The Youtube situation - why did my earnings suddenly stop?

Confused to why your Youtube account has suddenly stopped earning money?

Me too. So I've done some investigating..



So this is my Youtube channel where I write about cars: Drive Another Day

Currently it has 26 videos and a staggering 11 subscribers :D

Okay so it's not a monster earner, not by any stretch of the imagination but similar to the revenue from the advertising I run on blogs such as this one, I do enjoy that I have a handful of cents that comes in now and then. A full time job it isn't, Life changing money it's not, money I rely on it's not, but as low as it is it's still encouraging to see it come through. It's like busking change really even though I can't play a note.

So naturally when the last few days on my Youtube analytics tell me I've made nothing, after roughly the same amount of people as last week came through for a look I knew something was going on. And after a quick Googling, it seems a couple of things are causing my little cent tap to dry up:

Back in March Recode wrote an article about Google tweaking their ad system to respond to brand safety for advertisers. Long story short businesses were pulling their ads off the service due to the fact that they'd show up at the start of videos that were blatantly racist or supporting terrorism. Which honestly is fair enough - if I was the advertising director of a big business and my commercials were appearing on Youtube clips of either, I'd be pissed to.

Which has more than likely led to Youtube's next big step:

From Adnews earlier this week: Apparently you're not going to start earning any coin whatsoever if your channel has a combined total of less that 10,000 views. Which means if you're starting out, getting that many views before anything happens could take you a very long time.

Case in point, I've had my Youtube channel for about a year and a half now and I'm a sniff over 9000 at the moment. And in all honesty if it wasn't for a couple of videos pulling down the lions share of all of those views, I'd be well and truly behind the eight ball right about now.

Big projects like my DIY sandblaster, are a hit: (4k+ and counting - my best effort yet)

Quick and dirty Youtube clips about bargain mowers? Yeah not so popular (but at least 5 people now have have a look :P)

If all my videos had the success of the soda blaster, I wouldn't be writing this post. If they had the success of the mower above however? Well therein lies the kicker - I would have to create at least 2000 Youtube clips before I and my channel started earning a cent. Which is equal parts hilarious and insanely depressing at the same time.

So unless your niche is stupidly popular or you're planning to pump out a lot (okay quite a lot) of quick and dirty shoot and upload clips, it's going to take quite some time to amass the numbers you need.
And then...well unless your viewers are clicking on the ads you're now allowed to show...well you're still going to be getting a handful of cents per 1000 impressions or so.
So there's a lot of work before you're allowed to earn...not much? Yeah I'm confused too.  

So how does this affect my channel personally?

Similar to my previous house being up for sale currently, technically it's only a matter of time in both cases where I'm back on track. According to my analytics I average anywhere from 90 to 130 views every 48 hours, which means for the remaining 1000 views I need to re qualify, I'll need roughly 370 to 576 hours. Which is roughly 15 to 24 days.

However if you took my 3 most popular off the table? It'd be a while. A very long while actually.

What I would like to see instead:

Once Google/Youtube get their latest algorithm down pat, I'd like to see the return of money made based on 1000 views regardless of where you're at, 10,000 views or less. 

However make the revenue available when fans click the ads only applicable once you get past 10k. Give content creators an extra level to strive for - even poo change is still money ultimately and I would rather a handful of cents over a handful of nothing at the moment.   

But what about you?

Got a different take on this situation? Struggling to make 2000 videos at 5 views each to start earning some coin? Already well past the 10,000 views and this whole situation isn't affecting you at all Youtube multi millionaire? Let us know in a comment below :)


EDIT A DAY LATER: I made ten cents. Considering no ads seem to be popping up on my videos at the moment (well for me anyway) I'm not sure how this happened...