YouTube Keeps Making It Harder...And Easier
My Love-Hate Relationship With The Google-Owned Streamer
Yesterday, YouTube announced big changes—aka “new opportunities” in PR speak—to its YouTube Partner Program (YPP), doubling many of the requirements for new creators who want to get monetized—and for Shorts creators to remain monetized—on the platform.
Because apparently YouTube looked around and thought, “You know what creators really need? More hoops to jump through.” Fucking corporate assholes.
Thankfully, none of this affects my channel all that much. I’m already monetized, and my Shorts have earned me less than $200 over the past 90 days.
Still, I’m irritated.
Because this isn’t some struggling little startup trying to figure out how to keep the lights on. YouTube is a fucking juggernaut.
In 2025, YouTube generated more than $60B in advertising and subscription revenue for its parent company, Alphabet (aka Google). Advertising alone accounted for roughly $40B, according to industry estimates. Analysts expect YouTube’s revenue to climb to roughly $70 billion in 2026.
And this is the platform telling creators that the price of admission is going up. Cool.
Meanwhile, YouTube Shorts alone now average 200 billion views a day.
Not million. Billion. Every. Fucking. Day.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced that milestone in a blog post, along with another data point that puts the platform’s scale into perspective: people watch more than 1 billion hours of YouTube on their televisions a day. That’s not counting desktop, laptop, mobile, or table views.
For some damn reason, YouTube has decided to reward its staggering success by making it harder for the people creating the content for the platform to get paid.
I’m not saying YouTube shouldn’t have standards or make a profit. Lately, the platform has been flooded with low-effort, repetitive, AI-generated, and otherwise questionable content. I have no problem with YouTube trying to separate independent creators from the content farms churning out algorithmic slop.
But there’s something inherently ridiculous about making the people producing the content that keeps this enormous machine running work harder to qualify for a smaller piece of the pie.
Especially when Google takes 45% of our AdSense revenue. Generous, right?
So starting in February 2027, I likely won’t make another dime from Shorts. But I will probably keep making them anyway. Because Shorts have become one of the few reliable ways to attract new viewers.
Shorts may not make much, if any, money, but they tend to get my content in front of people who otherwise might never find my channel. So I’ll essentially be making free content for YouTube, which YouTube will make money from.
Oh, late-stage capitalism. Fuck you very much.
YouTube giveth, and YouTube taketh away. Usually in the same update.
One thing YouTube has given me recently is a much larger international audience.
In June, roughly 45% of my channel’s views came from the United States. In July, that dropped to around 30%, while viewership increased significantly in Brazil, France, Germany, and Spain.
There’s something genuinely wonderful about seeing comments in languages I don’t speak. Someone in Brazil watched something I made. Someone in France found it. Someone in Germany or Spain wandered into my little corner of the internet.
That still blows my mind.
I spend an absurd amount of time researching, editing, and assembling these montages. Most of the time, I’m sitting alone at my desk with too many browser tabs open, collecting and curating the ingredients for a new video.
And then suddenly someone thousands of miles away is watching.
That part never gets old.
Which is why my relationship with YouTube is so complicated.
As a business partner, YouTube is more often than not abusive, cold, and demanding.
It changes the rules. It moves the goalposts. It takes a bigger cut. It gets twitchy about censorship and copyright. It allows Content ID fraud to run rampant and bots to run the show. With little to no human oversight.
And then, just as I’m ready to storm out and dramatically slam the door, YouTube goes: “Hey! Somebody in Brazil just discovered you!” And I’m like, “That’s so cool!”
As a distribution partner, YouTube is incredibly powerful.vAnd I’d be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate that.
Two hundred billion Shorts views a day is a pretty compelling argument for why I probably shouldn’t abandon the platform. And that billion hours of daily TV viewing tells me YouTube isn’t just competing with TikTok, Instagram, Netflix, or traditional television anymore. For me and many others, it is television.
So I’ll keep making Shorts, even if they’re not a revenue stream. They’re marketing.
And hopefully some of those people will follow the trail back to my Substack, where I have considerably more control over what I make, what I publish, and how I connect with the people who choose to stick around.
And if YouTube wants to make it harder for creators to make money there? Fine. I’ll adapt. With all their bullshit these past few years, I’ve gotten pretty good at adapting.
But I’m also going to continue taking the wins where I can get them. Because even if YouTube giveth and YouTube taketh away, right now it’s doing something I genuinely love: It’s helping me find viewers I never would have found otherwise.
That’s the weird magic of the internet.
And despite the changing requirements and rules, I’m still here, damnit. Still creating. Still posting. Still experimenting. Still trying to turn YouTube’s increasingly ridiculous content game into something that works for me.
I can be pissed off at YouTube and grateful that it exists. Both things can be true.
And that may be the most YouTube thing of all.
Keep calm and carry on!
Clint 🌈✌️
RELATED READING
You Tube Is Making It Harder To Earn Money On You Tube (The Verge)
You Tube Teases Premium Lite Expansion, Doubles Channel Monetization Requirements (9to5Google)
YouTube Monetization Requirements Are Changing in 2027 (vidIQ)
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Brian a tricky path to tread. I enjoy all content creators post if it takes my interest. However I don't 👍 AI deliberate created content even if I have Enjoyed it, yes👍 to genuine content like yours. Cheers DougT 🏴🇬🇧
The entire internet, nay, the entire world seems to have speeded up it transition, whether for good or bad, I have not yet decided. Fondly, Michael And I would add YouTube, like so many other financials, is based on GREED not the common good. I also call it "MISPLACED MONEY" when so many CEOs and others high up in any company are paid soooooo well.