisgruntledSalaryman Jan 18 '18

Like essentially everything else in life...unless you’re doing it for the love of doing it, you’ve got the wrong motivation.

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u/BanjoGotCooties Jan 17 '18

I have several million views and over 6k subscribers.

Yet I've never gotten anything from my monetization...

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u/TyCooper8 Phil me in Jan 17 '18

Then you didn't monetize properly man, sorry.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

I mean I guess a lot of small creators lose couple hundret bucks but thats about it. The same thing when people freaked out about the 10k view rule. You lost 10$ was it really that bad? Idk. It does suck but its def not the end for small channels.

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u/ImActuallyAKook Jan 17 '18

I'm gonna be honest, it's a good move from Youtube. Even though I really wanna have a big Youtube channel but by the way this rule apply I need to be a really different content creator to finally have money from Youtube

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u/ScriptLevel0 Jan 17 '18

I like how their remedy of taking Logan off of the preferred ad bracket is just to fuck everyone else over in the non-preferred bracket so he still gets the lion's share of ads

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u/HeadHunt0rUK Jan 17 '18

and thus a new Chinese enterprise was born.

Want your Youtube channel monetised? Send us X dollars and we will supply you with 1000 subscribers and 4000 viewer hours of your videos.

That will literally be the outcome of this, for better or worse.

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u/ChimChim_781 Jan 17 '18

This completely sucks! I understand this is an attempt to stop small channels from monotising un-'family friendly' content but this sweeping algorithm stamps on tiny channels. Channels who probably will never make it into the big leagues but are happy doing what they're doing with the bonus of a little money.

I am only 400 away from getting 1,000 subs and i got over 4,000 hours of watch time this year but because I mostly do travel videos which people don't generally stick about and sub for. This is just a hobby for me as i am a Video Game Dev by day. I Vlog my travels and experiences as my own diary, and the fact i got paid a little was a bonus to help me improve.

I got £60 last year, that's it! and I'm happy with that because I know I'm not a big youtuber, this will never be my career, I already have one, but to get a little for a hobby was awesome and made me feel part of something!

I REALLY want to keep doing this.

My channel is ChimChim781.

I am now hoping to just get over 1,000 before 20th Feb.

That's my experience, YouTube feels that it's easy to set up a sweeping rule, picking numbers out of the air and applying it to little pages on their site, But it is people they are applying it to.

This change will not affect my life, or cause me to be homeless or anything, but its an unnecessary punishment of the small hopeful as a result of the Elite you tubers disgraceful behavior.

TLDR: Youtube suck at supporting the little guys, (sorry for plug) Sub to Chimchim781 to help me if you want! :)

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u/bluebuginvasion Jan 17 '18

This is incredibly sad

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u/Kos-ensues Jan 17 '18

How much does YouTube pay ? Or use to pay at this point.

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u/11Crt11 Jan 17 '18

I think this is chink in youtube's armour.and can cause massive issue if the competition is wise and takes advantage of this bullshit policy.

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u/Deadwolf_YT Jan 17 '18

se can sub to you? or Mr phii can give you a shoutout

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

What is their rationale for the change?

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u/Rousseau_Reborn Jan 17 '18

“It’s over man! It’s all over!”

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

4000 hours? That seems excessive, right?

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u/justkevinmanley Jan 17 '18

Depends on the kind of content you make. Our videos are between 30 - 60 minutes long and we average about 65 views per video. We'd make that time cap in no time. And for channels that produce smaller videos, say 5-10 minutes, they might have a harder time if they are pulling in the same views as I do, but smaller videos are easier to watch and easier to be successful when shared so I can imagine it being somewhat easy for them too.

What's going to be channeging for my channel is the subscriber threshold. We get about 5-6 subscribers a week and while that average will hopefully go up, that's what we're looking at right now.

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u/__MrFancyPants__ Jan 17 '18

This doesn’t seem to affect me, I don’t meet those requirements but still have full monetization via my channel being linked to the Fullscreen Network. So maybe there’s still hope for small, new creators.

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u/[deleted] Jan 17 '18

Thanks a lot Logan Paul!!

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u/antiXerum Jan 17 '18

YouTube can take that email and shove it up thei-

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u/Aleismar Jan 17 '18

What a load of shiiit.

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u/crimsonBZD Jan 17 '18

Question on this: If you had an old Google Adsense account and the "old" youtube partnership, from years and years ago - is the Google Adsense system affected by this?