YouTube is lowering the eligibility requirements for creators to make money

YouTube will allow more creators to monetize their presence on the platform, including creators with smaller followings.

The company announced today it is lowering the eligibility requirements for the YouTube Partner Program and opening up a handful of monetization methods to smaller creators, including paid chat, tipping, channel memberships, and shopping features.

Under the new eligibility policy, the YPP will be open to creators once they reach 500 subscribers — half the number that YouTube previously had. Other benchmarks are changing, too: participating creators will need 3,000 valid watch hours instead of 4,000, or 3 million Shorts views compared to the original 10 million. The lower requirements will initially roll out in the US, UK, Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea.

Smaller creators will still need to grow their footprint to cash in on ad revenue, with YouTube saying the existing YPP requirements will remain for revenue sharing (the company notes that creators won’t have to reapply to the program once they hit the higher requirements). YouTube has used its ad revenue-sharing program to entice creators to make money, especially to bolster the company’s shortform content in recent months by introducing an ad revenue-sharing program for Shorts.

Other platforms like TikTok have also lowered the bar for having access to creator monetization features. Earlier this month, the company announced that its video paywall feature, Series, would be available to creators with more than 10,000 followers but that users with 1,000 followers who met other requirements could also apply to participate in the program. Series gives creators the option to share premium content that fans can pay to access.

In both cases, smaller creators are getting a chance to make money from fans and followers who pay for additional content, interactions, or otherwise support creators financially. Monetization features like tipping or paywalls are available across other creator platforms and, in each case, require an audience that’s willing to spend money.

Other monetization streams are also opening up to a wider group of creators. The shopping affiliate program, previously available by invitation only to select creators, is now available to YPP participants in the US with at least 20,000 subscribers.