The "make money" button, however, is an illusion for 99% of publishers. The one case where it does seem to make out is with livestreams, and then only because unlike topical short-form videos, streaming is not a winner-take-all environment where one or two people run away with all the eyeballs, but instead people will tend to decommoditize topical streaming based on the personality of the broadcaster and your ability to form a parasocial relationship with them... hence even a relatively unknown person, if they're persistent, can manage to grab a few hundred regular viewers who'll toss a few bucks each stream... not enough to make a living, but enough for beer money. The prime advantage of youtube in this scenario is not having to deal with setting up hosting/DDoS filtering and negotiating with a payment processor ... just push the button and upload. So for streamers I think it can still be worth it, but for people posting short form content I think they might be better off rolling their own because they can't rely on Youtube's algorithm to give them enough eyeballs to be profitable.