Image courtesy: Tech Crunch
YouTube‘s Partner Program, which allows users to earn money from their videos, has reached 2 million creators, the company said on Monday. The programme has helped top artists like PewDiePie and Jenna Marbles convert YouTube into a viable business, but it has also caused concern for the firm when qualified partners — frequently those same top creators — do something that reflects poorly on the platform and temporarily drives away advertisers.
Creators who qualify for the Partner Program (at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of total watch time on your channel in the last 12 months) can make money through advertisements, subscription fees, contributions, livestreaming, and YouTube Premium income.
The Google-owned firm has battled at times to strike a balance between having a large number of producers who generate a lot of ad income and maintaining a small number of artists. This has included choosing whether to remove advertisements from channels that engage in harassment or other problematic material; while YouTube gets a share of qualifying artists’ ad income, sponsors will drop their ads if they are concerned about a channel’s content.
In reaction to some creator-on-creator abuse, which has been a prominent feature of the platform for years, YouTube revised its harassment policy in 2019 and has punished artists who exceed legal or ethical lines by demonetizing their channels. In the last year, this has included demonetizing videos that reference the coronavirus, a delicate subject.
In a blog post, YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan, stated that the number of new channels joining the programme in 2020 has more than doubled when compared to 2019, and the number of YouTube channels making six figures or more in revenue is up 35% year over year (though he did not specify how many creators make that much money).
“Finding new ways to reward trusted creators financially and help them ramp up their businesses will always be a top priority for us,” Mohan said.
