We all love YouTube. From the homemade amateur videos to the extremely professional studio flicks. It’s so convenient and easy.
And it used to be a huge cash cow for creators who knew how to draw an audience. But recently new limitations have made it a little more difficult for the average man to get involved. But things might have just gotten so much sweeter with the addition of new monetization tools.
Last week, YouTube announced it would be adding new options for creators to make money from their content. Most of the options are reminiscent of what other platforms have tried, but they could still alleviate a problem YouTubers have been facing for over a year.
3 New YouTube Monetization Features:
- The first feature is a $4.99 Channel Membership that lets users pay for exclusive content on a channel. That content can be emoji, live streams, special badges, and extra videos, depending on what the content creator offers. From the sound of it, it’s almost exactly like Twitch’s subscriptions, down to the price. But that system ain’t broke, so why bother fixing it? It’s been available for a small number of users in a beta test as “Sponsorships,” but is now going to be made available to eligible users with over 100,000 followers.
- The second feature is a merchandise shelf that allows users to sell their swag underneath every video. Up to now, creators had to link to their personal storefronts in the description of every video. Now they have a section on their channel where they can show off prices and pictures of each item. Here’s what it looks like on a Lucas the Spider video:
- The third feature is Premieres, which allows creators to show off pre-recorded videos in a live stream with a public landing page where they can interact with fans as the video goes live. It’s basically what the name suggests it is, with the added benefit that YouTubers can now have Super Chats — where users pay to have their comments pinned to the top of the stream — for every upload.
To say these new options come with a complicated and tragic backstory wouldn’t be an exaggeration. Last year, the so-called “YouTube Apocalypse” commenced when YouTube changed its rules on advertising. It did so in response to the controversy over the fact that ads were playing over videos containing extremist content. The UK government froze all ad spending when its ads played over such videos. Several other advertisers followed, pulling out of YouTube’s platform and, in response, Google put new rules in place.
These new options might be just the ticket to help the site’s content creators make money from their hard work while not slackening its policies against controversial content.