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YouTube offers tiered membership levels to boost creators’ revenue
Last year, YouTube took to the VidCon stage to share new ways creators could make money. This year, YouTube returned with updates to those programs. For starters, it's adding new Channel Membership levels. Since last year, fans have been able to pay a monthly fee of $4.99 in exchange for added membership perks like exclusive live streams, extra videos and shoutouts. Now, creators can set up to five different price points and offer varying perks at each tier. According to YouTube, when Fine Brothers Entertainment tested offering multiple levels, the company's membership revenue increased sixfold.
Anti-VidCon event 'TanaCon' was an absolute disaster
Tana Mongeau, a YouTube star, was angry that popular YouTube convention VidCon has refused to grant her a "Featured Creator" badge that would grant her extra security and a special area to meet and greet her fans, so she decided to take matters into her own hands. For 2018, Mongueau decided she would put on her own rival convention called TanaCon, held across the street from VidCon, on the same days (June 22nd and 23rd). She envisioned it as a two-day free event where fans could meet up with their favorite YouTube stars. It didn't exactly go as planned.
YouTube creators can hype prerecorded videos with 'Premieres'
While YouTube users have been able to schedule prerecorded videos for years, until now there hasn't been a seamless way to build anticipation for those videos. But there's a feature being launched at VidCon 2018 called YouTube Premieres that's going to change that. This tool will let creators hype future on-demand videos with a dedicated public landing page that they can link to before a video is live on their channel. Right now, YouTube creators tend to go on other social sites like Instagram or Twitter to let their followers know about incoming videos, but there wasn't a way for them to direct people to a specific page on YouTube -- not for prerecorded videos, anyway.
YouTube looks to merch and memberships to make creators more money
YouTube is having a busy day at VidCon 2018. Aside from launching Premieres, a feature that lets creators hype prerecorded videos with a public landing page, the company is also announcing new ways for them to make more money. For starters, channels with more than 100,000 subscribers will now have access to Memberships, which will allow viewers to pay a monthly fee of $4.99 to get exclusive access to badges, emoji, livestreams, members-only videos and shoutouts, among other perks. This is exactly what YouTube was already doing with Sponsorships, though that was available only to a select group of YouTubers. If you're a creator but don't meet the 100,000-subscriber threshold, YouTube says it hopes to bring Channel Memberships to more people in the coming months.
YouTube has a new mobile app now, 3D VR video coming soon
During a keynote speech tonight at the 6th annual Vidcon event, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced a new version of its mobile app. Available on Android and mobile web browsers now (iOS coming soon), it makes it easier for creators to publish and edit directly in the app, and easier for viewers to subscribe to a channel with just one button touch (and with ten million of those touches, channel owners can earn the new Diamond play button reward). The redesign even puts your subscriptions and profile right at the top for easy access. This is also the version that adds the ability to watch those vertical videos in full screen, so expect that to come your way soon if you don't have it already. Update: An update to the iOS app is out that brings fullscreen vertical video support to your iPhone too.
YouTube is upgrading to 60fps, adding a tip jar for donations and much more
YouTube is about to get a whole lot better, with a slew of new features freshly announced at this year's VidCon. Google's video wing will soon get support for clips running at 48-and-60 frames-per-second, which should be perfect for video game footage that you've captured an uploaded from your PlayStation 4 or Xbox One in addition to those 1080p60 game trailers that are quickly becoming the norm. You'll have to make sure 1080p resolution is selected to get the benefit of the higher frame-rate, naturally, and we've embedded a sample after the break. Customizable and, as the YouTube Creators blog post tells it, prettier-looking annotation cards as well as some new tools that your fans can use are en route, too. What are those? Well, viewers will soon be able to drop you a few bucks here and there so you don't have to rely on ad revenue alone.
