Get ready to pay for YouTube.

Google-owned (GOOGL) video site will be offering a commercial-free paid subscription service, possibly later this year. Speculation is YouTube will charge about $10 a month for the no-ads plan.

This doesn’t surprise Yahoo Finance’s Aaron Task.

“Google is trying to come up with several different ways to generate revenue outside of their core advertising market, which is still a juggernaut,” he says. “But they’re losing a lot of ground to Facebook (FB) and others in the mobile area, so they’re trying to find different revenue streams.”

Task notes one key motivation for the move is to increase the money available to pay for incredibly popular YouTube stars.

“In large part, this is an effort to try to keep the creators of the content on YouTube that has been so successful-- the Michelle Phans of the world—happy,” he adds.

And Task points out that’s important for Google.

“There’s a lot of traffic and revenues those videos have driven for Google and the content creators are saying, ‘Hey, how about a little something for the effort here,’” he says. “And Google is saying these advertising platforms are a way for them to direct revenue to the people who are actually making the videos.”

He also sees it as a reaction to what’s happening in the marketplace right now.

“I don’t want to say this smacks of desperation, but Google is late to the party here,” he says “And there’s more video being served today on Facebook than there is on YouTube. So Facebook is eating Google’s lunch in a lot of different areas, and Google is trying to catch up here.”

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Task notes because we’re seeing more and more video providers charging for their content, he wonders whether an ad-free YouTube is going to have much of a demand.

“There will be limits to how many al la carte services people are going to be paying for,” he argues. “I don’t know if people are going to pay for advertising-free YouTube because right now you can skip a lot of the ads anyway.”

And he finds the whole thing a bit ironic since one of the main reasons people turned to YouTube and other online providers was to avoid paying money to the cable TV companies.

“Some people are going to say, you know, the deal I’m getting for cable isn’t that bad. You are getting a tremendous amount of content for $99 a month and oh by the way, you’re getting broadband internet access and a phone if you want to use a landline. This ultimately could be the best thing to happen to the cable companies.”