According to a report by Bloomberg, YouTube is paying good money to its creators to promote its new, Twitch-like monetization features, such as donations and paid memberships. The money reportedly ranges from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, although, none of the creators have been identified by the report.
The new features were introduced by YouTube last year in a bid to keep creators happy after the company sensed a growing unrest among many of them for allegedly not getting the same options to monetize their content when compared to their compatriots on Twitch and Patreon, both of which, alongside Facebook Video and Instagram’s latest IGTV platform, are being seen in some quarters as potential challengers to YouTube’s dominance going forward.
One of the features that’s part of the deal is ‘Super Chat’, which allows users to pay a small amount to a YouTuber to pin a comment on live-streams. The more the payment, the longer the comment remains pinned. The feature was introduced in January 2017, and replaced ‘Fan Funding’, which was YouTube’s previous tool to help creators monetize their content on the site.
It’s ironic that YouTube is paying its creators to promote Super Chat when it is one of the features that most of them have constantly complained about, given that 30 percent of any payment they receive through the platform ends up going to YouTube.
The company, on the other hand, is desperate to convey the message that its new features will definitely help creators on the platform generate additional income over and above what they already earn from traditional advertisements.
