It Takes Money to Make Money
YouTube and Google have announced that new channels will need to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months to be eligible for ads.
This raises the bar extremely high for new channels to start receiving ad revenue. That being said, it also raises the debate on the motive behind content production on YouTube.
When I started producing videos on YouTube in 2008 my main goal was to help musicians obtain larger audiences online. Ten years later, this is still my main objective, as well as helping bridge cultural gaps.
In a Google blog post the company stated:
‘We are passionate about protecting our users, advertisers and creators and making sure YouTube is not a place that can be co-opted by bad actors. While we took several steps last year to protect advertisers from inappropriate content, we know we need to do more to ensure that their ads run alongside content that reflects their values.’
YouTube is making it harder for unwanted content to be paired with advertisers. In that sense, I agree with this move. In contrast, producers that have been working hard to obtain ad revenue will have to work much harder and smarter to see financial support from Google and YouTube.
Personally, I am lucky enough to be within the YouTube Partner Program, but I still desire for YouTube and Google to offer me an interview after applying for dozens of positions in connection to hopefully obtain full time job with the company. My point here is that being content is a form of wisdom.
Google is a multibillion dollar company that I assume most YouTube producers want to be more apart of to help financially support themselves in an era of outsourcing jobs, wages staying stagnate, low wage jobs being the main driving source to keeping unemployment numbers low, raising prices in healthcare and cost of living; this overall creates a more stressful environment for many Americans. That stress creates resentment to major corporations.
My advice for many people that feel this stress is to do the work to build a business. Several of the larger channels on YouTube published content without the goal of making money.
The old saying of it takes money to make money is now even more vital in the digital landscape.
If you want to obtain the viewership that is needed to receive ad revenue via Google AdSense, it is going to take working hard, as well as paying off YouTube or via Google AdWords to build the traffic to see growth.
The problems with these changes are highlighted with the YouTube video below by The Know.
