YouTube will soon be rolling out more ways for content creators to earn money directly from viewers.
These new features were announced this week at VidCon, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Super Stickers
Building off of a feature introduced last year, called Super Chats, YouTube is introducing Super Stickers.
Super Chats let viewers buy messages that stand out in a live stream, while Super Stickers will let viewers send animated stickers for a fee.
Creators earn a cut of the revenue YouTube makes from each purchase of a super message or sticker. Some streams are earning over $400 per minute, the company says.
For nearly 20,000 channels, super chats are now their number one revenue stream. Perhaps that number will grow even more with the introduction of stickers.
Channel Membership Tiers
YouTube is building off of another existing feature with the addition of membership tiers.
Previously, viewers could pay a flat monthly fee of $4.99 to get access to exclusive content.
Now, creators can introduce tier-based pricing, which would allow them to offer more content for a greater monthly fee.
Creators can set up to five different price points for channel memberships, with varying perks at each level.
This now puts YouTube in competition with Patreon, which is a platform used by many YouTubers to earn revenue from dedicated fans.
Patreon has always allowed creators to set up different membership tiers. Now that YouTube offers the same capabilities it will be interesting to see how this affects Patreon’s business.
More Merch Partners
Creators now have more opportunities to sell merchandise with the addition of five new partners.
Joining Teespring is Crowdmade, DFTBA, Fanjoy, Represent, and Rooster Teeth.
Eligible creators who distribute merchandise through one of these companies can now take advantage of YouTube’s ‘merch shelf’ feature.
YouTube says thousands of channels have more than doubled their total revenue by using these new tools in addition to advertising.
