YouTube Gaming is introducing paid sponsorships for its creators to earn money from their channels, and to help them better connect with their fans.
Fans of creators on YouTube Gaming will now be able to buy things directly from their favourite channels, as well as support them with a small amount of $4.99 per month. Those who sponsor pages will get several perks that include custom badgers and custom emoji that are designed by the creators themselves. These can be used in live chats to help them “stand out from the crowd,” and more are unlocked as a creator gains more sponsors. Creators can upload their custom badges and emoji, and use them in real-time as certain sponsorship milestones are reached, and passed.
Additionally, sponsors will also be able to access a special sponsonrs-only live chat which also gives them immunity from “slow mode” – a feature that prevents fans from commenting too often in a live chat. Creators will also be able to set up perks through 3rd-party services. For example, “on-stream alerts that you’ve received a new subscriber via Streamlabs or an exclusive Discord sponsors-only server where fans can connect and chat together.”
Some YouTube Gaming creators who already use sponsorships have seen a lot of success. YouTube Gaming Product Manager, Barbara Macdonald, provided a few examples:
[quote]GameAttack makes most of their channel revenue via sponsorships and Super Chat. Rocket Beans earned 1,500 sponsors in their first day. And ONE_shot_GURL’s monthly celebratory wall of sponsors is getting so full, it’s running out of room.[/quote]
MacDonald also went on to explain that sponsorships are available to all eligible channels, so if a channel is eligible, enabling the feature is easy. Just go to youtube.com/features. Finally, MacDonald also announced that the company is also testing another version of the feature with ordinary YouTube creators. If you’d like to see this in action, you can check out Lauren Fairweather’s or Que Diabos’ channel. If you are interested in the feature, simply sign up and try it.
Finally, YouTube is now shutting down its “paid channels” feature it had launched in 2013. With less than 1% of creators using it four years later, it’s clear that the idea never really took off.
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