Earlier this week YouTube announced they are launching a $100m Creator Fund to promote the use of YouTube Shorts, their new short-form video competitor. The $100m will be disbursed every month to creators whose videos receive ‘the most engagements & views’. Unlike their normal monetization rules, creators are eligible for the Shorts Fund without being part of the YouTube Partner Program, this is great news for smaller creators looking to break onto the YouTube scene.
Short-Form Video in High Demand
YouTube’s $100m Shorts Fund is the latest in a number of funds launched over the last 12 months aimed at getting content creators to publish original content on specific platforms. So as a creator, how can you cash in?
Here is a look at all the recent funds:
Snapchat Spotlight: $1,000,000/day (available)
Substack Grants: $100,000/each (closed)
TikTok Creator Fund: $2,000,000,000 (available)
YouTube Shorts Creator Fund: $100,000,000 (available soon)
Clubhouse Grants: $5,000/month each (closed)
Facebook Black Creator Fund: $25,000,000 (closed)
Short-form video is clearly in high demand with Snap, YouTube and TikTok all willing to pay a premium to get new content on their platform. Now you don’t have to be a short-form video creator to take advantage, back in January I wrote about a number of creators making millions from the Spotlight fund. Not all of them were dedicated Snapchat users, instead they were taking longer-form content from other platforms and repurposing it specifically for the Spotlight fund. We will start to see that happening again with YouTubers taking old longer-form content, chopping it up and pushing it to Shorts to take advantage of the new fund.
Before you start counting all the cash you are going to make, keep in mind that each fund has specific rules and requirements to participate. I have linked where to apply for each fund above.
This is Just the Beginning
It’s important to note that all the creator funds listed above have launched within the last 12 months marking a critical shift in the Creator Economy (described perfectly by Niel Robertson from Influence.co below) where social platforms have finally realized they can’t monetize creator content for free anymore.
TikTok started the creator fund movement with their 2019 fund announcement in an effort to steal creators away from Instagram but the recent rapid growth of the entire Creator Economy has fueled the rest. I believe the release of iOS 14.5 (limited app tracking) driving up the costs of acquiring new users, has also pushed these major platforms to spend more to retain their existing users. Because there is no easier way to retain users than with quality original content.
Creators around the world should be excited as this is just the beginning and you can expect to see a number of other platforms (Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, Patreon) announce similar creator funds within the next few months.
There is no better time to be a creator!