YouTube will now let users tip creators. The new feature will be available for now in a limited number of countries, and YouTube will receive a percentage of each donation – 30%.
New ways to generate income
YouTubers are limited when generating money on the platform. Most depend almost exclusively on the payments they receive from sponsors and advertising royalties.
However, even the biggest YouTuber of all (PewDiePie) has expressed multiple times that it is very difficult to survive exclusively from the ad revenue as YouTube often demonetizes videos and even entire channels.
YouTube will implement a new option that will allow users to make small donations to their favorite content creators.
The system will be very similar to the one used by Twitch – but in this case, donations can be made in pre-recorded videos, not just livestreams.
In this way, users will have greater participation to support their favorite content creators, who will no longer necessarily have to resort to external sites such as Patreon.
However, that assumes that users will be happy to give YouTube a 30% cut of each donation – especially as the way YouTube is run in recent years has been met with harsh criticism from both users and creators.
However, donations, which YouTube calls “Applauses”, will have certain rules that will limit their use.
The first will be the location. For now, the applause button will only be available for certain countries (Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, and the U.S.A). Gradually more nations will be added to the list.
The second limitation will be the platform used to watch the videos.
Oddly, donations can only be made from the desktop version of the website, and no plans were mentioned to add the feature to the mobile app.
The third limitation is that only YouTubers who are part of the Platform Partner Program can receive donations – meaning that you also have be eligible for the Adsense program and already monetized on YouTube.
Finally, the fourth rule, will be at the monetary level.
The tips will have a limit per user of $500 per day or $2,000 per week (each donation will have a fixed amount of $2), and this amount will be shared between the Super Chat and Super Stickers functions.
Donations will not be refundable.
