Technology

YouTube creators are gaining a number of new tools to generate revenue from their videos outside of traditional advertising, as well as those that will help them better engage their fans, according to news the video streaming site announced today at the VidCon conference in Anaheim, California. This includes the rollout of channel memberships, merchandising, marketing partnerships via FameBit and the launch of &Premieres,& which offers a middle ground between pre-recorded, edited video and live streaming.

Memberships

Before today, YouTube had offereda Twitch-like &Sponsorship& modelon YouTube Gaming. This gave fans the ability to sponsor a channel for $4.99 per month, which also gave them access to exclusive digital goods, like a custom badge and emoji.

YouTube started testing this program across its larger video network last fall, it said. Those tests led to YouTube channel memberships.

Unlike on YouTube gaming, Channel memberships have additional requirements.

Creators will need to have 100,000 subscribers or more, be over 18 and be members of the YouTube Partner Program.

However, the price point for backing a creatorchannel remains the same: $4.99 per month, and includes the custom badges and exclusive emoji.

It will also allow subscribers to gain access to members-only posts in the Community tab where creators will share custom perks from time to time, like access to an exclusive live stream, additional videos, shout-outs, news of upcoming events, early access to ticket sales and other things.

YouTube says it will vet these perks manually, to ensure they meet YouTubeguidelines and are something the creator can actually deliver.

&This tool set is fairly powerful, so we want to make sure that they don&t put products out there, that they really can&t commit to,& explains Director of Product Management, Rohit Dhawan, who heads alternative monetization at YouTube.

He says the perks can be almost anything the creator wants to offer, within YouTubeguidelines.

&Itkind of like a blank canvas…itus giving the creators the tools to customize their membership offering and provide whatever perks that they feel is going to be valuable to the fans,& he says.

This feature launched in January for select creators, who have already been generating revenue. It will soon arrive for all who are eligible.

Comedy creator Mike Falzone more than tripled his YouTube revenue, thanks to memberships, says YouTube. Spanish gaming channelelrubiusOMGnow has six times the number of members as it did sponsors on YouTube Gaming alone. AndWintergatanis making over 50 percent of revenue from Channel Memberships.

Overall, the number of creators earning five figures a year is up 35 percent, and the number of those earning six figures is up by 40 percent, YouTube says.

Similar to sponsorships, YouTube retains 30 percent of sponsorship revenue after local sales tax is deducted, but covers all transaction costs, including credit card fees.

Merchandise

In addition to memberships, creators will also be able to sell to fans directly, starting today.

In a shelf directly below the video itself, creators with more than 10,000 subscribers can offer merchandise like tee-shirts, hats, phone cases or any one of over 20 different merchandise items that make sense for their channel.

For example, the creatorof Lucas the Spiderturned his character into a plushie, and sold more than 60,000 units, making over $1 million in profit in just 18 days.

This new program is being launched in partnership with custom merchandise platform Teespring.

YouTube says that Teespring will retain a cut of the merchandise, which varies per item. Effectively, the way this works is that therea flat price per item sold that goes back to Teespring, but the creator can mark up the item to whatever price they want, then keep the upside.

For example, a single t-shirtbase price is $10.22, but creators typically sell them for $22. However, if the creators sells 200-499 t-shirts, the base price drops to $9.82, so the creator makes more money.

But YouTube has also negotiated a deal with Teespring where it receives a commission on those sales — a small flat percentage, we&re told — the majority of which is returned to the creator. This is meant to incentivize the creator to sell merchandise through YouTube, as they&ll receive more thanks to this returned commission than if they sold direct.

This is also a massive win for Teespring, which only a few years ago was restructuring its business and laying off staff.

During beta testing, Teespring says there was an 82 percent success rate for YouTubers using the merchandise service, and conversions from views to sales were testing at 2.5 times higher than with standard description links. This led to an average of 25 percent more units sold per user, among early adopters.

In addition, creators who have been connected directly with brand sponsorships via FameBit, the company it acquired in fall 2016, will also be able to use the merchandise shelf to point fans to whatever they&re selling — like video games, apparel or any other product sold online. This feature was announced at VidCon, but hasn&t rolled out at this time.

Premieres

Finally, YouTubers who want to leverage the revenue generation possibilities that come with Live video will have a way to do so without having to actually go live.

Instead, they can use a new YouTube feature called &Premieres& that creates a landing page they can promote ahead of a videorelease. This page will also have a chat feature, like Live videos do, which means creators can use Super Chat and take advantage of Channel Membership perks even if they aren&t doing live content.

The videos are uploaded in the same interface on YouTube, so thereno new workflow to learn beyond toggling the &Premiere& switch on.

Creators can also join in the chats as the video goes live to engage with their fans around this pre-recorded content, as well as comment on the videos before they start. When the Premiere wraps, itposted as a regular video on the site (without the two-minute countdown video YouTube adds).

&We&re going to use our search and discovery platform to promote these,& notes Kurt Wilms, Group Product Manager at YouTube, wholeading Live.

&Upcoming premieres can appear on the [YouTube] homepage and in recommended videos,& he says. Premieres will also show in the section where all the channel content you&ve subscribed to displays, we&re told. And Premieres will be in YouTube search and YouTube related videos.

&They&re going to appear across all the dedicated discovery portions of our site, which is awesome,& he says.

Premieres can be used to promote upcoming videos from creators as well as things like new movie trailers from studios, trailers from video games, or even music videos. But Premieres is not tied to YouTube Music at this time.

A number of YouTube creators will be turning on Premieres after VidCon, includingSimon - Martina,Leroy Sanchez,Jackson Bird,Los Polinesios,Ari Fitz,ZerkaaPlays,Theskorpionshow, Laura Kampf,Vintage Space,Yammy,R.LUM.R.,JacksFilms,Corridor Digital andInnana Sarkis.

YouTube also said its version of Stories will arrive for all eligible creators with more than 10,000 subscribers later this year.

The announcements come at a critical time for YouTube, as Facebook is trying to woo creators away to its own network and video hub with uniquefeatures of its own.

The news also follows another announcement YouTube made to advertisers this week, about new ways they&ll be able to connect with their audience using a Creative Suite of ad tools.

At first, I didn&t know where the Yalta fit in.

With a 30L capacity, the Yalta 2.0 (Chrome Industries, $96) is not a small bag but itnot massive either. Ita little bulkier on the bottom than the top, an inversion of most bike-friendly bags that usually crunch most of your carry weight high up on your shoulders. As a classic Chrome bag, I&ve always admired the Yalta from a distance for its unique profile, full side zipper and its decision to opt for a tension hook clasp instead of Velcro or a Chrome buckle (cool but heavy). The Yaltaadjustable closure hook feels good to use and means that you don&t have to deal with the noise Velcro makes, which if you&re me is definitely not your primary ASMR trigger.

TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker

I tested the Yalta in two contexts: during the week for my normal routine and on a low-key weekend camping trip. During the course of my normal day-to-day testing, the Yalta turned out to be a surprisingly adept gym plus laptop bag thanks to its strangest design quirk: a large opening that lets you access the space that the waterproof main rolltop compartment sits in. Once you unzip the full-length side zipper you feel a little weird, like you&re somewhere you&re not supposed to be, but ride it out. That pocket, kind of an internal bladder around the true inner roll-top compartment, is handy if you figure out what to use it for.

TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker

For one, you can put your weird filthy stuff in there so it doesn&t ever touch your clean normal stuff, and thatpretty cool. In my case that meant a full-sized Brazilian Jiu Jitsu gi — a huge robe-like training uniform — and the rest of my workout clothes, plus assorted nerd stuff, like my inhalers and 10 micron pens ranging from fine tip to extremely very fine tip. You can also get to anything in the cavernous side-zip area (again, this is the entire interior of the bag minus whatever is in the rolltop section) super easily, so itnice to have two big sections with varied levels of accessibility instead of just one huge main compartment and a side pocket or whatever. The laptop sleeve sits at the very back of the bag, accessible within this full side zip. While side-zip laptop slots are amazing, the Yaltadid feel on the large side and my 13″ MacBook was safe but not very snugly positioned.

TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker

For my second trial, I loaded the Yalta up for a day hike to a local rock climbing spot with friends (note: this thing cannot carry a rope). Itnot what the Yalta is designed for, but itwhat I was up to so I figured I&d give it a shot. The bag performed well on the hike in, fully loaded with lunch, snacks, many layers, a raincoat, a small first aid kit, a Sony RX100 II, a really heavy guidebook for the area and a two-liter water bladder, which I stuffed into the strange side-zip area, snaking the hose out through the top of the zipper. I managed to forget my helmet, which I wished I&d had later when a nearby climber dropped a metal carabiner from 60 feet off the ground, but had I remembered it would have clipped on to the closure loops on front of the pack nicely.

TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker

Surprisingly, the Yalta — much more of a bike bag than a crag bag — did well throughout the day, distributing my weight comfortably enough that I didn&t notice it at all. The front pocket made essentials easy to access and the rolltop waterproof area gave me peace of mind that my stuff would stay dry if it started raining, which it usually does. One gripe: the sternum strap was surprisingly hard to hook and came undone sometimes, but it wasn&t a huge deal. Italso worth remembering that any rolltop without full side access is going to be tough to organize, and that was definitely the case here.

TechCrunch / Taylor Hatmaker

Compared to some of Chromemore heavy-duty bags and other less-technical packs, the Yalta is a likable middle ground. The pack isn&t as rain resistant as a bag made out of fully waterproof material and the laptop sleeve could use some structure, but it carries a fair amount and itgot a nice slender profile that looks and feels good. The Yalta doesn&t really have any quirks or tricks beyond the strange side-zip compartment, and that makes it a good fit for anyone who needs a good-looking, weather resistant mid-sized rolltop backpack for work and what comes before and after.

What it is:A great multi-purpose rolltop backpack that isn&t too technical.

What it isn&t: The ultimate gear pack. Full of pockets.

Read more reviews from TechCrunch Bag Week 2018.

SpaceX beat out one other competitor to land a $130 million launch contract with the U.S. Air Force using its Falcon Heavy rocket. The award is an important validation of the Falcon Heavy,one of the most powerful rockets ever made.

Under the contract, the Hawthorne, Calif.-based rocket company founded by Elon Musk will launch the Air Force Space Command-52 satellite to its intended orbit. The contract includes launch vehicle production and mission, as well as integration, launch operations and spaceflight worthiness activities, according to a notice posted by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The work, which will be performed at SpaceXheadquarters, the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and inMcGregor, Texas, is expected to be completed by September 2020. The mission is planned to be launched fromKennedy Space Center.

Two proposals were received by the DOD in the competitive bidding process.

&SpaceX is honored by the Air Forceselection of Falcon Heavy to launch the competitively-awarded AFSPC-52 mission,& said SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell. &On behalf of all of our employees, I want to thank the Air Force for certifying Falcon Heavy, awarding us this critically important mission, and for their trust and confidence in our company. SpaceX is pleased to continue offering the American taxpayer the most cost-effective, reliable launch services for vital national security space missions.&

SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon Heavy for the first time (with a Tesla Roadster strapped to the top, no less, because… well, Elon.) in February 2018. The rocket has three cores, or first-stage boosters, that work in unison to get the rocket into a low Earth orbit. There are two side boosters and a center core. SpaceX has designed the rocket so that after stage separation all three boosters will land and be able to be reused. The company recovered two of the three boosters.