As the YouTuber Partner Program madness kicked in this past week, one extremely common point I saw being brought up by large YouTuber Content Creators time and time again was that most of the channels being affected by this were making under $100 a year. Noting that the payout threshold for Google Adsense is $100, this means in many cases small channels would take over a year of earnings to finally get a payout.
This isn’t much money. No one is going to lie about that. However, it is still money coming in nonetheless. Big YouTuber’s however, treated it like it was a worthless amount. They often compared it to the “thousands” they lost during Adpocalypse which no one will deny either was a bad thing for many on the site. However, a bit of absolute hypocrisy comes in to play when these YouTuber’s complaining about losing money during Adpocalypse say that small time YouTuber’s should have other options for making money – that they should do other things and just make videos for free hoping to grow, as if that isn’t what all of them aren’t already doing!
What does it matter how much money a small channel makes? How is that affecting these big time creators, and why does that somehow justify taking it away? Just because it’s not much money to you doesn’t mean it isn’t quite a bit to someone else when it finally comes in – enough to treat themselves to something good for their hard work. They made videos for a year or more, they fucking deserve it, I say. I know when my checks come in I’m damned happy and while I invest it back into Xadara in some way, I do treat myself to something nice from time to time.
As I have said before, the trickle in of money was a nice incentive to keep it up. Watching the adsense account grow each month provided a drive produce content which would continue to cause that total to grow. This would happen while they worked their normal jobs or had their other projects – my website, for example, is my primary project, with YouTube secondary to that, supporting my personal brand. In my case, ads on the website combined with ads on videos resulted in an acceptable bit of income – something that made the effort worth it, when combined with seeing social media shares and seeing hits pop up on the site.
Should be worth noting too that due to the way YouTube does things, I tend to get far more views on even the most insignificant article than I do on most YouTube uploads. There are exceptions, but the fact remains getting views on YouTube is actually somewhat tricky compared to a basic blog. Funny how that works.
Anyway, in my case, YouTube acted as a supplemental boost to my regular website income. It was a small amount, but it worked. Now, that’s being taken away, and it’s going to make things a little tougher – at least, it will slow down the growth of the adsense total.
To some big YouTuber’s that’s nothing we should care about. It’s not as bad as what they suffered, and we should look for other ways to make money.. when many of them on the same page complained that their main source of income was being attacked by Adpocalypse when they are the ones choosing to make content that’s likely to get demonitized, in many cases. I won’t go throwing stones but hey, it’s the truth.
It’s an elitist attitude, when you get down to it. To think that somehow you shouldn’t be affected by anything, but we should be fine to lose all our YouTube monetization options but you losing *some* money is horrible. Don’t get me wrong, I get that it caused some people serious problems, but the lack of empathy in this from some YouTuber’s that I like? That just didn’t sit well with me, and really made me lose respect for quite a few people.
Insulting and hypocritical, to boot, considering they act like we are somehow too stupid to know how to manage money when they seem to be risking everything on their end on, you guessed it, YouTube Advertising Revenue. Especially funny when you think about the bigger YouTubers who have cut back or, in some cases, pretty much abandoned channels following Adpocalypse – they stopped getting as much money so they moved on, or were forced to do other things.
It just makes ya think, is all… why the hell does it matter?