Now it’s letting YouTubers cater to their biggest fans with Channel Memberships, which it has been testing with a few creators in the past few months. YouTube creators have long had the ability to generate revenue through ad-revenue sharing, and a “tip jar” for followers to buy premium chat messages during live-streams.

For example, Joshua Slice of Lucas the Spider three weeks ago began selling a plushie of his popular animated arachnid (pictured above) - and moved more than 60,000 stuffed spiders in 18 days, netting him over $1 million in profit.Īccording to YouTube, the number of creators earning $10,000 or more annually is up 35% year-over-year and those bringing in at least $100,000 annually is up by 40%. The results in some of YouTube’s early tests have been huge.

“So we’re going after the lowest-hanging fruit to make it much easier for them to do it on YouTube.” We saw these things already happening,” said Rohit Dhawan, alternative monetization lead at YouTube. “A lot of creators already are selling merchandise, doing influencer marketing, and fan-funding. The goal with the initiatives? As YouTube faces intensifying competition from Facebook, Instagram and others, Google wants to help career YouTubers build bigger fanbases and make more money from their channels. “It’ll be like the entire audience around the globe for that video will be together,” he said. The new YouTube Premieres feature for creators, Mohan said, is expected to create more real-time interaction between viewers and creators. Mohan said live-streaming of events like the British royal wedding last month and the launch of the SpaceX rocket attracted millions of people. “That’s why we’ve been working alongside them… Together we’ve experienced the biggest music, sports, science, culture and gaming events unfold live on YouTube in the last year.” “We’re working on new ways to help creators strengthen those bonds,” Mohan told a packed ballroom at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Neal Mohan, YouTube chief product officer, unveiled the new features Thursday at Vidcon 2018, the Viacom-owned confab for digital creators and their fans.

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