YouTube now requires creators to have twice as many watch hours to start earning money
Creators who want to start earning on the platform will need at least 8,000 qualified watch hours over the past year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days.
本条来自 TechCrunch（AI / 创投），聚焦 consumer。 YouTube now requires creators to have twice as many watch hours to start earning money
Creators who want to start earning on the platform will need at least 8,000 qualified watch hours over the past year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days
- Media & Entertainment
- TechCrunch Brand Studio
- Aisha Malik
- 11:27 AM PDT · August 10, 2026
- YouTube now requires creators to have twice as many watch hours to start earning money
Creators who want to start earning on the platform will need at least 8,000 qualified watch hours over the past year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days
Media & Entertainment
TechCrunch Brand Studio
YouTube now requires creators to have twice as many watch hours to start earning money
Aisha Malik
11:27 AM PDT · August 10, 2026
YouTube announced on Monday that new creators will have to meet higher thresholds to begin earning money from ads and subscriptions.
Creators who want to start earning on the platform will need at least 8,000 qualified watch hours over the past year or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the last 90 days. Currently, creators need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours over the past year or 1,000 subscribers and 10 million Shorts views over the past 90 days.
The change is going into effect starting February 1. The Google-owned company says the update won’t impact creators already in the YouTube Partner Program.
Additionally, YouTube announced that creators will need to maintain 10 million Shorts views over a 90-day period to earn money through the Shorts Creators Pool. Channels below this threshold will remain in the partner program and continue earning on long-form content, with Shorts revenue resuming once they cross 10 million views again.
YouTube says the changes are being introduced to “keep pace with the growth of YouTube, which now sees over 200 billion daily Shorts views and over a billion hours of watch time on TV” every day.
The changes make it harder for creators to enter and remain in YouTube’s monetization program, especially for Shorts creators. By increasing thresholds, YouTube is putting more pressure on creators’ ability to consistently bring in large audiences before being able to earn money on the platform, which could in turn lead to fewer new entrants being able to monetize their content.
As part of Monday’s announcement, YouTube announced that it’s expanding its more affordable Premium Lite subscription to all countries where YouTube Premium is available. Creators receive a share of subscription revenue based on member watch time and views, with 55% going to long-form video creators and 45% to Shorts creators.
“With these additional subscribers, creators can expect higher earnings: when a user signs up for Premium, partners, on average, earn more than when the user was watching ads,” the company wrote in the blog post.
Premium Lite offers an ad-free experience on most videos, along with the ability to download videos for offline viewing and play videos in the background.
YouTube isn’t the only social media company revising its creator rewards programs. Over the weekend, Elon Musk’s X also revamped creator payouts by changing its guidelines to only reward original content. Earlier this spring, Facebook also launched a new monetization program to attract creators from TikTok and YouTube.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission . This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Aisha Malik
Consumer News Reporter
Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University.
You can contact or verify outreach from Aisha by emailing aisha@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at aisha_malik.01 on Signal.
October 13 – 15
San Francisco
Scale faster. Grow your portfolio. Gain practical expertise. No matter your goal, Disrupt can empower you.
Save up to $300 toda y!
Most Popular
This ‘adversarial’ pattern can prevent surveillance cameras from detecting you
Zack Whittaker
Cloudflare launches Kitesurf, a browser built for AI agents
Sarah Perez
ChatGPT brings unlimited text chats to free users
Ivan Mehta
Tesla and SpaceX will invest $16.8B to start building ‘Terafab’ chip factory in Texas
Sean O'Kane
Amid legal battles, Suno says it will start watermarking songs
Ivan Mehta
Ford’s new electric truck, ‘Fathom,’ starts at $28,350
Sean O'Kane
Bending Spoons to buy Airtable for $1.28B
Ivan Mehta
X
youTube
Mastodon
Threads
Bluesky
TechCrunch Staff Contact Us Advertise Site Map
Terms of Service Privacy Policy RSS Terms of Use Code of Conduct
OpenAI vs Apple Nous Research Space Data Centers Staya Nadella SpaceX Starship Tech Layoffs ChatGPT
© 2026 TechCrunch Media LLC.
本条目归入「Consumer Trends」垂直，涉及真实话题：consumer。
· 市场：关注 consumer 对相关品类与竞争格局的潜在影响。
· 消费者：受众行为与偏好变化值得追踪。
· 品牌：本动向对品牌资产建设的启示。
· 渠道：内容分发与触点组合（社媒 / 电商 / 线下）的协同值得复盘。
· 核心话题：consumer。
· 可思考：如何把「consumer」的洞察，转化为可衡量的内容与增长动作？
面试中可引用「YouTube now requires creators to have twice as many watch hours to start earning money」：围绕 consumer，说明你对行业动向的判断与可落地动作。
本条目相关英文术语可在「商务英语」模块按话题检索，用于外企面试表达训练。
Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from …
Additionally, YouTube announced that creators will need to maintain 10 million Shorts views over a 90-day period to earn money through the Shorts Creators Pool. Channels below this…
YouTube says the changes are being introduced to “keep pace with the growth of YouTube, which now sees over 200 billion daily Shorts views and over a billion hours of watch time on…