I’ve been working with creators for over a decade now, since starting Night in my bedroom in 2015. The ways creators make money haven’t really shifted much over the last decade, but the rules around how they get monetized have. Those rules changed again recently when YouTube announced new YPP (YouTube Partner Program) guidelines. This comes at a really interesting time as the platform is having to adjust to AI-first channels and billions of daily views from YouTube Shorts. It brought up a thought I’ve continued to have. Social platforms may be heading toward a future where it becomes increasingly difficult for creators to rely on them for consistent advertising revenue.
How Does YPP Compare to Other Social Platforms?
YouTube has now made it harder for new creators to get ads on their videos. The biggest change to YouTube’s YPP since 2018 just happened, with creators now having to hit twice the previous engagement criteria: 8,000 hours watched in 365 days or 20 million Shorts views in 90 days.
Here’s how that compares to the other major platforms:
Snapchat: 50,000 followers + 15,000 hours of view time in the last 28 days, with 3,000 of those hours coming from Spotlight.
Instagram: No broad ad-revenue-sharing program. Creators are primarily making money through brand deals and subscriptions/affiliate marketing.
X: Starting September 8, creators will need 500 verified followers and 500,000 Home Timeline impressions from verified users in the last 90 days to qualify for Original Content Rewards.
TikTok: 10,000 followers and 100,000 video views in the last 30 days to qualify for the Creator Rewards Program.
The interesting thing to me is that YouTube now has one of the highest barriers to monetization among the major platforms. It has historically been the platform where a smaller creator could build an audience and monetize content.
How This Fits Into the Macro Trend of Monetization
We’ve all seen the headlines over the years of advertisers pulling out of YouTube over different controversies. Whether it’s PewDiePie or Elsagate, YouTube has had its fair share of issues that they’ve had to address. I’ve said this before, but I do believe that the platforms want a much larger middle class. You can read about that in more detail here. Will that cause a ripple effect for creators having a harder time breaking into that middle class to unlock advertising dollars?
The journey to becoming a content creator, while easier now because of short-form content and the ability to get discovered, is going to be more difficult when it comes to making a consistent living as the middle class becomes more crowded.
As I was writing this, news broke that YouTube will now count a view the moment a video starts playing. They’re still keeping the original view metric, now called “Engaged Views,” and that will remain an important metric for monetization. However, public-facing views for creators are going to be significantly inflated, especially with autoplay on the homepage now counting as a view. This is going to have a real impact on brand deals and how creators and brands negotiate. YouTube is one of the last major platforms to make its public view count an exposure metric. Pay attention to this when the change goes into effect today.
Will We See a Shift Away From Niche Content?
This YPP change will undoubtedly lead to creators making changes to the type of content they create. Where would I focus my time as a new creator? I think it’s obvious you’d want to use short-form, as it’s an easier path to audience growth and views to eventually get monetized. Spending time on a 10–20 minute video that may only generate a small amount of watch time is going to be a much bigger sunk cost than churning out Shorts.
Instead of deep, niche content, I could see a resurgence in trend hacking, with creators focusing more on how viral their content can be with a general audience rather than catering to a hyper-niche audience, which is what we’ve been seeing more of lately. I can’t imagine reading this as someone who makes animated content that can take weeks or months to produce. Will we start to see channels jump on trends, hit the YPP threshold, and then pivot back to the content they originally wanted to make?
The Big Takeaway
The platforms are making it easier than ever to get attention, but harder to turn that attention into a sustainable business. I think we’re going to see new creators adapt by making more content designed to go viral and relying less on niche content. The creators who figure out how to build an audience while also building revenue streams outside of the platforms are going to have a major advantage.
If you enjoy reading Night Light each week, refer a friend and get some Night swag, including a personal video from me, an invite to our Discord, and I’ll even put your picture up on the walls of our office forever.
The viral movie Niu Lai just became one of the most profitable movies of all time. After going viral on the internet for its low production cost (and also just looking like it was made 20 years ago), the movie has reportedly made more than $4 million on a reported $200 budget. No AI needed.
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