YouTube turned heads this past week when it announced that it would be extending its Partnership Program to any users who’d like to get involved, but it’s not like much has really changed. The year-and-a-half old program had originally been made available to accounts that were regularly getting thousands of views every time a video was uploaded.

Now? Well… you still sort of need to have that strong following going for you. The only difference is lightning only needs to strike once and you only need one video to garner a lot of attention. According to YouTube itself, in order to meet the minimum requirements of Partnership, you must:

• Create original videos suitable for online streaming
• Own or have express permission to use and monetize all audio and video content that you upload
• Regular upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.

That’s all well and good, but I jus t tried to apply for a Partnership deal (Disclosure: I’ve loaded one video onto YouTube in my entire life and it currently has 153 views) and got this:

Thank you for your interest. Based on an automated review of your account it is unlikely that you will qualify for the YouTube Partner Program. Applications are reviewed for a variety of criteria, including but not limited to the size of your audience, country of residence, quality of content, and consistency with our Community Guidelines and Terms of Use.

You may still apply but please note there could be a significant delay in responding to your application. If your application is not approved, you will not be able to apply to the program again for 2 months. Thanks for your understanding.

Please note that YouTube Partner Program is for users who want to generate revenue from their existing audience. If you would like to increase your audience, we suggest that you consider using YouTube Promoted Videos program.

So I guess things haven’t changed all too much.

What has changed, though, is that YouTube has started to monitor activity on the site a little bit closer, now with a keener eye for users who consistently draw attention to their videos. If you’re such a user, and you haven’t entered into any partnership yet, you should expect to – sometime in the near future – receive an email invitation to “Enable Revenue Sharing” on the video of yours that’s doing particularly well. Additionally, if you join the Partnership Program on one video, you can’t automatically add the feature to other videos you have on the site.

Is YouTube making money or what?

The operation still has some kinks to work out, but it will help certain videos that were never monetized despite their popularity get some monetary attention. Additional benefits for users of the program can be found here.

In reality, the biggest beneficiaries of this new development will probably be Google, who bought the video empire for $1.65 billion three years ago. According to Trip Chowdhry, a senior analyst at Global Equities Research who spoke to mediapost.com shortly after YouTube’s announcement,“Google should have generated a profit from YouTube within three years based on the purchase price. ‘YouTube should be generating $1 billion in revenue and be profitable for the acquisition to be considered smart and good,’ he says. ‘I don’t think they generated even $20 million in revenue per year so far. It’s a very dumb acquisition.’” The decision to expand their Partnership Program will allow Google and YouTube to place higher-paying, more targeted ads against the videos, thus increasing their revenue to a certain degree.