This is one big concern in hundreds of words to the people as YouTube is coming up with a stricter policy that will be effective next month. What you should worry about is the channels that will no longer be involved in monetization and the small YouTube channels are already losing momentum as if people have lost interest in their videos or some kind. It may sound like YouTube is ruining small channels like they no longer care for them because their contents are less interesting or whatnot but it seems that YouTube seems to care for actual professional YouTubers out there who can monetize their stuffs without screwing up their channels. But before this policy is to take place, the most important thing in doing things as a professional YouTuber is that everything in your videos must be in the legal/light zone so that it's safe to monetize them without worries of trouble. However, one dark example is that someone monetizes the videos they've stolen from other accounts or maybe the videos containing something in the grey zone. What an illegal way and I can imagine consequences worse than account termination.
In the past, a lifetime of 10000 views is required in addition to 1000 subscribers to be part of the YouTube Partner Program but then that amount is like too small and my channel has like 400000+ total video views or some kind although I have like 200+ subscribers. However, I have no main goals in pushing these amounts even quicker in the future as showing off something no one else has shown is the first reason why I started my YouTube channel in the first place. Of course, there might be useless garbage I posted in the past but they were easy to take down or something as people probably expected me to do things right in the future so that they would be interested in my channel. However, this is going to change next month with 4000 hours of watch time in the past 12 months along with 1000 subscribers. For small channels like mine, you may be out of luck if you don't follow this new criteria but that's what it is to become big for real with tons of views per video as well as the growing amount of subscribers. A channel with sufficient amount of total video views although the amount of views per video is not that large may have a difficult chance of being a YouTube Partner. Things have changed quite alot although some of the features were more controversial.
What will happen is that you can still use various channel features but to go deeper will require verification and being a YouTube Partner. For Custom URL, Custom Thumbnail and Live Streaming, your channel must be verified and for Cards and End Screens, you will need to be a part of YPP in order to link things to the external source. Plus, this revamped program will be a new license in terms of video monetization. You need to be part of it if you want your videos monetized. A real change is that Super Chat and Sponsorship will be parts of YPP, not outside of it and besides, a sponsorship is not an easy thing to do for YouTube or other professional business.
Well, I might have seen tons of reaction videos and that was an impressive stuff but the thing is, they've taken the copyrighted content for their reaction videos and monetized them. I guess commerical-use rights or sponsorship must be required if you want a professional reaction to the stuff you see and it may be the same for product reviews and vlogs containing copyrighted contents.
Sure, you can tell me things about Fair-Use but those things above are at professional levels and your videos must be in the light/legalized zone if you want them monetized legally. Some alternatives in getting your channels supported may include Twitch, Patreon and even your merchandise but then, I don't know if the policies are changed there or not.
There are already concerns so far from people stating that they will be kicked out of the YPP program next month and it looks like they will need some help but then, they can try various alternatives to keep their career alive and kicking. Especially for musicians and DJs in which their public performances don't give them so much money in the end and it seems that they will need other ways to gain additional money for survival. If gaining tons of money is your first priority, then you don't deserve your advancement in your career for sure. You must have passion and ambition for whichever career you want.
Will small channels like mine be gone next month? I guess not. I can still continue posting my stuffs there although my channel is already on life support starting sometime last year. The amount of watch time in minutes and views is already decreasing but I guess that I already feared on what the retards at home had been up to against me as well as a bunch of accidental things I did in the past like 1-2 years ago. There's also a site in which someone can end up making one's own account and then verifying accounts that are not entire his/hers. I wonder if that is a flaw in the service or something but speaking of impersonating channels on YouTube, it may pose a challenge to indicate which one is genuine or not so that a genuine one can be truly verified. This may solve the confusion among the viewers and the impersonators may be sad or something with/without realizing the trouble they're in. Sure, a simple consequence is account termination but that doesn't seem to be enough for some of the immature impersonators or even the useless trolls I had ever seen.
Another part of the revamped YPP is that 10000 people will be hired by Google to work on things like manual reviews of the YouTube channels and such and things will be like effective or maybe complete globally two months later.
