YouTube has finally introduced paid channels in India. The customer has to go through the YouTube purchase process to get access to the channels. All subscriptions include a 14-day free trial (your credit card is not charged until the end of the free trial).

If you want to create a paid channel, you should have a channel with at least 10,000 subscribers. The eligibility criteria include:

Your account is in good standing.

You meet the general criteria for YouTube partnership.

You have verified your account by phone.

You have an approved AdSense account linked to your YouTube account.

There are 26 pay channels available currently. Yury Indian, GayDirect, Big Think Mentor, My Fight Gym and Global We Got Married are a few of them. Paid subscriptions are also available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, United Kingdom and United States.

In May 2013 in US, when the YouTube paid channel was launched, the policy was that the content owners could keep more than 50% of the revenue while YouTube keeps the rest. For India, reportedly partners get 55% of the revenue through subscription or advertising.

Subscription rates range from Rs.5 to Rs.20,000. Subscribers can be billed monthly or annually. Channel owners can also run advertising on their channels. Multiple channels can also be given in various subscription packages. Also when a free channel switches to paid channel, all the subscribers are automatically unsubscribed.

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This was first reported by MediaNama.