Youtube Partner programme. 1 WEEK IN!

The Youtube partner program from my perspective

From the 20th February this year (2018), Youtube have updated their requirements for the Youtube Partner programme AKA monetisation. I have been a Youtuber for a long long time with first videos being uploaded in 2010 and some reaching almost a million views.
These were NON monetised videos as they used something called audioswap to allow my videos to have a sense of depth without me waffling on. When I realised that this was my problem I moved over to voice-over videos.

What happened?

Well I made a fair bunch of videos getting fewer and fewer views, gave up with the channel for 2 years while life got in the way, deleted it all and started up my current channel. My account was still eligible for Youtube and I regained a following, a small one but a following. At point of writing I have 142 subscribers, 27,000 ish video views and about 1200 hours of yearly watch time.

Requirements

Youtube launched a minimum requirement of 4000 hours of watch time (bear in mind a few years ago I had that) AND 1000 subscribers. So in like 6 years of Adsense, I have been paid once by Google. That fortunately was this year one month before these new limits, interestingly though, I was expecting a possible increase in viewer-ship expecting a potential walkout by low end channels but so far, this has not happened. It is only a week after all. Based on this, if I stay, my channel might grow steadily.

My problem

If I go, I currently don't lose out based on the fact I am "miles" off of the new regulations.

Comment if you like on this dilemma. Watch time can be accrued quite easily, subscribers cant (unless you pay for them  which gets you banned).