One YouTuber has a solution, but YouTube won’t like it: The obvious question is, however: if you’re going to monetize smaller channels, why not simply change the partner program to give smaller creators a cut of the revenue? MORE FROM FORBES 2 Million Creators Make 6-Figure Incomes On YouTube, Instagram, Twitch Globally By John Koetsier There are significant costs to running YouTube - remember how long it took for YouTube to become profitable - and bandwidth isn’t free. Of course, from YouTube’s perspective, it’s hosting and streaming videos for free. Viewers get to enjoy their videos mostly distraction-free, and the creators can focus on growth. “Simple as that.” MORE FROM FORBES YouTube Bug Cutting Creator Pay 50% Or More YouTubers Becoming Desperate By John Koetsierįor smaller YouTube creators being ad-free can be a competitive advantage as they climb the long hill to having a monetizable YouTube channel with a reasonable amount of revenue. “If you're monetizing ads on our small channels then at the very least you should give us a cut for our hard efforts,” says the creator behind The Boob Tube (which is about TV, not a part of the human anatomy). This latest move comes hot on the heels of what YouTube creators say is a bug that cost them weeks of revenue, but that Google refuses to acknowledge: a sudden and unilateral declaration that 100% of their video views were from “invalid traffic” overnight, before returning to standard levels of monetization - at least for some - a couple of weeks later.