As you may have heard, or not heard, Youtube has decided to create stricter rules for Monetizing Videos! We are going to attempt to break down this news and give you an understanding as to how this affects you as an independent artist!

WHY?

The new channel-monetization guidelines are one part of an attempt to institute a stricter quality-assurance strategy and providing more protection for their advertisers. Let’s face it, when their advertisers are happy, YouTube is happy! The more advertisers on YouTube, the better the chances that YouTube will remain a viable venue to share, promote, and monetize your music.

YouTube needs to assure it’s advertisers that the content that their ad is going to be seen on is not only reaching their target market, but is appropriate in it’s content. The big money advertisers don’t want to have their ad on any content that promotes hate, violence or inappropriate images. These new rules gives YouTube a way to “thin the herd” so to speak to in order to protect their advertisers from these kind of abusive content having their ads attached to them.

The New Rules

As of February 20th, channels included in the Partner Program must have:

• 1,000+ subscribers
• 4,000+ hours of watch-time within the last 12 months

If you meet these requirements then you are good to go! If your channel doesn’t meet this new criteria you will no longer be allowed to directly monetize the videos you’ve uploaded to your channel. You will still be eligible for your streaming royalties, but you will not be allowed to get money from ads that run on your content.

OH NO what Should I DO?

Let’s face it, if you have not reached these requirements you weren’t making that much money anyway. The Partner program was really designed to encourage content providers that are creating channels with an active engaged fanbase. If you think you can just park your video’s on YouTube and rack in the bucks you are not being realistic.

It takes hard work, and time to attract subscribers to your channel. Your content has to rise above the noise of the millions of video’s that on this platform. So, instead of fretting over pennies you are going to lose, it might be time to work on a strategy to increase your subscribers and their engagement with your content. One great resource is the “YouTube Academy” If you follow these steps outlined on this site you can start working towards bringing your channel up to these new requirements and start earning good money from your content!