Damon Dominique on gradual monetization changes on YouTube:
YouTube as a job, social media as a job — the first thing I wanna say is that, I had a YouTube partner manager (which, they don’t— they’ve never done anything, by the way)— anyway, one of the partner managers sent me over, like, a feature that was gonna be released on YouTube, which was similar to the TikTok creator fund.
And, I responded something along the lines of, ‘Oh, well, what’s interesting about YouTube is that if everyone posts their really cool thing in this month and everyone gets a lot of views, then everyone wins.
There’s no topping out of a budget that YouTube is willing to spend. The way that TikTok works (or worked back in the day — I think they might be changing it now) was that they would be, like, ‘Here’s a million dollars that we are allocating towards everybody creating content. Fight for it.‘
And, whoever gets the most views gets the bigger cut.
That’s different than, ‘Everybody can win on YouTube.’ Because, if everyone posts a thing and everyone watches it, then we can all earn, and it’s not topping out a certain number. That’s not how it works.
So, anyway, my partner manager was letting me know that YouTube Shorts— there was gonna be a Shorts Fund!
Like, I don’t like to be this person always having to be like, ‘Sorry, one second. The whole reason we prioritize YouTube is because of the payment model. It incentivizes creators to create cool things as opposed to garbanzo beans content just to be on the Shorts feed, and to hopefully, like, fight for views.’
[Partner Manager:]
- ‘I’m afraid I don’t get your point. The pool model is only used for Shorts.’
I was like, ‘That’s exactly my point. Short is, like, the new feature. You guys are trying to get creators to get used to lower payouts.’
Her response was that, ‘Shorts uses an ad format that’s different than long video, which means they have to take a unique approach to revenue sharing.’
It’s gonna be $0.01, you guys.
Damon’s joking but, only a little bit. He’s OG-enough of a creator to understand what many do not:
- The responsibility of any partner manager, special contact, or creator liaison is to make more money for the platform, not the creator.
Their job is to make you feel like a business partner, and not the dairy cow that you are.
— Tang
Damon Dominique’s owned platform is: DamonDominique.com.
