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Back in April 2017, YouTube set a YouTube Partner Program eligibility requirement was 10,000 lifetime views. And may small creators were able to enable monetization and earn a decent however small eranings. But YouTube has raised the bar. YouTube has started to stop monetization if - YouTube Channel doesn’t meet the new threshold of 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. This is going to affect many small creators who are starting and many smaller creators who focus on a small niche area.
An excerpt from the YouTube Monetization termination email reads:
Under the new eligibility requirements announced today, your YouTube channel, , is no longer eligible for monetization because it doesn’t meet the new threshold of 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. As a result, your channel will lose access to all monetization tools and features associated with the YouTube Partner Program on February 20, 2018 unless you surpass this threshold in the next 30 days. Accordingly, this email serves as 30 days notice that your YouTube Partner Program terms are terminated.
Over the past couple of years, YouTube had updated their policies quite a few times to restrict monetization on videos. Many creators saw their videos not eligible for monetization as the videos are not advertiser friendly and creators had to apply for review. And in some cases, YouTube review team would enable monetization after manual review but some would not make the cut affecting monetization on those videos. Some opine that the type of content posted is becoming more advertiser-centric. However, since creators are monetizing, it also makes sense that the content is advertiser friendly.
This new YouTube policy will allow for fewer competition among creators applying for monetization, and restrict the number of creators eligible for monetization. This will especially hurt small players.
There are of course many spam channels and channels promoting controversial content. There are many channels on YouTube who continue to use deceptive thumbnails to attract visitors to click on their videos. Such practice is actually against YouTube policies but we continue to see such channels thrive with many subscribers. I personally think the new YouTube policy is going to affect some of those channels as these channels already have many views earned from "deceptive methods" and many subscribers too. While some honest smaller creators with lesser number of views and subscribers will be hit, killing them.
Instead of making it more difficult for honest, smaller creators, it would have been better to crackdown on these spam channels with deceptive content, which are actually in violation of YouTube policies but still thriving.
Has your YouTube monetization been stopped by YouTube? How do you feel about this update from YouTube?
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