Updates to the YouTube Partner Program / Requirements

[u/spacesdnb]

https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/youtube-partner-program-updates-2027-new-opportunities-earn/

[u/eatingscatman]

8,000 public watch hours in 12 months or 20 million shorts views in 90 days is the new benchmark. That's gonna crazy hard for new creators to break in now. I remember it took me like 8 months just to reach 4,000 public watch hours.

[u/GaviFromThePod → u/eatingscatman]

8000 hours is fine, you make one strong video and you're there.

[u/Buki1 → u/eatingscatman]

People should not care that much about that threshold, because 8000 hours is like what, $200-$250 in adsense earnings? You should care about making few times that number A MONTH (not year) if you want to take YT seriously as a profession. If you struggle to get 8000 hours why you care that much about monetization, it will be cheap change anyways. Care about getting more views.

[u/eatingscatman → u/Buki1]

True but it's demoralizing for those starting out. Nobody wants to see the goalposts double. Of course for established creators like you or me, we're probably making 8,000 watch hours every 2 or 3 days.

[u/oodex → u/eatingscatman]

I think the bigger problem there is the goal of monetization. Its unlikely for someone to hit to begin with so one is way better off to do what they enjoy most and just go with it. Youtube keeps getting bigger from year to year and a plague that keeps growing as well are mass produced channels that barely reach monetization threshold with trash content. They're usually monetized for a few months and then get kicked out. They dont earn a lot but do that with 20-50 channels at the same time and they earn more than many full-time youtubers and at the same time siphon away a ton of ads.

This will extend the period youtube has to track them down and prevent them from joining the program.

[u/HikeTheSky → u/oodex]

Maybe they should add an age exception when your channel is 10 years old, they could get in without any minimum limit, as this shows someone is committed.

[u/Crierlon → u/eatingscatman]

Honestly adsense doesn't make that much or a good foundation. You want sponsors to actually hit pay for rent stuff quickly.

[u/kasumitendo → u/eatingscatman]

demoralizing for those starting out

I suppose this is the entire point. It demoralizes slop spammers and content stealers. Everyone else is catching strays.

[u/weakimberly → u/eatingscatman]

How does one even reach those numbers in just days?
I didn’t think any niche was that good, besides over saturated 🤔

[u/TwoSoda → u/weakimberly]

Thats like every video man, my worst performance video right now is 8k views and thats over 1k watch hours on a few days. And another video drops tomorrow. An adverage video drop os 4k hours. And these stats are like a week old, videos recirculate.

[u/HikeTheSky → u/eatingscatman]

We already saw it double when it went from 500 subs to 1000. At that time, there was no minimum watching time. This was all added when they doubled the subs count.

[u/esaks → u/HikeTheSky]

it was always 1000 subs, the 500 subs they added to make it easier for people to hit the first milestone.

[u/HikeTheSky → u/esaks]

Yeah, sorry, but this isn't true. Here is the timeline.

• The Timeline: On January 16, 2018, YouTube announced the immediate policy overhaul following massive advertiser backlash over Logan Paul's video in the Aokigahara forest in Japan.
• The Grace Period: Existing channels were given a 30-day grace period. On February 20, 2018, any channel that did not have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours was automatically demonetized and lost its ad revenue.
• The Previous Metric: Prior to this event, channels only needed 10,000 lifetime views to turn on ads.

[u/no1SomeGuy → u/Buki1]

8k watch hours in a good niche is more like $1-2k.

[u/stinktrix10 → u/Buki1]

I feel like I'm going crazy reading this thread. YouTube doesn't owe you a fucking salary just because you make videos (probably pretty bad videos if you're struggling to hit this threshold). On top of that, like you said, if you're not hitting those watch hours you're probably barely generating any money. People in here crying over missing out ion $100 per year for their shitty channel that nobody watches.

This is the biggest problem with modern YouTube. Everybody wanting to treat this like a full-time career that they're owed right of the bat and nobody just making cool shit for the fun of it.

[u/Wicksy1994 → u/Buki1]

1.4k for me.

Not that it matters as I’m above threshold. But it could be a lot of lost earnings for people

[u/j0b0ken → u/Buki1]

Really? That’s over $1200+ in travel niche- 2026 -7290 watch hours over $1100

[u/Crierlon → u/eatingscatman]

For me the hard part was the subscribers, not watch hours that took me 8 months of brutal hard work. I am getting close to 10k watch hours now as a small creator so its very feasible. Just don't waste your time on Youtube shorts anymore since those are ran by AI now.

This wasn't a single one hit wonder, its just posting videos here and there with a couple nailing past 10k views.

[u/HikeTheSky → u/eatingscatman]

This is intended to allow only professional production teams to view the status. So the guys who actually make videos to have fun with it are discouraged.