Key Takeaways
- YouTube is doubling the number of watch hours and views it takes to become a monetized channel.
- Effective February 1, 2027, monetized creators will need at least 8,000 watch hours over the past year or 20 million Shorts views over the past 90 days.
- According to tech journalist and consultant Emil Protalinski, YouTube wants to make it more difficult for spam accounts to gain a following and monetize their videos.
YouTube is going to make it more difficult for new creators to earn money from ads and subscriptions by doubling its monetization thresholds.
According to an announcement earlier this week, creators who want to make money on YouTube will soon need to amass at least 8,000 watch hours over the past year or 20 million Shorts views over the past 90 days.
Meanwhile, creators currently need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year or 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over the past 90 days to make the cut.
The change will go into effect on February 1, 2027. YouTube said the move will not affect creators who already monetize their platforms.
Bad news and good news
Tech journalist and consultant Emil Protalinski wrote in a post on LinkedIn earlier this week that the change is “bad news for all YouTube creators who were close to getting into the program.”
“For the record, I’m at 150 subscribers and definitely nowhere near even 1 million Shorts views, so I was unlikely to hit the thresholds anytime soon,” he wrote. “Now, however, it seems a fool’s errand to try.”
Protalinski said that he isn’t the target audience for the change. In his view, YouTube wants to make it more difficult for spam accounts to gain a following and monetize their videos. He said that this is a direct response to the proliferation of “AI slop” accounts gaining traction on YouTube, including channels whose videos use AI-generated text for scripts or AI-generated images for backgrounds. Some videos are entirely AI-created.
“In short, doubling the thresholds will be tough over the short term, but hopefully it will improve YouTube’s quality over the long term,” Protalinski wrote.
YouTube offers creators more money than other platforms
Content creator Erika Kullberg is an attorney and personal finance expert who used to work in corporate law. She has more than 21 million followers on social media, including 2.26 million subscribers on YouTube. One of Kullberg’s videos addresses how she paid off more than $225,000 in student loans in less than two years. Another popular video is about her decision to quit a $250,000 job in corporate law.
Kullberg told Entrepreneur in 2024 that YouTube is “by far” her highest-paying social media platform. From 2019 to 2024, her total earnings from YouTube amounted to more than $353,000, not including brand sponsorships and before taxes.
She shared that it took her about three months of posting one YouTube video per week to be able to monetize her channel.
“When I first started YouTube, I committed to putting out one video per week for one year no matter what,” she said. “I was practicing as a lawyer full-time, and doing YouTube as my side hobby for 20 hours a week on top of that.”
Her advice to someone thinking about content creation full-time is to “make sure” they have enough money to do it. “Start saving up,” she said. “I’ve never once regretted leaving the corporate world behind.”
Key Takeaways
- YouTube is doubling the number of watch hours and views it takes to become a monetized channel.
- Effective February 1, 2027, monetized creators will need at least 8,000 watch hours over the past year or 20 million Shorts views over the past 90 days.
- According to tech journalist and consultant Emil Protalinski, YouTube wants to make it more difficult for spam accounts to gain a following and monetize their videos.
YouTube is going to make it more difficult for new creators to earn money from ads and subscriptions by doubling its monetization thresholds.
According to an announcement earlier this week, creators who want to make money on YouTube will soon need to amass at least 8,000 watch hours over the past year or 20 million Shorts views over the past 90 days.
Meanwhile, creators currently need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year or 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over the past 90 days to make the cut.