YouTube changes requirements for monetisation.

The great thing about SteemIt that I love is that the barrier to entry is quite low compared to other traditional content creation websites like WordPress and YouTube. If you're honest and you put in a few hours of good research and writing, it is relatively easy to make a few dollars here within a short period time (especially when you compare it to WordPress and YouTube).

As some of you may or may not have heard the story doing the rounds at the moment in the YouTube community is YouTube's alteration to its monetisation requirements that was released on the 16th of January.

These reforms are really an extension to the Adpocalypse event that occured last year over concerns of YouTube's advertising clients and the YouTube content being used to promote their ads.

YouTube has indicated in its statement that these changes are a necessity to safeguard the future of advertising revenue for the platform and to prevent "bad actors" from negatively affecting YouTube and its content creators. [1]

The old criteria for monetisation on YouTube used to be the accumulation of 10,000 life time views. [2] The new criteria requires content creators to have 1,000 subscribers and 4000 hours of video watch time in the past 12 month period to be eligible for monetisation. [1] These reforms are scheduled to be implemented by the 20th of February to allow existing users to have a 30 day grace period. [2]

A quick search on YouTube reveals a lot of discontent amongst the smaller up and coming content creators with subscribers below the 1000 threshold. At the moment it seems a lot of these up and coming channels plan on looking to Patreon, sponsorship deals and the development of their own merchandise and products to cover the revenue shortfall.

I personally think Patreon is a great platform but in reality only a percentage of one's followers can really be in a position to offer support in this way. There is also the risk as well that Patreon, being a private company can evict you from their platform if you are a controversial figure and you violate their community guidelines. Lauren Southern comes to mind as an example of a YouTube creator who was banned from their platform. [3]

It is also relatively simple to set up your own merchandise line but you need to be sure that your content and your fan base will translate into sales before you'll actually see a result from this. A lot of dropshipping and merchandise creation websites can also have varying quality and delivery lead time issues. You might be building great quality content and a community on YouTube, but if your merchandise lets your followers down then your brand is surely to suffer.

So all this has me thinking:

I think YouTube's alteration to its monetisation criteria presents Steemians and DTubians, who are passionate about the promotion and the mainstream adoption, with a great opportunity to migrate the affected YouTube users over to these platforms.

From a business risk mitigation standpoint though, the sad fact of the matter is that online content creators can never rely on one revenue stream alone, or realistically place their full faith in any one platform. It is incumbent on content creators to diversify their revenue streams as much as possible to mitigate counterparty risk in their business. The internet is an ever-evolving ecosystem. This creates great opportunity for success and wealth, but also introduces an element of risk and uncertainty for those who conduct business and derive their livelihoods from it.

Please follow, resteem and upvote if you like my work!

Thanks,

Apsis Trading.

P.S. I apologise for the meme. It may not translate to overseas folks as it is a very Australian-centric meme. Here is a link to the back story and the original meme as well:

Know your meme: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gina-rinehart-poverty-gaffes

Original meme: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3qsdfb