I have mixed feelings about the whole partner program change. On one hand it potentially means that once you do qualify you will make more money, due to a higher CPM. On the other hand it has been shown that monetizing a video can drastically increase it's exposure on the algorithm. I never bothered with monetizing videos because I felt it had no direct purpose for me at the time (I never knew it increased algorithm views).
The claim by many big channels is that this change will make it easier for new channels that take YouTube seriously to get exposure, because it will kill off bot accounts. I'm not sure I understand this however, it implies that all these bot accounts will just suddenly die off and disappear. I was under the impression that once you apply for partner it can take weeks or months to be approved. If that is the case how did these bot accounts get approved so quickly and make money from ads?
I suppose I should just get used to the goal post being moved, I'm sure next year (or sooner) they will increase it again. Then again, I just enjoy making videos so while it would be nice to eventually have a bit extra money for projects I suppose for now I will just make due with what I'm lucky enough to have the algorithm grace me with. It served one of my videos as a suggested on a Big Clive video once (still no idea how or why), that was an exciting huge spike in views, watch time and subs!
I'm roughly half way to the new goal for watch time, but 4000 hours a year still seems like a lot for a niche channel like mine. I'm also only at 1/4 of the subs needed, which is a lot more than I ever expected to have in reality.