When we first gave away the original Creator Award — a simple play button inside of a frame — we couldn’t have imagined the status symbol they would become for both creators and their fans. Today, we award creators with Silver (100K subscribers), Gold (1M subscribers), Diamond (10M subscribers) and Red Diamond (100M subscribers). Each tier reflects the impact each creator has had and the contributions they’ve made to culture, society, the economy and people’s daily lives.
In fact, in our latest YouTube Impact Report, we found that creators in the US have contributed over $25 billion to the US GDP and created an estimated 425,000 full-time equivalent jobs. The past 10 years of awarded creators shows how they have been able to not only grow an audience, but change their lives through launching ancillary products and businesses – thus perpetuating the expansion of the creator economy.
What truly demonstrates the power of creators’ success is how we continue to see many first recipients of the Gold Creator Award still thriving today on YouTube. Philip Wang, co-founder of Wong Fu Productions, started a channel producing music videos and short films that has since become a successful independent digital production company. “It was so cool when we got our first award. Not only was hitting 1M subscribers a huge accomplishment, but for YouTube to acknowledge it definitely gave us a sense of validation and motivation. I'm grateful that we got the very first iteration of the award, which was actually quite hefty back then!” he shares.