 Hey there, Saplings. My name is Danny and welcome to Esoteric Moment. Today I wanted to do a video to share my thoughts on the changes in the YouTube Partner Program. So if you haven't heard today, YouTube announced all of these changes that were supposed to help encourage and reinforce the relationship with advertisers in making sure that they wanted their material on YouTube and therefore creators get paid and YouTube gets paid and also to kind of help crack down on creators who are just taking videos from other people and uploading them or, you know, doing spam or other items that were against the YouTube kind of code of conduct. All of these changes meant that in order to reach the threshold to be a YouTube partner and to make any money on YouTube and more importantly have access to a specific set of creator tools that help you grow your community, you needed two things to have a thousand subscribers and to have in the last year, every year, the 365 days, to have 4,000 hours of watch time or more. Now this change affects this channel and what I'm doing here in a few ways. I have reached the threshold of subscribers and I've been making money from YouTube for the last year and a half. When the program was happening previously you had a different set of thresholds to meet and then every month, whatever income you generated would go to your AdSense account and if AdSense total was above $100 you would get written a check. Now I didn't make a lot of money and I wasn't making videos to make money but those small checks in the last year helped me, you know, invest in the channel and invest in the type of connections that I can make with the awesome people I want to make here on YouTube. These changes mean that I do not have the threshold of 4,000 hours of watch time which I think is a surprisingly high number to require in order to even get involved in this program. I'm not going to stop making videos. I love connecting to people here, having conversations in the comment section and really being a part of the dialogue and sharing more about druidry and the books I'm reading and a little bit about permaculture. I love that but it does mean that I can't invest in extra software. It means I can't really upgrade my equipment and it means that this hobby and passion of mine that I would really love to see grow and devote more time to might have to take a backseat because I don't have the resources to just invest in it on my own. I need it to be creating something itself. I don't think I'm alone in this position where you have a lot to offer and you're a smaller YouTube creator and you're trying to make a million views or subscribers or have a whole team behind you. You just want to make good quality and interesting content. I'm really disheartened by this change and this change will mean that I no longer receive funds even though I did actually get a check from YouTube last year and use that money to reinvest in this channel. I just wanted to provide an opportunity for other smaller creators in the comments to share whether you are in this situation. If you're close to one of those thresholds and you were previously making money or really close, let us know in the comments and maybe we can help each other out. It just means that smaller YouTube creators are going to have to stick together a little bit more tightly and make sure that we're subscribing to the content that we really want and watching that content so that we get more of it and it's not just about clickbait thumbnails and you know kind of trashy daily vlogs. Not that all daily vlogs are trashy but you know if you're trying to do quantity versus quality there are some things that change and I would like quality not just quantity. So if if you'd like to help my channel out you could certainly go back and watch some of your old favorite videos or put a playlist on. That would be lovely. I in in full disclosure I would have to get about 1400 hours in the next 30 days to keep the benefits of being a YouTube partner. Keep monetization. I don't know if that's really going to happen with the amount of subscribers I have but that's where this channel is at. I would love to know where your channel is at and if you need assistance. I'm going to shout out three channels myself today. Rich who's Monday's host on Pagan Perspective. I know he's pretty close to the subscriber limit of a thousand so if you enjoy him on Pagan Perspective definitely go check out his personal channel. There's a link in the description. Sarah MP or I think it used to be like itty bitty Celtic Witch. She has a really beautiful Instagram page and she has the subscriber count but I checked in with her but not the watch time so if you want to put one of her playlist on or if you've already watched your videos maybe put her playlist on but mute it and have it running in the background. Definitely check out her stuff. Bella Moore has an interesting channel where it's like half beauty vlogger half witchy Pagan stuff. I believe on the YouTube Pagan Facebook channel she said she had the subscribers but not the watch time so I've definitely got a playlist that I've been checking in on and watching some of those videos regularly. She would be another great small creator to help out with. Of course there are more people who could use assistance and if you are one of those people let us know in the comments below. I personally would love to help more creators get those final subscribers or help with watch time which I really think is where a lot of people in the Pagan community will especially need assistance with. There are those YouTubers who post really long videos and get people to watch 30 minute videos but I think generally most people prefer videos that are between like five to eight minutes and that is edited well and concise so we just need to make sure we watch our favorites so that we can keep investing in our community. Change is good and I'm sure that we will find the benefit of this change soon but it is hard to be one of those people who used to get some funds for their channel and will no longer get that and now see this new barrier that feels unattainable and feels like it is driving us to create content that isn't really what we signed up for. We signed up for content that was good and for maybe a smaller community but you know reach the people we wanted to interact with. I do have to say that there are some larger YouTubers who have on Twitter said things like you know when I started it wasn't hard to reach a thousand subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time you know if I could do it in five months you can do it for five months and I'm sure that's true but when many of those people who are making those comments started it was seven years ago and there weren't as many creators there wasn't as much competition and the internet was a very different place and the videos that were attracting views were very different you stood out more so it's not really a apples to apples comparison to say that the stuff you created five years ago is the same as the material that people are creating now and in the environment that people are starting in now. There's also been talk about going to other platforms which in many ways seems like a viable option but those other platforms don't have the views right now and they aren't where the conversations are happening and for all of these stress and frustrations that YouTube has really put upon creators it's still in many ways the easiest and most accessible for creators to build an audience some of the other platforms you know you've got to pay right away and that sucks when you're trying to get those thousand subscribers. Thanks for watching if you would like to help me out definitely subscribe but more importantly go back and watch your favorite videos I'm gonna try and upload more videos this month and we'll see what happens and hopefully I can keep creating the way I would like to and you can enjoy the content that I've promised to put out there for us. Thanks for watching and as always may you find peace in the sacred grove.