YouTube Just Made It Even Easier To Make Money Through Its Monetization Program

Compared to its creation in 2005 as a mere online novelty, YouTube has become one of the major hubs for online independent entertainment. Through the YouTube Partner Program, multiple content creators like PewDiePie and MrBeast have risen to exceptional prominence, not only setting up careers but establishing entire brand identities. New YouTube Partners are joining up all the time, looking to turn their hobbies into paying jobs, which is why the site has decided to lower the bar of entry and make the program a bit more accessible.

Today, YouTube announced on its official blog that it has altered the prerequisites for a channel on the platform to join the YouTube Partner Program and begin monetizing its content. While the new rules are similar to the old ones, they are more lenient and reachable. Ideally, these new requirements will be much more quickly and easily attained by channel owners, which will allow more of them to get in with the program and start turning those channels into income streams.

Previously, YouTube maintained two prerequisites for joining the Partner Program. First, your channel needed to have at least 1,000 subscribers. Second, to prove that you're a valid user of the service, you needed to have at least 4,000 hours of public YouTube video viewing in the past year. Alternatively, you could also have at least 10 million views of public YouTube Shorts in the past 90 days.

YouTube's new rules for joining the Partnership Program use the same basic framework as the previous rules but with much lower numbers. First, your channel needs to have at least 500 subscribers. Second, you need to have at least 3,000 public video watch hours or 3 million public Shorts views. Additionally, your channel needs to have at least 3 videos publicly uploaded within the last 90 days. Once these requirements have been met, your channel will be eligible for partnership, which in turn will give you access to features like memberships, Super Chats, Super Thanks, and YouTube Shopping product promotions.

According to YouTube's blog post, these new eligibility requirements are in place effective immediately in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea, with other YouTube-supported countries to receive them in the near future. Additionally, YouTube is expanding its YouTube Shopping affiliate program, allowing all Partnership-eligible channels with at least 20,000 subscribers to feature major brands like Nordstrom or Sephora in their videos and earn commissions for their work.