COVID-19 has forced economies like Italy and India to enforce country-wide shutdown to ensure that social distancing is practiced so that the spread of the disease can be avoided. It goes without saying this pandemic has hit the world hard not only in terms of health and economy but workflow.
Companies worldwide are taking all possible steps to ensure the safety of their staff, and so is Google. Google-owned YouTube has been actively sharing the impact that COVID-19 has on the workforce and informing the service users about the delays or issues they may encounter during this time.
Issues like the temporary closure of YouTube Space facilities, disabled new Community posts on some channels, and delays in the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) application processing have surfaced so far. Cut to now, joining the list is delayed review of the merch shelf and related features.
For those of you naive, YouTube merch shelf – that appears on the video page of eligible channels – basically allows creators to showcase their branded merchandise. This gives creators an opportunity to earn more money by selling their merchandise directly to their fans.
The latest information coming from a Google employee conveys that new users may encounter issues enabling the merch shelf as of now. Old users, on the other hand, may not be able to add new items or modify the existing ones until things are back to normal. Take a look at what the post says:
Expect Delays – Shelf enablements & merch reviews: As we take steps to prioritize the well-being of our extended workforce, reviews of items for the merch shelf and related features on YouTube are likely to take much longer than usual. This means:
If you are new to merch on YouTube, you may not be able to enable the merch shelf and related features until our review capacity returns to normal.
They further added:
If you’re already live with the merch shelf and want to add new merchandise items or modify the name or description of existing ones, you may need to wait longer than usual for those items to be reviewed and approved for display on your channel.
So if you are a YouTube creator, you may get to see the above-mentioned merch shelf related issues in the days to come. We’ll be keeping a tab on other YouTube services that may be impacted due to the pandemic’s effect on the company’s workflow. Keep a tab on this space for more such news.
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Dr. Aparajita Sharma
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Currently, I am pursuing Ph.D (Psychology), and have been teaching the same for past four years. Coming to PiunikaWeb, I know it was a complete switch over, but the idea was appealing enough to put in all the effort it called for. My work primarily involves research. Oh, and yes, some of the photographs you see here are clicked by me. Overall, I am enjoying whatever I am doing, and hoping you’ll also feel the same reading all my articles. You can find me on LinkedIN.
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