Youtube’s new monetization strategy was recently released and it does not look great despite it supposedly designed to help those who were worried about policy violations. Instead it seems like Youtube is saying that small content creators are not worth having around any more.
According to a breakdown by Gizmodo, “Under the new guidelines, channels will need to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within the last year to be eligible for receiving ad revenue. Previously, uploaders needed just 10,000 total views to run ads on their videos. All Google Preferred channels will also now be manually reviewed, with ads only running on videos that have been approved. Enforcement of these guidelines will start February 20th.”
This will appease advertisers and those who can affect the bottom line of Youtube and ultimately Google. As it stands this may not hurt those established Youtube channels, but it certainly won’t help smaller wrestling content providers who are looking to start up a Youtube channel. Here are some current numbers for larger indie wrestling channels and Ring of Honor:
Defiant Wrestling (formerly WCPW) 266,111 subscribers
Ring of Honor 197,578 subscribers
Being The Elite 171,237 subscribers
Beyond Wrestling 144,795 subscribers
CZW 96,540 subscribers
AIW 54,287 subscribers
Smart Mark Video 11,682 subscribers
AAW 7,445 subscribers
CWF Mid Atlantic 6,640 subscribers
IWA Mid South 5,602 subscribers
NWL 3,524 subscribers
Powerbomb.TV 367 subscribers
Beyond Wrestling was a pioneer when it came to utilizing a great relationship with Youtube into a business model and Drew Cordeiro has discussed this at length with us on numerous podcasts over the years, most recently in Dec of 2017. Their move to Powerbomb.tv was somewhat motivated by these moves from Youtube.
Youtube is still a very large platform and wrestling promotions should continue to utilize it. While some have switched over to Twitch.tv and seen some revenue return to them. It will be hard to find a remedy for the revenue that would have normally come from Youtube, especially if you’re a newer content creator. What do you think about this? Leave a comment below