How Much Do YouTubers Make: The Ultimate Guide

How much money do YouTubers make?

How to earn money from YouTube views?

How much does YouTube pay for views?

Do you have these questions (and, more) around making money online with YouTube? If you nodded, you are in the right place. I had these questions too, and for the entire week, I read on it and made notes.

In this post, you will LEARN A LOT. This is not a quick blog post, it has tonnes of information. By the end of the post, you will know exactly how much do YouTubers make or how much YouTube pays for views.

If you go ahead and start your channel, do share it with me. I would love to subscribe and help a fellow onlinepreneur out. Okay?

Relevant Reads – 50 best work from home jobs that pay well in 2019

Let’s begin –

I. HOW TO EARN MONEY FROM YOUTUBE VIEWS?

In this section, we will talk about various ways YouTubers make money on the platform along with how much money do YouTubers make on average

#1 AD REVENUE

This is one of the most common and known ways of how to earn money from YouTube views.

You will have to sign up for Google Adsense, and they will place ads on between your videos. In the entire revenue, they get from the advertisers, 55% is for the publisher (i.e. you and YouTube).

How much do YouTubers make per view with ads? or how much money do YouTubers make per view?

On an average and according to many sources online, 0.01 – 0.3 cents (or more) for each ad viewed or clicked. While I am not sure if that is the exact amount YouTubers make per view, it is a good place to base your judgment on.

If you take $0.01 for 1 ad views, you can make $10 for 1000 “ad” views.

How much do YouTubers make per 1000 views using these ads? How much does YouTube pay for views?

The number is variable and depends on multiple factors that we will touch upon later in the article. At this point, all you need to know is that you can make anywhere between $7-20 for 1000 video views, although that can be higher or lower in some cases.

Note: Video views are different than ad views. Your users need to view the ad for you to be paid. Not every views results in ad watched.

How much do YouTubers make per video if there are ads in between the content?

Now, this depends on the views and the kind of ads displayed on their video. It could mean loads of money or no money. For example, if you have more than 1 million views, it is safe to assume that you can make somewhere around $3000 and up (if you are properly monetizing it).

How many views do you need to reach on YouTube to get paid?

YouTube will pay you when you reach a balance of $100. There is no cap on views

How much does YouTube pay per subscriber?

You do not get paid per subscribers, that a false notion and a common one. That said, the more subscribers you have, the more video views you will have which can convert into money.

Now that you have an idea about the average pay for ads, let us talk a little bit on how do these ad networks work –

Ads are of two types – How much does YouTube pay for views or clicks on the ads?

Cost per Click (CPC)

If the user clicks the ad, Google Adsense will charge that advertiser a certain sum of money. You will get a part of it, so in a way, you are earning.

The ads could be the clicked from the pop up in the lower part of the video screen or in a square banner anywhere on the screen while the video runs.

These ads need to be “clicked” for you to make any money off it.

Cost per View (CPV)

Advertisers pay you money if the viewers view that advertisement. For you to make money, the viewer needs to at least watch the ad for 30 seconds or half the ad (whichever comes first).

The catch – that viewer can click that ad 1000 times but you won’t make any money until they watch it.

If you understood this, you know that a video with 1 crore views won’t make much money if viewers don’t watch the videos associated with it or click any. That means, videos with big numbers or viral videos, don’t always make much money.

And, because of these reasons, there are YouTubers who use ads which can’t be skipped or have a pre-defined time (this covers the minimum time viewers need to watch for a YouTuber to make money per view) after which you can skip the ad (especially in videos which are longer than a few minutes to a few hours). This forces the viewer to watch the entire ad without skipping.

How to earn money from youtube WITHOUT Adsense

#2 AFFILIATE LINKS

You can earn money for recommending a product or a service to your viewers. This is known as affiliate marketing and works well with YouTube videos

There are 2 ways that this can happen

A YouTuber may have signed up for an affiliate program by yourself, review a product or recommend it in any of your videos.
A Youtuber may also be approached by a company asking them to review their product.

Below the video and in the description section, YouTubers put a link directing the viewers to a site where they can purchase the recommended product or service. These links are affiliate links and have your affiliate ID. If the viewer clicks on it, they are cookied for a period of time and when they purchase it, YouTubers get a percentage of the purchase price as commission.

#3 SPONSORSHIP

Many YouTubers with a decent subscriber base and high engagement get approached by companies to sponsor them. Basically, they get paid for business promotion on their channel.

Businesses are constantly in search of places to get more exposure and YouTube is a go-to place.

Why?

Because it the second largest search engine with approx. 1.9 billion monthly users baser. These statistics are perfect for companies to engage and nurture their potential buyers.

Remember, to take advantage of sponsorship, your subscriber base should be made up of people who the company is targeting.

So, it is always a good idea to build a niche target. That means, focus on one kind of target audience and build content they would be interested in.

#4 DONATIONS

While this is not the best way to make money from YouTube, there are channels with thousands of devoted fans who would be willing to.

YouTubers make use of Paypal to take such donations. That said, this is a way to make enough money to keep up the channel and not to make huge profits.

#5 MERCHANDISE or SERVICES

While this is difficult to do, there are YouTubers who make a decent amount of revenue selling merchandise like t-shirts, tote bags, slogans or offering services like coaching, courses etc.

I I. HOW MUCH CAN YOU EXPECT TO MAKE

Ok, this is tricky. I am going to focus on what happens 99% of the times and the one off cases where influencers claim creating channels that are profitable right from the scratch.

In the life of any blogger or YouTubers, there are three phases

Early days (no one knows you and you feel like you are creating content for yourself)
Moderately established (you have subscribers, views and make little money but not enough to survive)
Established (you have subscribers, views and make enough money to survive. That means, you are profitable at this stage)

Early days

Let’s be honest, you are highly UNLIKELY to earn anything with first few YouTube videos. You are a long way from a million hits or being considered as an influencer in your niche.

That said, everyone started at the same place. 0 videos, 0 subscribers, 0 likes and 0 views.

Youtubers that have millions and billions of followers also started there. So, don’t be disappointed or discouraged by the numbers in the beginning.

You can start with signing up for Adsense account right from the start. While it sounds lucrative to monetize videos from the beginning, in practice, you will not be making any real money until you have built up traffic to your channel. You require subscribers and genuine engagement on your content.

As discussed above, if you have CPC ads, you will earn only if a viewer clicks on the ad. Similarly, for a CPM ad to make you money requires the viewer to watch the ad for at least 30 seconds. If they skip the ad or close the video before half the ad is over, you stand no chance of making any money on that.

Also, remember that your revenue is split with YouTube and adsense pays only once the account reaches $100.

When you are starting out a YouTube channel, your focus should be on building a reputation and not income. That said, there are certain niches, that can start making money from day 1 i.e. reviews. If you review products and services using affiliate links, you can begin to earn money fast.

Choose a niche for yourself and stick to it. This way you will build a targetted audience and engaging them would be easier than having a distributed audience and random content.

Some of the profitable niches are

Life hacks
Celebrity gossip
Top lists
Compilations of people’s fails
Funny videos
Food reviews and kitchen hacks
Product unwrapping and opening
How to demonstrations
Animal activities, e.g. funny things your cats do
Spoofs
Tech reviews
Makeup reviews

Moderately Successful Channels

With consistent efforts, great videos, content and on-camera talent, you can pull yourself out of the “only me and my mom watch the videos” scenario. By this time, you are making some money from adsense every month and affiliate marketing (if you decide to go down that path)

Congrats by the way, there are not many people who are able to accomplish that. Keep up with the good content and be consistent in what you are already doing.

Your aim should be to reach AT LEAST 20,000 subscribers.

Patreon Account: At this point, according to many, you can ask for crowdfunding assistance through Patreon. You sign up on the account and ask your subscribers and viewers to help you out by giving your money to sustain the channel.
Adsense: YouTubers also make use of Adwords at this stage. They chase after keywords that have a relatively high CPC. If you are a review channel, for instance, you could focus on reviewing products that attract ads with a higher CPC.
Sponsorship: YouTubers also start approaching and pitching small business for collaboration at this stage.

You need to understand that this is not enough for you to live off YouTube earning. Basically, you are at a place where you need to pump out more content and increase your subscriber rate.

Businesses will tend to think you are small, and your subscribers might think you are big or established “enough”. It is the most difficult place to be!

Relatively established, aim to reach 1,000,000 subscribers

Once you hit this BIG number, life becomes easier and you can make a living with YouTube earnings. That said, it is extremely usual to have reached this number if you are consistent on YouTube.

Once you have a following of this size, you have the traffic to earn adequate money to quit 9-5 and focus on this.

You will need to content on a regular basis. That means, with a subscriber base of 1000000 and two videos each week, you can make $10 (1 cent per view, considering the lower side of the average on how much YouTube pay per view) for every 1000 views.

Depending on how much do YouTubers make per view (1 cent per view) if each and every subscriber watches the video –

$10 * 1000 * 2 = $20000. If your cost per 1000 is more, you will earn more.

If a YouTuber has reached this level, they are likely to have

sponsorship opportunities
Endorsements
Product placements
Affiliate links
Products or services of their own

III. How Much do YouTubers make per view or get paid Depends On:

How much money do YouTubers make depends on several factors put together, let’s look at a few major ones

How Many Views You Get Per Video and How Many Subscribers You Have

Companies and advertisers look for a profile that attracts a large number of views and subscribers.

Why?

Because such profile gives them the exposure they are looking for and access to their target audience. You can collaborate with them for sponsorships only if you have a considerable amount of views and subscribers.

Besides that, you can make “enough” money with the ads with a large subscribers base only. For details, scroll up and look at the calculation for having 1000000 subscribers.

How Many of Your Viewers Use AdBlock

Now that an “oops” moment. As a user, people want the unwanted ads to be removed so they install AdBlock extensions. This reduces the number of ad viewers and drastically reduce the income you can make off the ads.

How Many Sponsored Videos You Make

This is totally dependant on where you stand right now, what is your subscriber base and how many views do you get on average. It also depends on what businesses are ready to pay you for sponsored content.

They can agree to

Pay X amount for a video
How many clicks through to their website
How many people watch the video

What is the location of Your traffic

This is a vital element that a lot of people do not know about.

Only the traffic from the USA and the UK geta a higher cost per click (CPC). Other tiers 2 countries like India, Brazil, South Africa etc get a much lower rate.

Demographics of your traffic

If your traffic consists of working professionals or people who are willing to buy products/services, the earning will be more than when your traffic includes teenagers, kids or people from the lower income groups.

Niche Of The Video

YouTube shows ads to the viewer based on what they are watching. Hence, the niche is critical. For example, technology videos have better CPC than news or spoof videos.

Type Of Ads

We discussed this in the above sections. You have different types of ads – skippable ads, display ads, non-skippable ads and these are either pay per click (the user HAS to click for you to make money) or pay per view (the user has to WATCH the video for you to make money).

Click Through Rate (CTR)

How much does YouTube pay for views depends on the Click Through Rate (CTR) of ads on your videos in case of CPC ads.

Higher CTR equals to more money

Audience Retention

Search engines are smart – they like ONLY quality videos. If the viewers watch it till the end or take action, it sends an indication that the content is good. That means, next time onwards, they will show ads with higher CPC.

Besides that, if your videos are longer, you can show more ads resulting in more money

Number of Subscribers

As the subscriber base grows, YouTubers get better CPC and CPI ads as compared to a new channels with no or few subscribers.

IV. What You Need to Start Getting Paid

1. About a few thousand subscribers

At least a few thousand subscribers. That would put you in the “moderate” zone.

For this purpose, you need to work on

the type of content
the niche
building a targetted audience (especially the kinds businesses would like to pay for to get access)
Setting a tone, direction, and goals for your channel

2. Be Aware of Companies that might cheat

A lot of companies are on the lookout to cheat bloggers and YouTubers. If a company approaches for a partnership, make sure you know what you are getting into before signing any agreement.

Always be wary of whom you collaborate with.

3. A Patreon Account

We already touched upon the Patreon account. While the earning from the YouTube channel is unstable, Patreon accounts give an option to the viewers to help the channel.

There you go. This is all on how much do YouTubers make and let’s summarize what we have dealt with in this post –

1. How Much Do YouTubers Make?

From nothing to millions. Some YouTubers make nothing, while some make thousands of dollars.

It all depends on various factors we discussed in this post, talent, and ability to create videos that are in demand.

The top YouTube channel Pewdiepie is said to earn $4 million net income from this platform. While not everyone can reach those heights, there are many who earn hundreds of thousands of dollar. We will look at them in a moment.

2. What Is An Average YouTuber’s Salary?

There is no SALARY for a YouTuber. That is not how it works.

As discussed earlier, YouTubers are individuals like you and me who create videos and monetize them in different ways to make money online. There is nothing like YouTubers salary. The correct term would be how much do YouTubers make or how much money do youtubers make

It is impossible to tell you what an average YouTuber makes because it can be almost nothing to hundreds of dollars each month.

According to the Observer Website, the top 3% of the YouTube channels get 90% of the total YouTube views. So the average YouTuber earns only a small fraction of what YouTube stars, make.

3. How Much Does YouTube Pay You For 1 Million Views? How much does YouTube pay for views in general?

As mentioned above, it is between $3-10 per thousand views. The figure can be lower or higher depending on the cade. For 1 million views, you can earn more than $3000+

4. How Much Does YouTube Pay Per View?

Between 0.03 cents to 1 cents per view or more. This is an average of how much YouTube pay per view.

5. How Much Do YouTubers Make Per View?

As discussed above, a YouTuber makes 0.03 cents to 1 cent per view from the YouTube Partner Program. The amount is similar for YouTubers into Affiliate Marketing.

For the sponsored posts, the rate may go up to 1 cent to 5 cents.

3 YOUTUBE STARS

PewDiePie – 10.1 billion+ total views and 86 million total subscribers

Felix Arvid Ulf Kjelberg is a Swedish video game commentator. His videos are about him playing video games and his reactions.

He made more than $20 million off YouTube in 2018 and more than $50 million since 2014.

HolaSoyGerman – 2.1 billion+ total views and 38 million total subscribers

German Garmendia is a Chilean YouTuber. He makes comedy videos which are aimed at Spanish speaking audience.

His net worth is $13 million+.

JennaMarbles/JennaMarblesBlog – 1.8 billion total views and 15.5 million total subscribers

Jenna Marbles (real name: Mourey) features comedic videos about being a young Millennial woman

Her net worth is estimated to be roughly $5 million

There you go.

Now you have all the answers on how much does YouTube pay for views, how to earn money from youtube views and how much do YouTubers make.

If you have any questions, comment below and let’s talk

Steve

Monday 25th of February 2019

Thanks for posting. I've considered YouTube as a support tool but have never looked into how much people make with YouTube. Very interesting post!

Marissa | Marissa's Teachable Moments

Wow, this was extremely thorough! This makes me want to start a YouTube channel. I will definitely bookmark this page as a reference. Thanks for sharing!

Bryan

I have a You Tube channel, but I've never made money. Then again, I've never really tried. I have thought about it, but I would really have to step up my game. Your article presents many useful tips on ways to turn views into dollars.

Bettie

Great article. I've heard that it can be hard to get a full-time income from youtube. Even though you have 100K subs. So it can take a while before you start earning money, but I think sponsorship is the best way to monetize your channel

highlands2hammocks

This is such an interesting read! We're aiming to make 2019 a big year for our YouTube channel so it was really motivating to read this!