YouTube (News - Alert) announced that starting on April 12, anyone can become a part of its Partners Program – its ad delivery program. Anyone with content on YouTube can now make money from it, an option only available to very popular content providers in the past.

Mashable reported that the Partners Program will be available to any YouTube member who opts into the program.

It must be original content, and the member must live in one of the following countries to be eligible: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States.

YouTube stated at its official Partners and Creators Blog it plans to add more countries to the list in the near future.

YouTube requires that content providers follow a basic set of guidelines in order to begin monetizing their online content. It basically states that all the content must be owned by the provider, and he or she must own all of the commercial rights to the content. In other words, a video of an NBA or NFL game posted on YouTube would not be eligible due to copyright infringement.

YouTube users can opt into the Partners Program via the Account Monetization page. Users must adhere to several terms and conditions and specify which type of ads they wish to be shown on their videos, such as overlay ads.

The YouTube Partners Program provides analytics and video managing capabilities so each user can customize which videos show and don’t show ads.

New members of the Partners Program will not immediately have access to all of the program’s features, such as custom thumbnails and banners. These features are currently only available to popular content creators, though YouTube plans to roll out these features to all content creators soon.