YouTube New Eligiblity Criteria - Really YouTube, really?!

Hi guys,

I'm sure you're painfully aware of the new policy in place by YouTube regarding monetisation, if you run a small channel like me. 

Today I received a message in my inbox, which I can assure you, did not put a smile on my face.  (I have left it at the end of this post for you)

The new threshold for monetisation is 4,000 hours of watch time in the last 12 months, which is hard for a small channel to achieve, and 1,000 subscribers.  My channel, Jenny E, is currently, at the time of writing this, at 611 subscribers and 1,500 hours of watch time in the last 12 months.  I put a lot of hard work, effort and love into my channel and its very upsetting to be suddenly told I can no longer earn any money from doing it.  Not that it was a lot of income, but it was something.

Link to my channel encase you're interested - www.youtube.com/jennye

There is speculation that this is due to Logan Paul's recent video, featuring what appeared to be a recent suicide victim, in the 'Japanese Suicide Forest'.  There has been massive backlash over his video and YouTube have since removed him from their, 'Google Preferred' (A group designed to give advertisers access to the top 5% of content creators) and his YouTube Red projects put on hold.

It seems beyond ridiculous to me that small content creators like myself and quite possibly like you too, are now suffering for what a giant YouTuber like Logan Paul did.  Whether that is the whole story or not is not made clear, this is speculation.  It seems like recently YouTube is going more and more down a rabbit hole of controlling its creators to within an inch of their lives. 

This is also supposedly in response to smaller channels potentially not being good for the community and that you should really be meeting these thresholds if you're serious about being a content creator and smaller channels could be creating bad content, not suitable for advertisers. 

Recently YouTube has been clamping down on what is suitable content for the platform and what is not, meaning that you cant say a single swear word or talk about anything they don't approve of without getting demonetised.  YouTube needs a bit of regulation, but they do have YouTube kids, a platform that is supposed to be for family friendly content, so why does the whole platform need to be regulated to within an inch of its life? 

Lets hope that they change their mind on this, but I don't think is likely.

I hope to soon be able to meet the threshold, but it will certainly require a lot of work and there are plenty of channels smaller than mine, that I know are made with a lot of love and effort and this is very unfair on all of us smaller creators who love our channels.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, I'd love to know what you think, for now I'll finish with the message they sent me.

Love and kisses,

Jenny E xxx

The below message was e-mailed to me this morning.

Today we are announcing changes to the YouTube Partner Program (YPP). While our goal remains to keep the YPP open to as many channels as possible, we recognise that we need more safeguards in place to protect creator revenue across the YouTube ecosystem What's Changing

Under the new eligibility requirements announced today, your YouTube channel, Jenny E, is no longer eligible for monetisation because it does not meet the new threshold of 4,000 hours of watch time within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. As a result, your channel will lose access to all monetisation tools and features associated with the YouTube Partner Program on 20 February 2018 unless you surpass this threshold in the next 30 days. Accordingly, this email serves as 30 days notice that your YouTube Partner Program terms are terminated.

One of YouTube’s core values is to provide anyone the opportunity to earn money from a thriving channel. Creators who haven’t yet reached this new threshold can continue to benefit from our Creator Academy, our Help Centre and all the resources on the Creator Site to grow their channels. Once your channel reaches the new threshold, it will be reviewed to make sure it adheres to our policies and guidelines, and if so, monetisation will be re-enabled.