YouTube is leaning into its creators by offering new features for short videos, shoppability, and, perhaps, even ways for them to make money through NFTs.

These were a few of the points outlined in the latest annual blog post by YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki. The video platform's leader touched on topics ranging from gaming to child protections. But much of the post was dedicated to creators and Shorts, YouTube’s short-form video answer to TikTok.

As influencers become increasingly important in brand marketing strategies, social media platforms have been adding more support and features to attract creators. For its part, YouTube plans to focus on giving creators more ways to make money on the platform, along with clearer policy guidelines and enhanced shopping features. 

YouTube has 10 ways for creators to make money including ads, YouTube Premium, channel membership, and funds. According to the post, the number of channels around the world making more than $10,000 a year is up 40% year over year. YouTube plans to distribute $100 million over this year to encourage more Shorts creation, through what it is calling its Shorts Fund. Wojcicki also wrote that the platform is looking into how it can help creators capitalize on NFTs.

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YouTube, which has been testing live shopping, plans to roll out more shopping features to creators this year by partnering with Shopify. In a current pilot program, creators can tag products, letting viewers browse and shop while watching.

"We're also in the early phases of testing how shopping can be integrated with Shorts,” Wojcicki wrote.

YouTube also has plans to expand its remix feature, which lets users create Shorts using audio from other YouTube videos.

'Expanding the YouTube ecosystem'

YouTube isn't alone in its pursuits. In the last few months, Pinterest set up live shopping Fridays as part of its TV series, and Snapchat rolled out Spotlight Challenges and sponsored tagging. TikTok has its own creator fund, and brands have tested its in-app shopping. Other platforms are also looking for ways to approach NFTs. Twitter launched NFT profile pictures last week.

YouTube, Wojcicki wrote, is looking into ways to work with NFTs and decentralized internet tech.

"We’re also looking further ahead to the future and have been following everything happening in Web3 as a source of inspiration to continue innovating on YouTube. The past year in the world of crypto, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and even decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) has highlighted a previously unimaginable opportunity to grow the connection between creators and their fans. We’re always focused on expanding the YouTube ecosystem to help creators capitalize on emerging technologies, including things like NFTs, while continuing to strengthen and enhance the experiences creators and fans have on YouTube."

To help creators work with brands, YouTube says it's been updating its guidelines to help allow more content to be monetized, while maintaining advertiser standards. YouTube launched pre-publish checks last year to let creators see if there are any copyright or ad-suitability problems before they publish a video. 

In the blog post, Wojcicki suggested that Google-owned YouTube would assist creators, such as by pinpointing moments in videos that may be in violation of its policies.

“Creators have also asked for more details so they can better understand about policy violations,” Wojcicki wrote. “We’re hiring more people so we can expand our experiment to provide creators more specifics about policy violations, like timestamps. We’re looking forward to developing this effort further.”

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