World

YouTube to allow content creators to sell memberships, merchandise

YouTube is doing more to keep its brightest stars happy. The online video site is all set to have a new adding a feature which will permit all content creators with more than 100,000 subscribers to sell memberships to their fans, the company announced the same on the last Thursday.

The Loyal viewers will be now going to pay a monthly fee for perks like custom emojis, exclusive content, and merchandise.

The Owners of popular YouTube channels like Phil DeFranco and Casey Neistat have long clamored for more ways to make money other than advertising as those complaints have grown louder these days from 2017.

Many channels have suffered somehow turn down in ad sales as Google’s YouTube tinkers with which videos are entitled to publicity.

The YouTube has stripped advertising also from the several channels to pacify companies whose ads ran in front of videos deemed badly chosen.

Disenchanted and Disillusioned on the YouTube stars have turned to services like Patreon for help collecting money straight from the fans. Others have flirted with rivals Facebook and Amazon’s Twitch. Many of Twitch’s most popular users already make more money by selling subscriptions than advertising.

YouTube executives have minimized the threat from rivals, which also shows the statistics about the growing number of people who make their stay on the site.

Over the past year, the number of creators earning five figures which have been increased more than 35% and the number of channels earning six figures is up more than 40%, in April, the company said.

The subscription feature will be one of a few new ways which will allow the YouTube creators to make money from a site that will be going to have long focused on the advertising.

“This is a means to diversify that revenue picture,’’ Neal Mohan, the Chief Product Officer said in an interview on Thursday at an annual convention for online video in Anaheim, California. “It’s something creators have been asking for. We’ve built products hand-in-hand with them.’’ Mohan also declared YouTube creators would be able to sell merchandise from their channel page (as they already can with tickets).

Subscriptions also advance the goals of YouTube’s parent company Alphabet Inc., which is also trying to diversify revenue.

The company is selling phones, home speakers, and cloud software while YouTube just introduced a new paid music service, which also sells a live TV service.

The subscription feature is already available to some channels which are devoted to the video games, it will soon be available to thousands of the more channels.

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