YouTube is making it harder for creators to start earning money

Do you dream of making money as a content creator?

Well, it’s about to get harder to qualify for YouTube’s program that pays creators.

YouTube announced on Monday that it’s raising the entry requirements for the main tier of its YouTube Partner Program (YPP), the video platform’s advertising revenue-sharing program. “The biggest changes are on what it takes to earn from ads rev-share,” Amjad Hanif, YouTube’s VP of creator product, said in a video about the changes.

The updates will particularly affect Shorts creators, who publish short-form content to YouTube.

Before you panic: “If you are in YPP today, you stay in YPP,” Hanif said.

Here are the key changes affecting creators — which will go into effect on February 1: Creator Austen Tosone told Business Insider that the changes could make it “so much tougher for small creators,” adding that many creators already find monetizing their long-form video content challenging.

YouTube’s Hanif said the platform is making the adjustments because of the “growth of the creator ecosystem over the last several years.” The creator economy looks very different than it did in 2018, when YouTube last updated its monetization requirements for long-form videos.

Now, the program has 3 million creators. (YouTube’s program launched in 2007, making it almost old enough to drink in the US.) The rise of short-form videos, for which YouTube introduced a permanent revenue-sharing model in 2023, has also changed the platform.

Hanif pointed to the wide variability in views on short-form videos that creators encounter when he explained the requirement to maintain 10 million qualified views. “We had a case where if you had only a few thousand views, you might have a few cents for that month,” he said. “Instead, we’d like to design the program in a way where it rewards creators who are leaned in, who are driving views and engagement.” In other words, you won’t be able to keep making money if you’re a one-hit wonder with a viral video.

You’re going to have to keep those viral hits coming in order to cash out.