Late Tuesday night after I was done streaming, I started seeing things about changes to the Youtube Partner Program. Course this is never good and this was the worst change yet. The TLDR is in order to be a partner channel you will have to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watched minutes with in the last 12 months to be considered for the partner program and Im losing partner status sometime in February.
Wow where do I start with this… Well lets start at the start of the year with Logan Pulls controversy and Youtube taking actions agents him and saying they would be making some changes. This already signaled to me that wasn't going to be good for anyone. Now we know what changes they made and they make no sense. Mostly these new rules just punish smaller channels that you know don’t film dead body’s and are just trying to make a living.
Like I said before the new rules are 1,000 Subs and 4,000 watch minutes within 12 months. The second part of this is actually fine. On my channel im just shy of that watch minute requirement, but the 1,000 subs needed is just wrong. I think its a well known secret that youtube subscriptions mean nothing. I currently have about 330 subscribers to my channel and 86% of my views come from non subscribers and only 13% of my views come from subscribers. Now im just a very small channel but I watch a lot of big youtubers and I’ve herd similar things from them as well that most of their views also come from non subscribers.
I know why they put the subscriber numbers as a requirement, they need a way to let the advertisers know the audience size and its part of youtube algorithm. In reality though the number means nothing, watch minutes mean way more.
For me it has nothing to do with the money I already wasn’t making money since the last changes, and even before that I didn’t make much a few cents here maybe a dollar there. What it really is about them opening the program to just about everyone and then because of a few big youtubers and poorly placed ads now the small youtubers have to pay the price and have the rules changed from underneath them.
I know life isn’t fair but if I agreed to one set of rules and Youtube changes the rules after I think youtube should be stuck with me unless I brake that agreement. I feel its wrong that they are changing the rules, I feel the channels in the partner program should be grandfathered in. I also think they should drop the the subscription portion of the rules and have it be just the 4,000 watch minutes maybe even up it a bit. Though lets face it Im talking into the void of the internet and youtube isn’t going to listen unless its coming from one of its advertisers.
