There are still many skeptical people in this world who do not believe that it is possible to make money on the Internet. In fact, there are countless success stories of people who have made their fortune online. YouTube is just one of the many ways you can become an internet sensation and, if you’re lucky, an internet millionaire.
Below, you can check out a guide to how much YouTubers actually earn:
- Google pays 68% of its AdSense revenue, so for every $100 an advertiser pays, Google pays the publisher $68.
- Actual fees paid by the advertiser vary, typically between $0.10 and $0.30 per view, but average $0.18 per view.
- On average, YouTube channel can earn $18 per 1,000 ad views. This equates to $3 to $5 per 1,000 video views .
In this post , we discuss how people make money on YouTube. However, how much do they earn? Well, here is a YouTube earning estimator that you can take a look at to find out exactly how much YouTubers earn.
Daily video views
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20,000 views per day
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600,000
Views per month
7,300,000
Views per year
Estimated daily earnings
$28.50 – $47.50
Estimated monthly earnings
$855 – $1,425
Estimated annual earnings
$10,403 – $17,338
Obviously, for thousands of YouTube users, the answer is “nothing” or “very little”. However, there are many YouTubers who have fun with their video channels. In addition, of course, there is a small elite group that earns extraordinary income from the videos they create and post online.
When it comes to earning an income on YouTube, success breeds success. You will find that the hardest dollar to earn is the first one. The more subscribers you have, the more people will click on your ads The more people click on your ads, the more you make a name for yourself, the more likely brands are to offer sponsorship or merchandise deals. The more well-known your channel becomes, the greater your chance of joining a multi-channel network. It’s like being on a roller coaster that only goes uphill.
What can you earn at the beginning of your channel?
You are unlikely to gain anything by putting your first video on YouTube. You are a newbie and you are certainly far from being considered an influencer. However, everyone has to start at the bottom. Even PewDiePie was an unknown when he uploaded his first video in 2010. He is now so famous that people make videos interviewing early PewDiePie subscribers about them feeling famous for it. At first, he was still making niche videos in Swedish.
In theory, you can sign up for an Adsense account and activate your channel for monetization from the moment you create a YouTube channel. However, in practice, you are unlikely to make real money until you increase your website traffic. When we talk about traffic, we mean genuine traffic from people watching your videos and not adopting a “shortcut” method of paying for views.
While there are CPM (cost per thousand views) ads, many are CPC (cost per click). To earn anything from a CPC ad, you need a viewer who clicks on the ad. In reality, only a small percentage of your visitors will click on the ads surrounding your videos. Even the CPM ads on the video itself require more than just a quick glance. To be counted as payment, the viewer must watch them for at least 30 seconds (or half the ad for a very short video). Think about how many people ignore the ad at the beginning of a video, thus eliminating any chance of paying the channel. If viewers click or view your ads long enough to generate revenue, you will share any advertising revenue with YouTube.
At the beginning of your channel, you build a reputation, not an income.
One area where you can start making money with a relatively small number of subscribers is if you pick a popular topic and participate in affiliate marketing. For example, if your videos review a popular type of product and you link to an affiliate sales page for that product, you can start making money that way.
For a rough idea of how much YouTubers earn, use the earning estimator below and enter your YouTube channel name.
YouTube Money Calculator
Estimated total earnings per channel
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Of course, some niches are easier than others to make money. So if you hope to one day live off your channel income, it would probably help if you created your channel on a topic that people are interested in. Probably the most successful niche is gaming. Let’s face it: the gaming industry is a huge industry and many gamers have reasonable levels of income to spend. Other successful niches include:
- lifehacks
- celebrity gossip
- News
- Top Lists
- Pranks and funny videos (including Jackass’ amateur antics)
- Food reviews and kitchen hacks
- Opening boxes and products (mainly children’s toys)
- Tutorials
- Activities with animals, such as funny things your cat does
- parodies
Moderately successful channels
With enough perseverance, not to mention talent with the camera, you should step out of YouTube’s underperforming artist graveyard. If you’re starting to be successful, you should be earning AdSense revenue every month from affiliate marketing income, if you’ve chosen to go that route.
However, at this stage, you are still mostly producing videos for love with some other source of income paying your daily bills for survival. By now you can be considered a minor influencer in your specific niche.
Once you have around 20,000 subscribers, consider asking for crowdfunding assistance through a site like Patreon. The average Patreon contributor donates $7, with Patreon keeping 5% of donations as a commission. It should be remembered, however, that if you are regularly uploading videos, you are likely to receive recurring payments from your Patreon supporters. One example is The Comedy Button , which currently has 5,266 customers paying $13,129 a month. This is a YouTube channel with around 24,500 subscribers.
When placements begin to recognize success, they should look to do more with AdWords, for example, by deliberately targeting phrases with a relatively high cost-per-click (CPC). If you have a review channel, for example, you can focus on reviewing products that attract ads with a higher CPC.
By now, these channels will be famous enough for smaller brands to ask the channel to talk about their products. However, these channels are still small by YouTube standards and so the income earned from sponsorship and product placement will still not be enough for channel owners to live on.
As writer Gaby Dunn wrote on the website Fusion , the middle years of a YouTube channel’s life are often the most difficult. Channel owners often have to work full-time creating video content, but people see them as only mildly influential, and channels are certainly not generating a full-time income. Dunn operates a channel with a friend, Just Between Us, which currently has 728,866 subscribers. You might think that this would be enough to ensure someone’s financial survival. However, Dunn says that “despite this success, we’re not there yet… it’s not enough to live on and the flow is unpredictable. Our channel exists in YouTube’s no man’s land: Brands think we’re too small to sponsor, but fans think we’re too big for donations.”
Of course, this depends on who your audience is. One problem faced by some YouTubers is that their supporters are naturally anti-capitalist and opposed to the idea that their YouTube heroes might be running out. Other types of channels like review channels, game channels and of course anything business related are easier. Fans expect these channels to make money and then can’t resist the fact that they need help.
Success starts at 1,000,000
When a YouTube channel’s subscriber count hits the millions, life gets easier for the owners. These channels are starting to find fame and are starting to be recognized as influential in their niche.
1,000,000 subscribers seems like a lot, but these channels are still not in the elite enterprise. Currently, there are over 2,000 channels in the club with over 1,000,000. Some of these are official channels for celebrities, mostly official channels for people like Justin Bieber and Rihanna. However, some are simply ordinary people who have built a following on YouTube.
Once you reach that amount of followers, you will have the traffic you need to make real money.
Google pays 68% of its AdSense revenue, so for every $100 an advertiser pays, Google pays the publisher $68. Actual fees paid by the advertiser vary, typically between $0.10 and $0.30 per view, but average $0.18 per view. About 15% of viewers watch, on average, the required 30 seconds of a video ad that will count as payment. This means that for 1,000 views, 150 people are likely to watch an ad. At $0.18 per view, Google will charge the advertiser $27, keeping 32% ($9). On average, a YouTube channel can earn $18 per 1,000 views.
Of course, it is important that a channel continues to release new videos, at least one to two videos per week. If a channel could get its entire fan base of 1,000,000 to watch two new videos a week, it would get paid each week: $18 x 1,000 x 2 = $36,000 per week from AdSense alone.
Clearly, at this level, a channel is also likely to have opportunities for sponsorship, recommendations, and product placements. Many of these YouTube stars will also know that they can market products to their fan base. Any review channels usually make a lot of money from affiliate marketing, even if they are only linked to Amazon, and they have low advertising payout rates of 1-10% for affiliates.
YouTube’s Superheroes
There are the real YouTube stars, some of whom earn quite a high income from their activities on the social network.
It is impossible to get exact earnings on YouTube because there are so many variables and undisclosed numbers. However, there are many sites that provide a “best estimate” of income made by major YouTube channels. Forbes published a list of the highest paid YouTubers in 2015. The top ten channels managed to raise at least $2.5 million each in earnings (before tax) in the year ended June 1, 2015. Swedish Felix Kjellberg, best known like PewDiePie, managed to raise $12 million in that time period, which is not too bad an income for someone who spends his days playing games.
Forbes’ Top 10 YouTube Stars of 2015 were:
- 1st: PewDiePie – $12 million
- 2nd: Smosh – $8.5 million
- 3rd: Fine Brothers – $8.5 million
- 4th: Lindsey Stirling – $6 million
- 5th: Rhett & Link – $4.5 million
- 6th: KSI – $4.5 million
- 7th: Michelle Phan – $3 million
- 8th: Lilly Singh – $2.5 million
- 9th: Roman Attwood – $2.5 million
- 10th: Rosanna Pansino – $2.5 million
In January 2016, Money Nation estimated that PieDiePie was worth $78 million. He is an example of how you can grow your income based on YouTube and also based on the results you have come from your success over the years. As per Money Nation calculations, his net worth has grown since he started his channel as follows:
2010 $7,141,192
2011 $18,754,192
2012 $30,674,480
2013 $42,909,107
2014 $55,466,728
2015 $68,355,870
2016 $89,751,704
You also cannot ignore the importance of the gains made from his wares. MoneyNation estimates his merchandise earnings to be $41 million plus an estimated $112 million he earned directly from his YouTube channel. They also put PewDiePie’s annual salary at approximately $14 million.
While PewDiePie is the exception rather than the norm, its financial success should bode well for all YouTube content providers. Your numbers should be inspiring targets for anyone starting a YouTube channel. Yes, it’s hard to make money on YouTube. Yes, you need to work consistently, not just creating your videos, but promoting them and building a relationship with your audience. However, PieDiePie has proven that you can succeed on YouTube. You can be rich and influence fans. You just need to survive the hard times. Those who manage to survive can thrive a lot.
