Well, they didn't ban me from the site. I still have my channel and I'm still able to upload videos. But they cut me from the Partner Program, which they awarded to me back in 2010, mainly due to the Foundation fake trailer I made with a variety of old 1950s sci-fi public domain clips.
Within a few months after I uploaded it, it was cross-linked on a few sites and because there was talk of a real Foundation film being produced, it got a bunch of views, I think over 25,000 by the end of that year. It's still the most viewed video out of the 60 or so I have on my channel.
Argh, I can't find the fucking place where it says how many videos I have...YouTube's interface, despite the multitude of changes and "tweaks" over the years, is still the most unhelpful of probably all the social media sites I frequent. Fucking Twitter tells me all the pertinent info right at the header, including how many tweets I've posted. (EDIT: It says the total videos I have on the analytics page copied below. I actually have 74.)
Argh, I can't find the fucking place where it says how many videos I have...YouTube's interface, despite the multitude of changes and "tweaks" over the years, is still the most unhelpful of probably all the social media sites I frequent. Fucking Twitter tells me all the pertinent info right at the header, including how many tweets I've posted. (EDIT: It says the total videos I have on the analytics page copied below. I actually have 74.)
So what's the big change when you're not in the YouTube Partner Program. Monetization.
Now I never intended to make a business out of my channel. I just mess around with it for fun. In fact, up to I think a couple of years after I got to be a Partner, I hesitated to monetize my videos. Mainly because I knew the money I'd "earn" would be just a few pennies here and there. But also because I hate YouTube video ads. Well, the sidebar static ad is relatively benign and acceptable, but the auto-play ad at either the beginning or later during play is freaking annoying as fuck. They're one of the main reasons I decided years ago to equip Ad Blocker extensions to my Chrome browser.
But I did eventually allow ads, even, on some that I thought would get more views, the auto-play ads. And, my Adsence account showed I was making money...little tiny amounts over month after month after month. But did I ever see the money in the form of a payment to me. Hell no. Read the fine print about that and you have to wait until your account earns at least $100 before you can request payout. How hard is that goal? My little weakling of a channel has only 87 subscribers (the majority of those are likely from some of my Planet Coaster videos since they have a fair amount of views, in comparison, and I got a few comments about the parks and park assets I made and have available on the Steam Workshop) so I don't "earn" a lot of money at all. How much? Well from roughly the beginning of 2011 to now, I have a whopping $56.65. Well, heck, let me just paste a couple screen caps of the metrics here (click to enlarge so you can actually read it):
Hey, you're saying..."You said the Foundation trailer had the most views, but here it shows "Riding Codzilla" with the most views and revenue." Right. That's because despite me being careful to use only public domain clips in my work, I used background music that, being old (composed in 1914), I thought would also not violate the copyright rule. Well, the music may have been composed so long ago as to be in the public domain now, but the recording I used was from just a few years ago. So I got dinged because of a copyright claim and was forced to display an ad that made YouTube money, but gave me zilch. That's also why the graph above doesn't show anything prior to 2013 when I started monetizing even though I had thousands of views. This graph only tracks money.
YouTube is not just bumping me down, they're doing it to, I'd guess, millions of other content creators because we just simply aren't getting enough views. You now need something like a minimum of 4000 hours of watchtime over the past 12 months and at least 1000 subscribers. But they gave us a bit of time to step up our game...we'll be able to stay in the program if we can hit these criteria by February 20th. Well, I sure the fuck can't.
So good bye $56.65 since it'll never hit $100 by then.
You know, I don't even give a fuck about the money, really. In fact, I actually breathed a sigh of relief since I hated to annoy viewers with ads, so I went ahead and demonitized every single video I have.
But, will that really eliminate ads on my videos? Well, not the ones like the Foundation video that got hit with a copyright claim. The ads for those will stay, making YouTube money, and surely, the advertiser since it should increase sales.
The only thing I'm a little concerned with is the real reason I was grateful to get into the Partner Program in the first place...unlimited video runtimes. I'm not sure how it is for plebs like I now will soon be again, but back in the day, you could only put up videos that had a maximum of 10 minutes.
What if that restriction gets imposed on me? And what will happen to the videos I have already posted that do run more than 10 minutes? I know not to make really long videos now but I always liked the freedom to be able to put some if I did decide to do stuff like a Let's Play video. Gamer creators usually post videos for Let's Plays lasting around 30 minutes or so on average.
Sigh. This is sad. This wouldn't of happened if Bernie had won. He'd threaten to nationalize YouTube, or maybe all of Alphabet (Google, Blogger, and a shit ton of other companies). Down with rich and greedy corporation! Yeah!
Um, wait a minute. My 403b fund is heavily invested in Alphabet stock. And it's makin' some nice cha-ching right now. Never mind. Reap as much revenue as you can, YouTube. I'll just stay happy with my little podunk poor channel. It's fine. I think I'll make it.