How Much Money Do Youtubers Make

I have days when I get the perfect email that inspires me to answer one of the most asked questions about YouTube, and it’s how much money do YouTubers make. Yesterday was one of those, and when that email led me to an article that says “Famous YouTube stars are barely scraping by.”

The article was written by Gaby, a 27 year old YouTuber that shares a channel with her friend, Allison. She’s been building an online following for 10 years, and a couple years ago moved that over to online video. These two have HALF A MILLION subscribers!

They’re either producing or starring in their own comedy sketch, their advice show, they write episodes, they deal with all the business things and running their company. BUT GET THIS —-

It says right on the article “..and yet, despite the success, we’re barely scraping by”!

How do you JUST scrape by with already a half a million subscribers??

What would YOU do if you have a captive audience of 500,000 people?

Do you think you could do ANYTHING to do more than “scrape by”?

I mean, with that big of a viewership AND loyalty really, all you have to do is have a product or a service, and offer it to your subscribers, and you don’t even need all of them to actually patronize your product to make a good living, right?

Looking into the article a little bit further, it looks like Gaby has gained some sort of celebrity status as she’s been asked to be photographed with, and even walked a red carpet! People recognize her! But then there would also be days when she sits faceless in a room of 40 people.

What do you think Gaby’s problem is? Why is she just scraping by?

If you build yourself to this level of fame and this celebrity status, what are you gonna do to turn THAT into REVENUE?

I’ve got a list of 11 different ways that you can monetize your YouTube channel (which I’ll go in-depth with at another time), but Gaby’s using just one! She’s counting on YouTube advertising revenue as her sole source of income or her primary source of income, when she needs to come up with some way to build a business around this.

She’s already using her YouTube channel to bring IN a great following of raving fans… so if she offers products, they would buy something from her if she’d just offer, right??

Now let me tell you about another YouTuber, but this time someone who makes ACTUAL MONEY on YouTube. He’s Marcus Guiliano, a chef. His top performing video has 1.46 million views on it. This was NOT a viral video. It started out flat when you look at the statistics on his YouTube channel, but it’s the kind of video that grows eventually and builds momentum, and then it ends up being a machine for your business.

For 18 months that it’s had the same angle of incline in the statistics, meaning his video was getting consistently high viewership, that video for 18 months has been bringing him in a consistent revenue of a thousand dollars per month!

That’s great! That’s especially great because it’s just ONE VIDEO. You’ll see that he has more than one video. In fact, he’s got A LOT. But only one is yielding real cash.

So, if you’re only relying on the YouTube advertising revenue, how can you survive?

Let me give you a great example now: Devin Super Tramp.

This is a REALLY FUN YouTube channel. If you haven’t seen it or seen any of his videos, I recommend checking them out. He’ll get always at least get a million views on his videos.

10% of his revenue comes from advertising. Just 10%.

70% comes from sponsorships.

What do I mean by sponsorships? If you look at his channel, you’ll see one video with the logo for Point Break. That’s a new movie that’s coming out, and they sponsor him to make a video that would target HIS audience, Devin’s audience, and introduce them to the movie Point Break. They paid him a good chunk of change to film this video.

While Devin earned from the movie, HIS Point Break video is ALSO making a little bit of advertising revenue on YouTube! So two birds with one stone! It’s in the bag! But wait, it doesn’t end there.

If Devin is earning

10% of his revenue from advertising,

70% from sponsorships,

where does the 20% come from?

The third way Devin’s using YouTube for money is by stock video footage. That’s the 20%!

So while he’s out at these exotic places, he gets a lot of video footage and some people hire him for little clips. He told me that for five seconds of video footage, he charges $1,500! Five short SECONDS of video and he gets THAT MUCH.

So those are the three ways that Devin makes revenue.

For my last example, let me tell you about Derek and his Veritasium, an educational Science YouTube channel. I don’t typically subscribe to a whole bunch of Science channels, but this guy is also a really good marketer. Right now, he’s got over 3 million subscribers. I’ve been following him for two years and the entire time, he has NEVER promoted his own product or service.

Now earlier this month, he came out with his own product called Snatoms: Magnetic Modeling Kit for Chemistry. The kit includes balls and stick models that you’d typically use in your Chemistry class, but in his design, they were all magnetic. Do you know what he did to get over $350,000 with just the IDEA of his design?

Now earlier this month, he came out with his own product called Snatoms: Magnetic Modeling Kit for Chemistry. The kit includes balls and stick models that you’d typically use in your Chemistry class, but in his design, they were all magnetic. Do you know what he did to get over $350,000 with just the IDEA of his design?

He launched it as a Kickstarter campaign.
His Kickstarter campaign wanted to raise $42,000 in order to make his Snatoms idea a reality.

But with his bit.ly link on his YouTube video linking to the campaign, he managed to get $367,000 pledge with still 7 days left to go on this Kickstarter campaign!
And that’s JUST ONE VIDEO.

One of his other viral videos made him over $150,000. And that’s just from advertising revenue.

His Kickstarter campaign wanted to raise $42,000 in order to make his Snatoms idea a reality.

But with his bit.ly link on his YouTube video linking to the campaign, he managed to get $367,000 pledge with still 7 days left to go on this Kickstarter campaign!
And that’s JUST ONE VIDEO.

One of his other viral videos made him over $150,000. And that’s just from advertising revenue.