What YouTube’s New Policy Means for Channel Owners

You may have been wondering why a lot of YouTubers are in panic mode asking people to subscribe to their channels; the reason is YouTube is tightening the rules around its partner program and raising the requirements that a channel/creator must meet in order to monetize videos.

Effective immediately, as a channel owner, you must have up to 4,000 hours of watch time on your channel within the past 12 months and have at least 1,000 subscribers before you will be eligible to join YouTube’s Partner Program. Prior to this new policy, all you needed to be part of YouTube’s Partner Program (YPP) was 10,000 public views.

YouTube Partner Program is the platform that allows you make money from videos you upload on YouTube.

This new policy will definitely hurt existing channels with less than 1,000 subscribers and make it harder for new channels to reach monetization, but YouTube in a blogpost, said that the higher standards will help prevent potentially inappropriate videos from monetizing which can hurt revenue for everyone.

Creators/Channel owners have a 30-day grace period before this new policy takes full effect according to YouTube.

“On February 20th, 2018, we’ll also implement this threshold across existing channels on the platform, to allow for a 30 day grace period. On that date, channels with fewer than 1,000 subs or 4,000 watch hours will no longer be able to earn money on YouTube. When they reach 1,000 subs and 4,000 watch hours they will be automatically re-evaluated under strict criteria to ensure they comply with our policies. New channels will need to apply, and their application will be evaluated when they hit these milestones,” YouTube said.

If you have a channel and you were previously earning money but can’t meet this new threshold, you will be paid what you have already earned based on AdSense polices.

YouTube isn’t going to use only size to determine if a channel is suitable for monetization, as any violation of YouTube’s Community Guidelines, Monetization Basics & Policies, Terms of Service, and Google AdSense program policies, will get you kicked out of its partner program.

A lot of channel owners are putting their channels out there for what is now being called Sub4Sub (one channel owner subscribing to another’s channel).

BNers, what are your thoughts on this new policy?