YouTube spon­sor­ship: support at the touch of a button

YouTube is un­dis­putedly the world's most popular video website – and the second largest search engine after Google. Every day, thousands of content producers upload their videos to YouTube. YouTube itself recently announced that video creators now have the pos­sib­il­ity to integrate a “join” button into their YouTube channel. Pre­vi­ously, join buttons on YouTube were only available for gaming channels. Now this option is available for all channel cat­egor­ies on YouTube.

Through a monthly can­cellable mem­ber­ship, viewers can now receive special emojis from the creator and make use of an internal member area and exclusive discounts on products or pro­mo­tion­al gifts. Therefore, the members belong to a kind of exclusive club, similar to donation platforms like Patreon and Kick­starter. This means YouTube is becoming ac­cess­ible to a flour­ish­ing market that is ready to pay – and connects its content creators better to the video platform, as they no longer have to switch to external sites such as Patreon. This guide tells you everything you need to know about YouTube spon­sor­ship and the join button.

As an official sponsor of a YouTuber, you have some ad­vant­ages over non-sponsors. Which ad­vant­ages and benefits you enjoy as a sponsor depends on the re­spect­ive YouTuber. They may provide exclusive video material and dis­trib­ute pro­mo­tion­al codes, re­com­mend­a­tions, images, or extra content to their members. Special an­nounce­ments or events such as fan meetings can also be organised ex­clus­ively for sponsors. In this way, the YouTuber can thank their sponsors for their support. On top of that, this makes the sponsors feel that they are part of their own fan community.

Joining a channel offers sponsors some ad­vant­ages. For example, sponsors can enhance their video comments with icons and emojis per­son­al­ised by the channel owner, so those visiting the comment section can see who sponsors the channel. It is also possible to get discounts: These can be discount codes for the YouTuber’s shop, or reduced prices for events that the YouTuber is attending. Some YouTubers even give members free or dis­coun­ted access to courses or the chance to meet them in person.

In addition, the name of the sponsor is displayed in green in live streams with a small red camera behind the name. This ensures that the audience knows that this person has joined the YouTuber’s channel. YouTube seems to have copied this principle from the livestream platform Twitch, in which sponsors are high­lighted in live chats using symbols.

If you join a channel, you pay around £4 per month. According to YouTube, the creator receives a 70 percent share of this amount, which is around £2.70. However, taxes are also deducted from this money. This makes YouTube re­l­at­ively expensive compared to dedicated crowd­fund­ing platforms such as Patreon and GoFundMe. The latter takes 5 to 10 percent of the fees – so the project creator receives 90 to 95 percent of the donations.

However, YouTube offers a greater reach than other platforms. And thanks to YouTube spon­sor­ship, a fan who wants to sponsor one of their favourite channels no longer has to go to an external crowd­fund­ing project page that the YouTuber has linked to, where they then have to create an ad­di­tion­al account. The YouTube spon­sor­ship programme enables the entire business and support model to run on one single platform. This con­veni­ent way to donate could be the deciding factor for many fans, since it means they can support their favourite YouTuber in just a few clicks and with only a small donation.

Thanks to the YouTube spon­sor­ship programme, the YouTubers them­selves can the­or­et­ic­ally forego time-consuming cross-platform work, so that they have more time for their actual work: creating content (although it may be useful to use multiple platforms – if you have enough time to maintain different accounts on different platforms). At the moment, however, a YouTuber needs at least 100,000 sub­scribers in order to be able to partake in the mem­ber­ship programme in the first place. As with every new feature on YouTube, it will probably be tested to see which functions and spon­sor­ing models are most useful for which number of sponsors. YouTube is likely to make a few tweaks here and there in the years to come until the spon­sor­ship programme really kicks off.

If you operate a YouTube channel, you should inform yourself about YouTube mem­ber­ship so that you can get on board in good time. The earlier you start (as soon as you are approved), the more likely you are to win the “early adopters” as sponsors and therefore not only earn more money, but also increase your reach.

The biggest dis­ad­vant­ages of YouTube spon­sor­ship in its current form are un­doubtedly the re­l­at­ively high fees and that the minimum number of followers is 100,000.

Please note the legal dis­claim­er relating to this article.