Youtube Partner Rules Don't Matter (Here's Why)

YouTube partner rules changed. Everybody freak out, or don't. I'm gonna tell you why. YouTube partner rules changed, and it doesn't matter. Stick around, I'm gonna tell you why. Welcome back, guys. I am Dan Willis of millennialmotivator.ca. Helping you guys create, engage, and inspire your audiences, whether that be through marketing, product, or service. If you're new to the channel, go ahead and click that subscribe button, that bell over there. I do videos Monday through Saturday for you guys. Uh, it's all about how to build business, how to market effectively, how to reach out to people. But today what we're talking about is the bomb that dropped yesterday in regards to YouTube partnership And the new rules that are going to play out with it. So without further ado, let's get down to it. Okay guys, first up, what changed? So up to yesterday, all you had to do was get 10,000 views to be considered for partnership on your channel. Okay, now for a lot of people, there was a huge complaint about that, that 10,000 views was too much, it wasn't feasible, everybody should just have access to partnership. And the reality is YouTube owns their channel. They can do what they want. That they pay us to create content at all is amazing. Okay, so 10,000 views, that's what it was to be considered by the community group to join the YouTube Partner Program. No problem. Yesterday they decided we're gonna change that. No longer is it just about views. YouTube for a while now, and we'll know this from the algorithms and all the videos that I've done about how to create proper videos, or if you're watching guys like Derral Eves or Roberto Blake, Tim Schmoyer, these guys have been talking about this for a while. It really is just this simple. YouTube is considered, is only considered with your watch time. They have been for a while. They realize that their ad capital comes from the amount of watch time. If somebody's watching 50 minutes of YouTube versus 5 minutes of YouTube, They earn more income for the ads being played. That's it. That's the name of the game. YouTube is a business. They're looking to make money. I don't hold that against them. Their business, love it. What they've realized though is that their partner qualifications don't reflect what their target is. A partner is looking to work alongside somebody for the profit of both, right? So in this partnership, it works like you create the content, they create the platform. You manage your videos, you do your meta tag data, you do all that, they manage the algorithm. That's the deal. That's the deal you make, and they split the revenue on the ads. Perfect. In order to reflect that, the change that they've made to their partner program is this: no longer is it 10,000 views. What it is now is if you are a YouTube channel and you would like to be a part of their partner program, you need 4,000 minutes of watch time and 1,000 subscribers. Now, a lot of small channels are gonna get very upset about this for a couple different reasons. One, they hit that 10,000 threshold and feel like they should be grandfathered in. Okay, I think I can understand that argument of, we did the work under the rules that you had set, can you just grandfather us in? I understand it a little bit, but the reality is I think if you got those 10,000 views legitimately, for you to have 4,000 minutes of watch time wouldn't be difficult. So I've been at this a month and I just checked my watch time this morning and there's over 6,000 minutes watched. So I'm having a hard time understanding the complaint from the community in regards to that. The other side of it is of course the 1,000 subscribers. Now 1,000 subscribers may prove a little more challenging, but let's go over each of those in turn, the, the watch time and the subscribers, and hopefully I can help you guys realize this isn't a massive deal. This is something that you're able to easily target, easily head towards and achieve. And then I'm gonna help you at the end of the video understand why it doesn't matter ultimately. First up, watch time. Okay guys, if you want to know how to be successful with your watch time, how do I make this grow? How do I, how do I build into my watch time? How is this something that's going to be You know, 4,000 minutes. How am I possibly gonna hit that? The reality is this, guys. For a long time, one of the standard rules when it comes to creating on YouTube is this: create videos at minimum 10 minutes long. Okay, guys, 10-minute-long videos. Okay, if you're creating a 10-minute-long video 3 to 5 times a week, you're gonna see that 4,000 minutes add up. Now, I've been aiming for 10-minute videos 6 times a week, and in a month I've hit 6,000 minutes watched. That wasn't insane. That wasn't a difficult thing to do. It was just creating regular content. So how do you get to the 6,000— 4,000 minute— 4,000 minute mark? How do you get to that 4,000 minute mark? It's this easy. Create content regularly. Create content 3 to 5 times a week. If you are putting up a 10-minute video on YouTube, and it doesn't take a lot, As long as you know what you're talking about, you're passionate about what you're talking about, it's not going to be a massive challenge for you. You are going to be able to do it fairly easily. Okay guys, so that's it as far as how do I hit the minutes. Create content, create regular content, make sure it's optimized on the backend so you've got your quality title, thumbnails, and you're tagging appropriately. And there you go, you're there. Share that puppy out. You'll make that, that video mark. No problem, no question. If you are doing those simple, simple steps of regular content creation, you make sure you've got a good title, good thumbnail, appropriate tags, and you're sharing it out across your networks, you'll see that happen real quick. Okay, so great, you've created this content, it's out there, but you're not seeing the subscriber base that you'd like to see. The number one most important thing that you can do for your subscriber base is Ask for subscribers. If you go back to the start of this video, every video I start, I introduce who I am, what I do, and I ask for a sub. Now, for a lot of people that seems hokey and sleazy, but the reality is I've got to be honest. When I'm creating content, I'm creating content because I have a passion and desire to help small businesses and entrepreneurs learn how to do things. And I can't do that if people aren't subbing. I want people to come back regularly so I can create relationships and get to know it. And that brings us to the next thing that you can do to build your subscriber base. You've got to engage with people. People have somewhere along the way considered social media to be a giant barf bucket where you're just spewing stuff out onto the internet. That's not what this is about. It never was meant to be that. Cat memes was like 10 years ago. The reality of social media is this: you're looking to create and build relationships in an engaging community. It's not craziness. It's what I wrote my book on. The book's down there in the link if you guys want it. It's on Amazon. It blew me away how revolutionary this seemed. You're actually looking to create a community and relationships. You're looking to have conversations and engage. So go back through your videos, even if you're a small YouTuber, okay? Let's say you've been at this for a year, you still haven't broken the 1,000 sub mark, no problem, okay? Go back through your videos and see how many comments dropped on the video, even if just the comment was just, this is good, okay? Regardless of what the comments were, see how many of them you replied to. If the answer isn't all of them, you're missing the boat. You are missing the boat. I am blown away at how often I will put a comment onto a major YouTuber, a major YouTuber, right? Something like PewDiePie. PewDiePie still responds to comments. There's a reason for that. It creates a community, it creates a conversation. If you haven't responded as a small YouTube channel that's struggling with these new rules, if you haven't responded to every single comment on your channel, you need to do it. You need to get on it. That has to be a thing. When you start having people that feel they are having a dialogue and they actually have a relationship with the channel, that's when you start to see the growth that you guys are looking for. So I mean, we're sitting here at video 36, so that's, you know, 40 days in, I guess, because there's a couple of holidays there, but 40 days into the channel and I'm up over 260 subs. So am I overly concerned about hitting that sub— that 1,000 sub mark somewhere down the road? No. That brings us to our last point here, guys. If you are in YouTube just for the stardom of it and That's it. You just want to be YouTube famous, you want to be known by everyone everywhere you go. I don't know that it's the place for you, to be honest. The reality is this is a video content creation community and it's a community. If you don't want to engage with the community, you just want to spew on it, chances are you're not going to find success. But even more so, if you just want to get paid this probably isn't the place for you. The amount of time that you have to dedicate into YouTube in order to see a return on it that is going to be sizable enough that you care, it's laughable. Off of ads, you're not going to see it. Even if you had 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 minutes viewed, you're not going to be raking in the cash, which is why YouTube doesn't understand why this is such a big deal. Because if you're not hitting those marks, you're not making bank off them anyway. We're talking, we're arguing a couple bucks here and there, right? The reality is if you want to be somebody who is nailing it, we're talking killing it on YouTube, your vision and definition of what it means to be successful on YouTube needs to change. It's not the monetization, it's not the income that you derive from YouTube. The value that's going to come from your YouTube channel is this, the content. Is what you have to say of value. And I don't care if that's a vlog, a cooking, A music, an automotive, a gaming, it doesn't matter what channel it is. Are you providing the viewers a service? Is it something of value to them? Is it gonna be something that they cherish? Maybe cherish is a little strong of a word, but enjoy, or at least entertained by. That's what it's about, guys. That's the crux of it. So for me, YouTube rules changed, you know, I'm getting all these messages, oh, YouTube rules changed, this isn't gonna work for you, yada yada yada. Those people misunderstand the purpose of the channel. This channel was not built to generate income from YouTube ads. That's, that's never been the aim. That's never been the goal. The goal was create a video a day, Monday through Saturday, for a year. That was the goal. See what happens if you're consistent, genuine, and authentic. You create, engage, and inspire 6 days a week for 52 weeks. What would happen? So YouTube partner rules change. Don't care. YouTube removes monetization altogether from the platform. I don't care. I'm not here for the monetization. I'm here to create content and help small businesses and entrepreneurs grow. I know why I'm here. If you're here for the money and you're a small YouTuber and you're here for the money, maybe you're disappointed, but maybe. You should dedicate the time that you're putting into YouTube into another endeavor. To be honest, if you're going to create 3 to 5 videos a week and they're quality content, not like what I'm doing here, this simple stuff. If they're quality content you're creating 3 to 5 times a week, Peter McKinnon level stuff, right? You're putting in at least 5 hours a week, okay? 5 hours a week. Now, take a run-of-the-mill job, take a job flipping burgers at Burger King, okay? Okay, you're gonna get paid— here in Canada, you're gonna get paid $15 an hour, $14 an hour, something ridiculous, right? $14 an hour to flip a burger, 5 hours, right? You're looking at $70 to flip a burger. Now you put that same time into your small YouTube channel, how much you're gonna see back on ad revenue? Hmm. Maybe a dollar, maybe 2. 3, maybe, if you're lucky, as a small YouTuber. It's not a valued return. If you're in this for a business and you're not in it for the community, to create content, or to spread a message, you're not in it for the right reasons. Stardom isn't gonna happen here. Go get a job in Hollywood, walk onto a set, offer to get the director his coffee, and start there. Don't do it here. It's not gonna work. This is not where you're gonna make the millions. Okay, the big guys out there like PewDiePie and Logan that, that make their millions on this— Logan brought his network from Vine over here and was extremely successful doing it. PewDiePie was in it at the beginning. He created the gaming niche and he's been able to capitalize on it and evolve his channel. That's it. Are you gonna be one of the first gaming channels? No. Makeup channels? No. Toy channels? No. The reality is, if you're gonna create a channel It's probably got another channel that already exists just like it out there. So it's not a popularity contest. It's about what you want to create for people to bring engagement and entertainment. Inspire people. Do something amazing. Create something. That's my spiel on this though, guys. Question of the day is, how do you feel about the new rules with YouTube? Do you think that that's unreasonable, that the business is saying, here's what we want, here's where we're headed? Or do you think that they're being pretty fair about this approach? Let me know in the comments down below. And again, if you enjoyed the video, click that subscribe button over there. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow, guys. Catch you then.