YouTube now requires creators to have twice as many watch hours to start earning money

4 days ago 18
The YouTube logo and letteringImage Credits:Matthias Balk/picture confederation / Getty Images

11:27 AM PDT · August 10, 2026

YouTube announced connected Monday that caller creators volition person to conscionable higher thresholds to statesman earning wealth from ads and subscriptions.

Creators who privation to commencement earning connected the level volition request astatine slightest 8,000 qualified ticker hours implicit the past twelvemonth oregon 20 cardinal qualified Shorts views successful the past 90 days. Currently, creators request 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 ticker hours implicit the past twelvemonth oregon 1,000 subscribers and 10 cardinal Shorts views implicit the past 90 days.

The alteration is going into effect starting February 1. The Google-owned institution says the update won’t interaction creators already successful the YouTube Partner Program.

Additionally, YouTube announced that creators volition request to support 10 cardinal Shorts views implicit a 90-day play to gain wealth done the Shorts Creators Pool. Channels beneath this threshold volition stay successful the spouse programme and proceed earning connected long-form content, with Shorts gross resuming erstwhile they transverse 10 cardinal views again.

YouTube says the changes are being introduced to “keep gait with the maturation of YouTube, which present sees implicit 200 cardinal regular Shorts views and implicit a cardinal hours of ticker clip connected TV” each day.

The changes marque it harder for creators to participate and stay successful YouTube’s monetization program, particularly for Shorts creators. By expanding thresholds, YouTube is putting much unit connected creators’ quality to consistently bring successful ample audiences earlier being capable to gain wealth connected the platform, which could successful crook pb to less caller entrants being capable to monetize their content.

As portion of Monday’s announcement, YouTube announced that it’s expanding its much affordable Premium Lite subscription to each countries wherever YouTube Premium is available. Creators person a stock of subscription gross based connected subordinate ticker clip and views, with 55% going to long-form video creators and 45% to Shorts creators.

“With these further subscribers, creators tin expect higher earnings: erstwhile a idiosyncratic signs up for Premium, partners, connected average, gain much than erstwhile the idiosyncratic was watching ads,” the institution wrote successful a blog post.

Premium Lite offers an ad-free acquisition connected astir videos, on with the quality to download videos for offline viewing and play videos successful the background.

YouTube isn’t the lone societal media institution revising its creator rewards programs. Over the weekend, Elon Musk’s X besides revamped creator payouts by changing its guidelines to lone reward archetypal content. Earlier this spring, Facebook besides launched a new monetization programme to pull creators from TikTok and YouTube.

When you acquisition done links successful our articles, we whitethorn gain a tiny commission. This doesn’t impact our editorial independence.

Aisha is simply a user quality newsman astatine TechCrunch. Prior to joining the work successful 2021, she was a telecom newsman astatine MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s grade from University of Toronto and a master’s grade successful journalism from Western University.

You tin interaction oregon verify outreach from Aisha by emailing aisha@techcrunch.com oregon via encrypted connection astatine aisha_malik.01 connected Signal.

Read Entire Article