YouTube is a video-sharing platform with over one billion users and is the most popular website as of 2020. With over 37 million active YouTube channels, there are over 22,000 Youtubers with over one million subscribers, but is YouTube being fair to said creators?
In 2009, YouTube began running ads during videos in an effort to begin monetization of certain videos with a high number of views. With the most recent gain of content creators in the current years, YouTube has made changes to their video monetization guidelines and creators aren’t happy.
Creators who are a part of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) receive a share of the ad revenue from each ad that runs during their video. However, with the platform’s update to their terms of service, creators who are not a part of the YPP are subject to advertisements to run during their videos even if they do not opt for it. Changes to this policy means that YouTube will not share compensation from those ads with content creators.
While creators are attempting to adapt to this new policy or change their main content streaming platform, they are not allowed to talk about it as their video will be flagged by YouTube. YouTubers served with one or more strikes automatically have the video deleted and the ability to monetize restricted in the future.
The ability to gain those features back takes months of work especially for creators with smaller channels who have to compete with creators with a major following. With these new monetization guidelines, many small creators will begin to falter in profits due to YouTube taking advantage of advertisement revenue.
Very informative article.
Good information to know, very relative to small businesses and new content creators.
Really appreciate you raising this topic/subject. Thank you kindly. As a creator who recently applied for monetisation...I was denied and told that I'd have to remove most of my content and apply again within 30 days. Of course, by removing the said content, I'd no longer be eligible. Meanwhile, YT are kindly placing ads on the very videos of mine that they said were unsuitable for ads. I only became aware of this when one of my subscribers told me that they were watching all the ads in order to help me earn some money. I politely explained that I was unaware of the adverts and that I certainly wasn't earning any money from my channel. I fell that it has killed my channel as there will never be any means of monetising without scrapping almost all of my content...which means that my subscribers won't be interested in my new content and that comes as no surprise. YT have me by the short and curlies and have put me in a very awkward position. I've had other channels that have blown up within a month but then been issued with strikes because haters hated and yt removed those videos but surprise surprise...the people who hated, then uploaded the removed content on their own channels and I was helpless to do anything because I no longer had the videos on my channel to prove they were mine. It's such a biased and unfair channel with guidelines that are forever shifting and creators are targeted for seemingly benign content. I reported a pornographic video and it took YT 6 months to do anything...all they did was to age restrict it but no verification was required to view it and it immediately played without any hassle. It's a video showing graphic sexual acts and yet...YT says it doesn't allow such things. I feel nothing but frustration for a platform that changes the rules like the weather and constantly recommends only really popular channels