<p class="title">YouTube, often criticized for not compensating creators well enough, will allow them to set up paid channel memberships, the company said today.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Currently, the vast majority of revenue at the Google-owned service comes from advertising and that will remain a focus, said Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief products officer.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"But we also want to think beyond ads. Creators should have as many ways and opportunities to make money as possible," he said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Viewers will pay $4.99 a month for channel memberships giving them access to exclusive content including live streams, extra videos or shout-outs on channels with more than 100,000 subscribers.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Creators will also be able to sell merchandise like shirts or phone cases directly on their channels, the company said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">YouTube returns a small part of its advertising revenue to content creators who regularly accuse the platform of giving them only crumbs.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The site is facing increasing competition from other platforms using more and more video.</p>.<p class="bodytext">YouTube says it has more than 1.9 billion users but the figure only counts those who log in via their accounts.</p>
<p class="title">YouTube, often criticized for not compensating creators well enough, will allow them to set up paid channel memberships, the company said today.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Currently, the vast majority of revenue at the Google-owned service comes from advertising and that will remain a focus, said Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief products officer.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"But we also want to think beyond ads. Creators should have as many ways and opportunities to make money as possible," he said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Viewers will pay $4.99 a month for channel memberships giving them access to exclusive content including live streams, extra videos or shout-outs on channels with more than 100,000 subscribers.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Creators will also be able to sell merchandise like shirts or phone cases directly on their channels, the company said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">YouTube returns a small part of its advertising revenue to content creators who regularly accuse the platform of giving them only crumbs.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The site is facing increasing competition from other platforms using more and more video.</p>.<p class="bodytext">YouTube says it has more than 1.9 billion users but the figure only counts those who log in via their accounts.</p>