YouTube launched Channel Memberships in June long with a merchandise shopping tool that gave creators a way to put up a built-in hub on their channel to sell their gear. The website likely conjured up both features to prevent creators from dropping their channels because of ongoing monetization issues. Due to changes to YouTube's advertising guidelines, some inoffensive videos end up getting taken down. Creators then have to deal with getting demonetized and losing their (possibly sole) source of income. YouTube says Marble Machine creator Wintergatan grew his revenue by over 50 percent through Memberships -- hopefully, smaller creators can replicate some of that success.