San Francisco: YouTube, often criticized for not compensating creators well enough, will allow them to set up paid channel memberships, the company said on Thursday.
Currently the vast majority of revenue at the Google-owned service comes from advertising and that will remain a focus, said Neal Mohan, YouTube´s chief products officer.
"But we also want to think beyond ads. Creators should have as many ways and opportunities to make money as possible," he said.
Viewers will pay $4.99 a month for channel memberships giving them access to exclusive content including livestreams, extra videos or shout-outs on channels with more than 100,000 subscribers.
Creators will also be able to sell merchandise like shirts or phone cases directly on their channels, the company said.
YouTube returns a small part of its advertising revenue to content creators who regularly accuse the platform of giving them only crumbs.
The site is facing increasing competition from other platforms using more and more video.
YouTube says it has more than 1.9 billion users but the figure only counts those who log in via their accounts.
"Teams are working diligently to resolve the matter as soon as possible," says PTCL
AAE-1 near Qatar is one of seven int'l undersea cables connecting Pakistan for internet traffic
Storms lit up sky throughout the New Year's Eve night going as far as California, Austria and Germany
New year will have some some unique and ambitious space projects to moon
Many older phone devices can't support Meta's app due to technological advances
Company's vice president says “we’re now targeting 134 launches, two shy of our last goal, to finish 2024 strong"
