YouTube has announced the launch of YouTube Shorts Fund, a $100 million fund distributed over the course of 2021-2022, to enable monetisation and rewards for the content creators.
In its announcement in a blog, YouTube said that it will reach out to thousands of creators each month, whose short-form content received the most engagement and views to reward them for their contributions.
The Shorts Fund is not limited to just creators in the YouTube Partner Programme. Creators will be eligible to participate if they create original content for Shorts.
“Anyone is eligible to participate in the fund simply by creating unique Shorts on the YouTube platform,” said Amy Singer, Director, Global Partnership Enablement for YouTube Shorts, in the blog. She added that, the company will share additional details as it will get closer to launching the fund in the coming months.
Amy wrote that the Shorts Fund is the first step in YouTube’s journey to build a monetisation model for Shorts on YouTube. “This is a top priority for us, and will take us some time to get it right. We are actively working on this, and will take the feedback gathered from our community to help develop a long-term programme specifically designed for YouTube Shorts,” she added.
Besides rewarding creators for their contributions through the Shorts Fund, YouTube will also expand its Shorts player across more surfaces on YouTube to help people find new creators and artists. “We will also begin to test and iterate on ads to better understand their performance,” added Amy.
YouTube been rolling out its short-form video feature YouTube Shorts in beta in India and the US since September last year. A TikTok-like platform lets users create and upload 15-second short videos, it started as an India-first product.
With Shorts, YouTube joins a plethora of apps and services that have mushroomed since the ban on China’s TikTok, which had over 200 million users in India. These include Instagram Reels, Dailyhunt’s Josh, Moj, and others.
