INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
YouTube creators are gaining a number of new tools to generate revenue from their videos outside of traditional advertising, as well as
those that will help them better engage their fans, according to news the video streaming site announced today at the VidCon conference in
This includes the rollout of channel memberships, merchandising, marketing partnerships via FameBit and the launch of &Premieres,& which
offers a middle ground between pre-recorded, edited video and live streaming.
Memberships
Before today, YouTube had offereda Twitch-like
&Sponsorship& modelon YouTube Gaming
This gave fans the ability to sponsor a channel for $4.99 per month, which also gave them access to exclusive digital goods, like a custom
badge and emoji.
YouTube started testing this program across its larger video network last fall, it said
Those tests led to YouTube channel memberships.
Unlike on YouTube gaming, Channel memberships have additional requirements.
Creators will
need to have 100,000 subscribers or more, be over 18 and be members of the YouTube Partner Program.
However, the price point for backing a
creator channel remains the same: $4.99 per month, and includes the custom badges and exclusive emoji.
It will also allow subscribers to
gain access to members-only posts in the Community tab where creators will share custom perks from time to time, like access to an exclusive
live stream, additional videos, shout-outs, news of upcoming events, early access to ticket sales and other things.
YouTube says it will
vet these perks manually, to ensure they meet YouTube guidelines and are something the creator can actually deliver.
&This tool set is
fairly powerful, so we want to make sure that they don&t put products out there, that they really can&t commit to,& explains Director of
Product Management, Rohit Dhawan, who heads alternative monetization at YouTube.
He says the perks can be almost anything the creator wants
to offer, within YouTube guidelines.
&It kind of like a blank canvas…it us giving the creators the tools to customize their membership
offering and provide whatever perks that they feel is going to be valuable to the fans,& he says.
This feature launched in January for
select creators, who have already been generating revenue
It will soon arrive for all who are eligible.
Comedy creator Mike Falzone more than tripled his YouTube revenue, thanks to memberships, says
Spanish gaming channelelrubiusOMGnow has six times the number of members as it did sponsors on YouTube Gaming alone
AndWintergatanis making over 50 percent of revenue from Channel Memberships.
Overall, the number of creators earning five figures a year is
up 35 percent, and the number of those earning six figures is up by 40 percent, YouTube says.
Similar to sponsorships, YouTube retains 30
percent of sponsorship revenue after local sales tax is deducted, but covers all transaction costs, including credit card
fees.
Merchandise
In addition to memberships, creators will also be able to sell to fans directly, starting today.
In a shelf directly below
the video itself, creators with more than 10,000 subscribers can offer merchandise like tee-shirts, hats, phone cases or any one of over 20
different merchandise items that make sense for their channel.
For example, the creatorof Lucas the Spiderturned his character into a
plushie, and sold more than 60,000 units, making over $1 million in profit in just 18 days.
This new program is being launched in
partnership with custom merchandise platform Teespring.
YouTube says that Teespring will retain a cut of the merchandise, which varies per
Effectively, the way this works is that there a flat price per item sold that goes back to Teespring, but the creator can mark up the item
to whatever price they want, then keep the upside.
For example, a single t-shirt base price is $10.22, but creators typically sell them for
However, if the creators sells 200-499 t-shirts, the base price drops to $9.82, so the creator makes more money.
But YouTube has also
negotiated a deal with Teespring where it receives a commission on those sales — a small flat percentage, we&re told — the majority of
which is returned to the creator
This is meant to incentivize the creator to sell merchandise through YouTube, as they&ll receive more thanks to this returned commission
than if they sold direct.
This is also a massive win for Teespring, which only a few years ago was restructuring its business and laying off
staff.
During beta testing, Teespring says there was an 82 percent success rate for YouTubers using the merchandise service, and conversions
from views to sales were testing at 2.5 times higher than with standard description links
This led to an average of 25 percent more units sold per user, among early adopters.
In addition, creators who have been connected directly
with brand sponsorships via FameBit, the company it acquired in fall 2016, will also be able to use the merchandise shelf to point fans to
whatever they&re selling — like video games, apparel or any other product sold online
This feature was announced at VidCon, but hasn&t rolled out at this time.
Premieres
Finally, YouTubers who want to leverage the revenue
generation possibilities that come with Live video will have a way to do so without having to actually go live.
Instead, they can use a new
YouTube feature called &Premieres& that creates a landing page they can promote ahead of a video release
This page will also have a chat feature, like Live videos do, which means creators can use Super Chat and take advantage of Channel
Membership perks even if they aren&t doing live content.
The videos are uploaded in the same interface on YouTube, so there no new workflow
to learn beyond toggling the &Premiere& switch on.
Creators can also join in the chats as the video goes live to engage with their fans
around this pre-recorded content, as well as comment on the videos before they start
When the Premiere wraps, it posted as a regular video on the site (without the two-minute countdown video YouTube adds).
&We&re going to use
our search and discovery platform to promote these,& notes Kurt Wilms, Group Product Manager at YouTube, who leading Live.
&Upcoming
premieres can appear on the [YouTube] homepage and in recommended videos,& he says
Premieres will also show in the section where all the channel content you&ve subscribed to displays, we&re told
And Premieres will be in YouTube search and YouTube related videos.
&They&re going to appear across all the dedicated discovery portions of
our site, which is awesome,& he says.
Premieres can be used to promote upcoming videos from creators as well as things like new movie
trailers from studios, trailers from video games, or even music videos
But Premieres is not tied to YouTube Music at this time.
A number of YouTube creators will be turning on Premieres after VidCon,
includingSimon Martina,Leroy Sanchez,Jackson Bird,Los Polinesios,Ari Fitz,ZerkaaPlays,Theskorpionshow, Laura Kampf,Vintage
Space,Yammy,R.LUM.R.,JacksFilms,Corridor Digital andInnana Sarkis.
YouTube also said its version of Stories will arrive for all eligible
creators with more than 10,000 subscribers later this year.
The announcements come at a critical time for YouTube, as Facebook is trying to
woo creators away to its own network and video hub with uniquefeatures of its own.
The news also follows another announcement YouTube made
to advertisers this week, about new ways they&ll be able to connect with their audience using a Creative Suite of ad tools.
