YouTube has tightened the rules for small creators to earn money through YouTube due to the Paul Logan scandal, when he showed a deceased person who had committed suicide in his video.
YouTube therefore decided on February 20, 2018 to tighten the rules for entry into the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), which includes Slovenia. The YouTube Partner Program allows creators to earn money directly through YouTube. Instead of 10 thousand views, which were previously sufficient to start earning through YouTube, the new conditions will be stricter. From now on, you will need to have at least 1,000 subscribers on YouTube and at least 4,000 hours of watch time in the last 12 months.
All those smaller channels that have already been accepted into the YouTube Partner Program and do not meet this requirement will be excluded from the program.
How can you earn money on YouTube despite the rule changes?
I personally believe that the actual potential you can earn from the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) is only 10 percent, and 90 percent of the earnings are hidden somewhere else entirely.
I will give some concrete examples that I recommend to my clients:
- collecting emails through video descriptions or for example cards, which you can later use for sales — here for example Stefan James with the YouTube channel Project Life Mastery earns at least an additional 10 thousand euros per month
- selling your own or other people’s products — for example Rosanna Pansino has sold more than a hundred thousand books
- you can convert videos into podcasts — for example Neil Patel created the Marketing School with Eric Siu
- additional consultations, where for example Carter Thomas with the YouTube channel Coin Mastery offers a 30-minute call for $500
- building a brand, as for example Tai Lopez does on YouTube and other channels
- using YouTube for joint webinars, where you can receive an average of 50% from the sale of other products. In this way, the affiliate marketing master John Crestani successfully promotes products that usually cost an average of $1,000 or more
- you can charge for a mention in a video or dedicate an entire video to an advertiser — an example is Lepa Afna
- arrange a sponsorship — e.g. a brand promotes your video or you showcase a product launch, like when Nike partnered with Casey Neistat
- you can be paid for creating videos per video or monthly, and this is made possible by the platform Patreon
- earning through product descriptions and getting paid for every purchase made through you (through so-called product reviews, such as the Vitamix review)
If you are interested in more concrete examples and earning opportunities through YouTube and the most current strategies on how you too can earn with the help of YouTube, I invite you to a two-day workshop that I hold only 4 times a year. Find out more about the workshop and the opinions of those who attended at this link.
