How to make money on YouTube without the Partner Program
Last updated: 23 August 2026
You do not need the YouTube Partner Program to earn from a YouTube channel. Memberships, tips, paid requests, sponsorship, merchandise and digital products all run on your own terms and pay regardless of whether YouTube has approved your channel for ad revenue.
What is changing, and when
From 1 February 2027, new applicants to the YouTube Partner Program will need 1,000 subscribers plus either 8,000 qualified public watch hours in the past 12 months or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the past 90 days. The watch-hour requirement doubles from 4,000, and the Shorts requirement doubles from 10 million.
Creators already in the programme are not affected. The change applies to applications from that date.
| Now | From 1 February 2027 | |
|---|---|---|
| Subscribers | 1,000 | 1,000 |
| Watch hours (12 months) | 4,000 | 8,000 |
| or Shorts views (90 days) | 10 million | 20 million |
Sources: YouTube Partner Program eligibility, TechCrunch, 10 August 2026. Checked August 2026.
Who this locks out
Doubling a watch-hour threshold does not affect everyone equally. 8,000 hours is roughly 480,000 minutes of watch time in a year. A channel whose videos average four minutes of actual viewing needs about 120,000 views a year to clear it — around 10,000 a month, every month.
That is achievable for broad subjects and very hard for narrow ones. A channel about a specific piece of software, a local subject or a minority language can have a devoted audience and never reach it. The threshold measures volume, and volume is the one thing a niche audience does not have.
It also does nothing about the underlying problem: even inside the programme, advertising pays according to what advertisers will spend against your subject, which for most niches is not much.
What pays without YouTube’s approval
None of the following involve YouTube, so none of them care what your watch hours are. All can be started on day one.
Sponsorship
A brand pays to reach your audience. This is the route most improved by being niche: a channel about welding is worth more to a welding-equipment company than a general channel ten times the size. It requires outreach — deals do not arrive unprompted at small scale — but the pricing is yours to set.
Paid requests
Your audience tells you what to make and puts money behind it before you make it. It suits exactly the channel the threshold locks out: a small audience that cares a lot. Ten people who genuinely want a specific video can be worth more than 10,000 passive views, and unlike advertising it pays before the work rather than after.
Memberships
Recurring payment for ongoing access, through Patreon, Ko-fi or similar. Patreon charges 10% on pages created after 4 August 2025 plus processing. The commitment is real: a membership is a promise to keep producing, and the month you miss is the month people cancel.
Tips
The lowest-friction option and the fastest to set up. Will not replace an income, but it costs nothing to add and tells you whether anyone will pay you at all — which is worth knowing before you build anything more elaborate.
Digital products and merchandise
Presets, templates, guides, courses; or print-on-demand merchandise. Both are made once and sold repeatedly. Both risk building something nobody asked for, which is a good reason to ask first.
What to do if you are below the threshold
- Stop treating the Partner Program as the goal. It is one income source among nine, and the only one that can refuse you. See the full list of ways creators earn.
- Add a way to pay you today. A tip link takes ten minutes. Not having one means the people who already wanted to support you could not.
- Ask your audience what they want. If people are asking you for specific videos, that is demand you can already act on — and it is the cheapest research you will ever do.
- Keep the watch hours in view, not in mind. They will arrive or they will not, and either way the ad revenue at the end is unlikely to be the largest line in your income.
Common questions
- What are the new YouTube Partner Program requirements?
- From 1 February 2027, new applicants need 1,000 subscribers plus either 8,000 qualified public watch hours in the past 12 months or 20 million qualified Shorts views in the past 90 days. The previous thresholds were 4,000 watch hours or 10 million Shorts views. Creators already in the programme are not affected by the change.
- Can you make money on YouTube without being monetised?
- Yes. Memberships, tips, paid requests, sponsorship, merchandise, digital products and affiliate links all pay regardless of whether YouTube has approved your channel for ad revenue, because none of them involve YouTube. You can start all of them on day one with no subscriber threshold.
- How much does YouTube pay per 1,000 views?
- There is no fixed rate. YouTube pays creators 55% of the advertising revenue earned against their long-form videos, and how much that is depends on advertiser demand in your subject and the countries your viewers are in. The same view count can pay very different amounts on two different channels.
- Does the 2027 change affect creators already in the Partner Program?
- No. YouTube has said the update does not affect creators already in the programme. The higher thresholds apply to new applicants from 1 February 2027.