YouTube says new creators will need double, or 8,000+, watch hours over the past year or 20M Shorts views in the last 90 days to start earning money from Feb. 1
YouTube announced on Monday that new creators will have to meet higher thresholds to begin earning money from ads and subscriptions.
Context & Ripple Effects
YouTube is reversing part of its earlier accessibility push: it lowered Partner Program entry requirements in 2023 after establishing a 4,000-watch-hour threshold in 2018. The new 8,000-hour or 20 million-Shorts-view bar raises the entry gate for new creators across both long-form and short-form formats.
The move follows YouTube's rollout of Shorts revenue sharing tied to 10 million views and its policy of showing ads on channels that do not necessarily qualify for payouts. It separates YouTube's ability to monetize audience attention from a new creator's ability to share in that revenue.
First-order effects
- New creators must generate substantially more long-form viewing or Shorts reach before they can earn from YouTube ads and subscriptions beginning February 1.
- YouTube narrows immediate access to Partner Program revenue for channels that would have qualified under the lower 2023 thresholds.
Second-order effects
- Creators pursuing early monetization have a stronger incentive to concentrate output on the format where they can most plausibly reach the new threshold, rather than treating Shorts and long-form as interchangeable entry paths.
- Because YouTube can run ads on channels outside the Partner Program, the higher gate preserves more ad-supported inventory without extending corresponding creator payouts to smaller new channels.
Third-order effects
- If YouTube maintains higher entry thresholds, platform monetization becomes more concentrated among creators that already have proven audience scale, while the Partner Program functions less as an early-stage creator incentive.
- The shift marks a more selective version of the Shorts monetization model: broad distribution remains available, but revenue participation requires materially greater scale.
The trend: Major video platforms are tightening the link between creator payouts and demonstrated audience scale while continuing to monetize a wider base of content.