Thinking of starting a YouTube channel and becoming rich and famous like PewDiePie or JennaMarbles? Always wondered how much you can actually make? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?
Yes.
Most definitely yes.
YouTubers make money by advertisements displayed during the video and on the sidebar. You know when you watch a video and it plays the commercial before the video (or sometimes during it)? Every time you see one, the YouTuber you’re watching gets paid. They also make money off of those ads on the right sidebar. This isn’t anything new. YouTube is owned by Google and Google is basically an advertising giant.
So, how much do they get paid for each ad? Generally, it depends on the type of ad served. The ads are optimized, meaning only relevant ads are displayed to the viewer. If you’ve been searching for a new vacuum, you may see an ad about vacuums. If you’ve been searching about electronics, you’ll likely see an ad about electronics. It also depends on the channel type and the audience that views it. YouTubers can also adjust the types of ads displayed.
You want numbers? Then it’s about $0.25-$4.00 per 1000 views. Ads are paid for on a cost-per-mille (CPM) basis, which means they get paid for every 1000 views. The CPM fluctuates depending on the ad.
You can get a rough estimate of how much you’d be earning daily. If you have 10 videos each getting 100 views per day, that’s 1000 views. If your CPM is $2.00, then you’d be making $2 per day.
Though that doesn’t seem like much, it all depends on how many views you get. If you have 100 videos, and each getting about 5,000 views per day. you’d be grossing $1,000 per day based on the same CPM.
See the difference? The key is consistency, persistence, and high quality content.
Think about the YouTubers with millions of subscribers. They get hundreds of thousands of views daily. Think about those ad views. Think about that money. Think about that bank account.
The top YouTubers make 6 figures monthly. Some even 7. Yes. Millions. That’s a fact.
But it’s definitely not easy.
And they don’t get all of what they earn. You also get deducted like crazy.
If you’re starting out, take into account that you won’t be seeing a $1,000 deposit in your bank account every day. A significant percentage of viewers have ad blocking software, which means you won’t get credited for those views. You’ll also get taxed for your revenue, just like any other business. And of course, you owe YouTube their cut for making it possible for you to earn in the first place (a big chunk).
So with all these factors in place, you need to a lot of views to earn a comfortable amount.
YouTube has many metrics and algorithms that rank your videos. The higher quality content you produce, the higher your videos will be ranked in the search results, which means more exposure, which means more views, which means more money. It gets very complicated very fast to go through each ranking metric, so if you want to win, all you need to know is: produce quality content.
If you want to get started, we suggest you do a lot more reading and invest in the proper equipment. Starting off without the knowledge required is just doing it on hard mode. Having poor equipment that can’t record with quality sound and video is near impossible. How often have you clicked “back” in your browser because some video had horrible quality? Get the right equipment and arm yourself with knowledge before delving in. As easy as you think it is, it’s not. It takes work and patience just like any other profession. We don’t want to discourage you, we just want you to know it’s not just upload some random videos and make bank. After all, we can always use some more cat videos.
If I had a YouTube channel, I would name it FrogLegs. That name really feels like the quirky, fun person that I am.