Creators with a millions of subscribers earn $17,000 per year

Jimmy21

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According to this article:





Is this accurate? According to them, most of the traffic on youtube goes to the top 3% (this is believe). They also say that most of those top stars arent making a living from YouTube. This I dont believe. From what I've seen, anyone that has a highly successful channel turns to youtube full time, unless their channel is based around their job. I know a lot of this varies. Different channels get different cpm and different channels post videos with different frequency. But is the general tone of the article correct?




I'm sure there are plenty of threads like this, but I couldnt find exactly what I was looking for. Most threads I see just talk about cpm.
 

zerocache

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Ad revenue share - that's the context here. Meaning, that even the largest YTers don't make even enough from ads to live off of, which is true.
 

Jimmy21

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Ad revenue share - that's the context here. Meaning, that even the largest YTers don't make even enough from ads to live off of, which is true.

So, how do channels make their money? I know there is a million ways, some sell courses, some sell products through affiliate links, some talk about products, but some dont seem to have any source of income other than ads and they still seem to be doing youtube full time.
 

zerocache

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I see what you mean.

I would venture a guess here and say that their overall channel content is relevant and past videos still perform that they do make enough.

The take away from the article (which is sensationalist bull), is that the ad revenue isn't as great as everyone thinks that you should bet a day job on.
 

Jimmy21

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I see what you mean.

I would venture a guess here and say that their overall channel content is relevant and past videos still perform that they do make enough.

The take away from the article (which is sensationalist bull), is that the ad revenue isn't as great as everyone thinks that you should bet a day job on.

It certainly was eye opening for me. I thought adsense earned WAY more for them. I sent an email to mike korzemba. I hope he will respond. He makes NBA videos and it seems like most arent even monetized because of copyright issues and I dont see any products hes endorsing or selling, but I assume he is still a full time youtuber somehow
 

dv2000

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It certainly was eye opening for me. I thought adsense earned WAY more for them. I sent an email to mike korzemba. I hope he will respond. He makes NBA videos and it seems like most arent even monetized because of copyright issues and I dont see any products hes endorsing or selling, but I assume he is still a full time youtuber somehow
it does. Look at mashar and the bear. They now get around 40 mil views a day. They earn around 30-40k a day
 

Jimmy21

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it does. Look at mashar and the bear. They now get around 40 mil views a day. They earn around 30-40k a day
Obviously there are outliers, but I'm striving to create a channel that gets around 1.5 million subscribers and uploads twice per week. Those are the channels I'm most curious in as I see that goal as achievable. Theres no point in looking at what pewdiepie or Ryan's toy review is earning when I know I'll never see those numbers.

The question for me is, is it worth it for me to put in the effort to create that channel? It would be fun, dont get me wrong, but I dont think it's worth it, if it wont be profitable
 

KatyAdelson

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I think it depends more on if viewers are viewing and clicking on the ads rather than how many subscribers someone has. For example, some genres like personal development and growing small businesses niches might have higher ad clicks than a music channel just because those types of viewers might be super interested in ads like Wix and Squarespace, whereas viewers of other channel niches may see ads as a nuisance.

A lot of big YouTubers make a fair chunk of their income from sponsoring products and having their own merch. As far as merch goes, there is that concept out there that "you only need 1000 true fans" to turn your idea into a full-time living, and I think there's a lot to be said about that. If you can find 1000 people to spend $5 per month supporting your products and ideas, that's $60k per year. If you have mostly digital products, then you don't have to worry about manufacturing costs and most of it is profit. Channels with 1 million+ subscribers can most likely find 1000 "true fans" to support their stuff.
 

Jimmy21

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I think it depends more on if viewers are viewing and clicking on the ads rather than how many subscribers someone has. For example, some genres like personal development and growing small businesses niches might have higher ad clicks than a music channel just because those types of viewers might be super interested in ads like Wix and Squarespace, whereas viewers of other channel niches may see ads as a nuisance.

A lot of big YouTubers make a fair chunk of their income from sponsoring products and having their own merch. As far as merch goes, there is that concept out there that "you only need 1000 true fans" to turn your idea into a full-time living, and I think there's a lot to be said about that. If you can find 1000 people to spend $5 per month supporting your products and ideas, that's $60k per year. If you have mostly digital products, then you don't have to worry about manufacturing costs and most of it is profit. Channels with 1 million+ subscribers can most likely find 1000 "true fans" to support their stuff.

Thanks for the insite.




I dont know if this is the wrong place, but my friends want to make a fantasy sports channel that is very high quality looking. We want to make it look like something that would be on espn. Every fantasy channel we find on youtube looks like it was filmed with a potato. We are pretty convinced if we made super high quality content and do all the right things for moving up the algorithm and I think we'd have a recipe for a very successful channel. I just dont see what we could sell other than ads. I don't think any of us want to go through all the effort if our ceiling is splitting 17k 3 ways.
 

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Number of subs doesn't mean much. What if those subs aren't active?

Daily views is what matters. Income is directly related to number of views in a given period. A rule of thumb estimate is that a channel will earn $1 for every 1,000 views.

So going by that estimate, to earn $17,000 in a year, a channel would need:

17 million views per year
which equates to
1,416,666 views per month
which equates to
47,222 views per day.

That's a lot of views and very hard to achieve. $17k is only just above the minimum wage of $15k for the USA. So conclusion - There are much simpler ways to earn $17k per year than YouTube. That's not to say it can't be done. But that is why so few people make a fulltime income from YouTube.