YouTube tries to attract TikTok stars by allowing monetization of YouTube Shorts videos

Goggle is about to expand its YouTube Partner program, allowing stars with enough followers and viewing hours to round out their revenue by also monetizing YouTube Shorts clips.

Taking a swipe at rival platform TikTok, Google announces major changes to the YouTube Partner Program, allowing creators to also earn revenue from views generated with YouTube Shorts videos. So, while until now any YouTuber with more than 1000 followers and at least 4000 hours of cumulative views in the last year qualified for the YouTube Partner Program, there is now another bar to pass, with only YouTube stars with at least 10 million views generated on the platform in the last 90 days also eligible to monetise YouTube Shorts videos.

Once accessed, the Shorts monetization option shares 45% of ad revenue with the creators of the Shorts clips:

“I’m proud to say this is the first time real revenue sharing for Shorts videos, on any platform, is being offered at scale,” said Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer YouTube.

At the moment, TikTok is only experimenting with ad revenue sharing , efforts remain focused on compensating advertising partners rather than the creators who actually produce the content. Currently only 4% of all videos shared on TikTok are eligible for monetization through the equivalent TikTok Pulse program. For the most part, creators are finding it increasingly difficult to earn money from the so-called Creator Fund, provided by ByteDance specifically to motivate TikTok stars.

With the new monetization option, the YouTube Shorts platform becomes TikTok’s biggest competitor, with eligible creators motivated by the promise of additional revenue to create more original content for the Google-run platform.