While creator funds and one-time payments work in the short-term, YouTube's long-term goal is to help creators make a consistent living by giving them a cut of the platform’s revenue. There aren’t many other platforms that can offer creators what YouTube does: stable income, massive distribution, and tons of different ways to create content.

In 2019, Wired reported that 125,000 creators -- podcasters, YouTubers, musicians, webcomic artists, etc…-- had generated a combined 5 million monthly subscribers. At the end of that year Patreon announced that it had paid out $1 billion to its users since its inception, with $500 million amassed that year alone.