Yowza, YouTube just cut its monetization requirement in half

Jul 01, 2023

If you’ve ever seen one of my YouTube videos, you know I’m a MASSIVE fan of the Medium platform.

One of the main reasons for that is the relatively low bar for monetization.

While YouTube requires 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours (over the past 365 days), Medium just asks you to have 100 followers and one published article to be considered.

The end result is that small-time creators can start getting paid a fair wage for their work almost immediately.

That makes Medium, in my humble opinion, the best platform to get started on if you want to make money online fairly quickly.

I also think Medium is far superior to freelancing because your articles have the potential to pay you forever.

Contrast that with YouTube, where it can take months — and frequently years — to see a dime for your hard work.

The road to YouTube monetization is a long and arduous one. (Digital illustration credit: James Julian/DallE2)

The grind

Take me, for example. I started writing on Medium back in late August.

Since then, I’ve been paid approximately $14,250 (in Canadian dollars, which is my home currency) for my work here.

Meanwhile, I posted my first YouTube video in late September — one month later — and have published some 40 videos since then.

My earnings from YouTube?

Zero dollars.

Here’s where I stand on the monetization front as of today:

As you can see, I’m into the final quarter of the subscriber requirement, but still what feels like miles away from the watch hours number.

As I wrote last week, the seemingly never-ending grind has me thinking about quitting that platform altogether.

I recommitted to making one final push to get over the monetization hurdles, however.

And today, the great news: the bar is coming down to meet me, not the other way around.

The changes

So what’s changing, exactly?

Well, effectively YouTube is adding a monetization step before you get to full profit sharing.

Think of it like graduated licensing: you get your learner’s permit, then you get a restricted license, then you get a full one.

So what does this look like in practice?

Well, as the headline above suggests, the required subscriber count is being slashed by 50%.

At some point soon, creators in select countries (mine, along with the US, UK, Taiwan, and South Korea), will only need the following to qualify for the new monetization tier:

500 subscribers
3,000 public watch hours (or 3 millions shorts views)
3 new videos over the past 90 days

Here’s the big catch: in order to qualify for the biggest money maker of all — revenue sharing from ads — you do still need to meet the bigger requirement.

However, the new tier at least adds a reward for having the tenacity to reach these new, lower requirements (and it does require a lot of tenacity).

After you reach those requirements, you’ll have access to the following:

Paid chat
A tipping function
Channel memberships
YouTube Shopping tools

For people like myself, who have a very niche topic but a very passionate audience, this opens a lot of doors.

And the great news is, once you’re in, you don’t have to reapply to the YouTube Partner Program. That means you can start earning ad revenue right after meeting the bigger requirement.

Does it still suck that Google has been serving ads on my content for like 8–9 months without sharing the ad revenue with me?

Absolutely.

But adding a new monetization tier is showing me a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

It comes at a point when I think a lot of people probably decide all the effort isn’t worth it and give up.

Now, I feel at least a bit more encouraged to keep pushing.

This post is republished from my Medium publication Create Every Day.

Subscribe to Medium today using my link ($5 a month, cancel any time) — I’ll get a lil’ kickback, and you’ll get all the awesome content Medium has to offer, risk-free!

My most-read stories

The latest from me

Get an email every time I publish so you don’t miss a story!

James Julian's Publish Every Day

Discussion about this post