YouTube Adds New Way To Make Money With Gifted Memberships
YouTube has begun to offer membership gifting to other creators. This allows viewers to purchase memberships for their friends.
YouTube offers creators another avenue to generate revenue from their audience. This feature is comparable to Twitch’s gifted subscriptions.
This will enable viewers to purchase channel memberships for their fellow viewers.
It is a way for viewers to support their favorite creators and give something to their community.
Channel Memberships Gifting beta is being released to a select group of creators. It will then be extended to other channels in the coming months.
You can submit a form at the bottom of the article if you are interested in early access to this feature.
YouTube Channel Membership Gifting
Monetized YouTube channels can earn revenue by selling memberships to their users.
Channel memberships offer perks like unique icons that appear in the comment section of a creator, members-only live streams and many more. It is similar to “subscriptions” on Twitch.
Before introducing membership gifting, members could only purchase memberships for their use. Users could only buy one membership per month.
Channel members can purchase a set amount of memberships [5, 10, 20] with membership gifting. YouTube will “gift out” those memberships to other viewers.
Gift memberships give viewers access for 1 month to all perks of your channel. Creators get the usual revenue share, and recipients don’t need to pay anything.
What is Membership Gifting?
You can purchase gift channel memberships on your desktop while watching a creator Livestream. To buy gift memberships for live streams, click the $ link next to the live chat.
To receive gifts, viewers must opt-in. Users can click ‘Allow Gifts!’ when prompted to opt-in during Beta.
YouTube gives gift memberships to subscribers based on their interaction with the channel. Gift memberships are more likely to be given to loyal viewers than first-time viewers.
Viewers are notified via email and live chat if a gift membership is received. Gifted memberships are non-recurring, and the recipient does not pay any fees.
Are YouTube Creators Benefiting From Gifted Memberships?
Due to the popularity of Twitch’s gifted subs and the potential for membership gifting to increase earnings noticeably for those who stream on YouTube,
You can see that subscriptions are roughly 5% to 10% for most popular Twitch streamers.
How can creators sell memberships?
I reached out to Greg Jarboe, president of SEO-PR and the author of YouTube and Video Marketing, for his thoughts on this update and an example of how creators could make money through subscriptions.
Jarboe’s take on it is below:
YouTube Partners have many options. Others include:
- Ad revenue sharing.
- Selling brand merchandise
- Super Chat and Super Stickers
- Premium revenue sharing.
Memberships Gifting is an attractive option for the few content creators who are making money through channel memberships. They are: Examples include:
- Rachana Ranada is a Chartered Accountant from India who helps viewers become more financially literate. Her membership fees have surpassed $100,00.
- Prince Ohakam is a gaming creator best known as Prince Charming. He uses channel memberships. Members can play live video games with him. He offers live streaming, videos, posts, and custom emojis.
- Anna Yakimenko is a Russian fashion consultant based in Milan. She uses channel memberships for discounts on merchandise, live streams, and personalized fashion advice.
Channel memberships may not be for everyone. Gifting them to content creators will only be beneficial. They can be a great tool if they help maintain a diverse creator economy.