YouTube has been around since valentine's day 2005, so it's been around for 12 years. That behemoth keep growing and growing and we all heard how popular youtubers makes insane amount of money through their monetization program. These folks aren't suppose to leak out how much they make but they make sh!t ton. Like everyone else I jumped on the bandwagon, hoping to cash in. I started my channel not knowing what my niche was, it's quite hard to find the right niche that you're passionate about and also keep viewer coming back for more. I ended up doing Mukbangs (eating show made popular by the South Koreans). It has taken YouTube by storm. So I did about 2 dozen of videos with nice thumbnails and all good 1080p HD quality. In about 3 months of time i have made about $2.96 USD total. That's a lot of work for a measly $2.96. Here's the kicker, by the 2nd month I was suspended from their monetization program, their execuse was that i click on my own ad. Let me tell you I DID NOT do such a thing. Their algorithm is just a POS. My account was suspended for 30 days from their monetization program, i can still upload and produce my videos, just that i can't enable & exercise their monetization option. Since the suspension was lifted I have uploaded probably more than 8 videos, totaling more than a few hundred views. But guess what? My estimated value remains at $0.00, not one cent was earned.
Prior to the suspension I was earning a cent here and there, but nothing major. During my suspension time frame YouTube rolled out a new program where monetization will allowed ONLY for users with a total of 10K views. You can read about it in the following article:
According to the article it only affect new user who sign up after the affected time frame. My guess is that after my suspension, the reinstate period must have converted my account to be like a new account where I have to amass 10K views in order to get monetization.
Other things that infuriate me is that they do not promote your videos, you will have to break at certain number of subscribers in order to be promoted. So the more popular youtubers get more popular based on the the youtube's promotion.
If you're a creator I would definitely diversify and put your content on other platforms such as twitch. I am not encouraging to give up on YouTube, i think over time and if you have really good content I think you will succeed, but it will definitely take a lot of work and dedication.
