Youtube changes Monetization policies, 4000 watch time hours, 1000 subscribers minimum required, 2018

Yesterday, Youtube changed its monetization polices, which was a big blow to lesser known smaller youtubers (creators). Once again youtube introduced new rules which harmed the small timers the most. Killing off revenue for the newbie creators and also for those who have monetization enabled but do not fulfill the minimum criteria.


According to Youtube's new policies, only those channels will be open for monetization that have:

• More than 4000 hours of watch time in the last year.
• More than 1000 Subscribers total.

This means you need to have atleast 20,000 watch time minutes per month if you want to become part of youtube's partner program next year, if your channel starts today. This came as a shock to the creator's community. With some people actually tearing down after hearing the news. A creator, Christine Barger, shared her video in teary eyes after hearing this news.

This makes a big difference for the new creators from the previous policies of 2017. Last time, creators only had to get 10,000 views in order to get approved for youtube's partner program.

Creator's have spoken out against youtube on social media and are also making requests to their viewers to view their videos and leave them playing in the background.

Youtube said that they will implement this new protocol for the existing youtubers from February 20th. This means that even if you have monetization enabled, you channel will be checked if it has 4000 hours of watch time and 1000 subscribers. If your channel meets the minimum criteria, youtube will continue forward with allowing monetization on your channel. 

People are asking for help on social media to somehow save their account's monetization privileges:



This already has a big backlash on twitter. But PewDiePie, the most popular content creator on youtube, wrote a very supportive tweet towards youtube.

Just to be clear, I didn't earn anything off YouTube, not a single dollar until I hit 25k subs. If all you're earning is $1 then YouTube probably is loosing more money just to pay that to you. As much as I typically hate their business practice, this one makes sense to me.

— pewdiepie 💰 (@pewdiepie) January 17, 2018

Although youtube says that only those channels are affected by this decision that make less than 100$ a year. This means their monthly income would be close to 7~8$. Some are saying that even if someone earns 1$ from youtube, it gives them a moral boost.
I hope youtube changes its policies, especially the watch time clause because it really is extravagant to ask new creators to get 4000 hours of watch. I have done the calculation and if my channel has 20,000 watch minutes per month only then I can get monetization privileges.