YouTube unveils new ways for creators to make money, including Super Stickers for chats in livestreams and premieres and paid levels for Channel Memberships
and as part of Google — the best they can offer you to make money is “Super Stickers”; my goodness. https://techcrunch.com/... Matt Navarra / @mattnavarra : YouTube launches new ways for creators to make money #VidCon - Super stickers - Tiered membership/subscriptions - Expanded merch shelf feature Also - Expansion of donate button for charities - NEW smart ‘learning’ playlists feature https://techcrunch.com/... Richard Nieva / @richardjnieva : In our interview, we Mohan and I discussed whether YouTube is a media company (he says it isn't), the balance between safeguarding the platform and creating new products, demonetization, accusations of bias and YouTube's other controversies. Richard Nieva / @richardjnieva : NEW: I wrote a profile of YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan. He's speaking at VidCon and is announcing new products including subscription membership tiers to support creators. https://www.cnet.com/... Richard Nieva / @richardjnieva : Another interesting tidbit. I chatted w YouTube cofounder Steve Chen, who told me Eric Schmidt only held him to one goal when Google bought YouTube: growth. “You guys get to completely run the ship,” Chen recalls Schmidt telling him. “As long as we agree on this simple checkbox.” See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This VidCon announcement is the third step in a deliberate ladder. YouTube opened paid chat with Super Chat on mobile livestreams in 2017, then added a flat $4.99/mo Channel Memberships product gated at 100K subscribers in 2018 alongside Teespring merch and Premieres. Today it stacks Super Stickers on top of chat and splits Memberships into paid tiers — turning one-off tips and one-size subscriptions into a priced menu.
Why it matters: Neal Mohan used the accompanying interviews to insist YouTube is not a media company, and the product line backs that framing up — every feature here routes money directly from fans to creators rather than through YouTube's programming decisions.
First-order effects
- Creators gain four new earning surfaces at once — Super Stickers in livestream and premiere chats, tiered Membership levels, an expanded merch shelf, and a widened charity donate button — so mid-size channels can mix tip income, recurring subscriptions, and commerce instead of relying on ad share alone.
Second-order effects
- Tiered memberships push creators to produce members-only content as a standing obligation, and the merch shelf expansion pulls e-commerce partners deeper into the channel page, making YouTube a storefront as well as a video host.
Third-order effects
- The pattern holds long enough that direct fan payments start reshaping the ad experience itself — by 2026 YouTube is showing fewer ads to users who buy Super Chats, Stickers, or gifts, effectively letting payers buy down the ad load — and the platform's revenue story becomes a split between paying supporters and ad-subsidized viewers.
The trend: Creator platforms are layering direct-to-fan payment products onto their ad businesses until the two revenue streams start trading off against each other.