According to data compiled by The Social Shepherd, YouTube is one of the largest and most popular internet platforms, with approximately 2. 7 billion monthly active users worldwide. In the U. S. alone, 62% of Internet users access YouTube every day, while 500 hours of video are uploaded to its servers every minute. While Americans of all ages make a layover, young people spend about 77 minutes a day watching YouTube videos.
In short, YouTube is a cultural powerhouse and a tech giant, and it has the profits needed to convert it. In 2022, the platform generated a staggering $29. 2 billion in revenue, mostly thanks to advertising and its Premium subscription service. You probably already know, YouTube creators get a piece of the profit pie, either directly or indirectly. Beast makes millions every month, but not each and every one of them can be Mr. Beast. Beast.
The fact is that making money on YouTube is rarely as undeniable as uploading a few videos and hoping they go viral. To be eligible to participate in the YouTube Partner Program, which allows creators to earn money through six other features (ad revenue, YouTube Premium revenue, Super Chat and Super Stickers, Super Thanks, Shopping, and channel subscriptions), you’ll need to meet requirements.
If you want to monetize your YouTube channel with ad earnings or through YouTube Premium, you want to have at least 1000 subscribers. However, there are exceptions. If your channel focuses on long-form videos, you want to accumulate 4000 watch hours in the last 12 months. For a shorts channel, the requirement is 10 million views in the last 3 months. Keep in mind that those are just the basic requirements. .
The thresholds for Super Chat & Super Stickers, Super Thanks, Shopping, and channel memberships are slightly lower. You need 500 subscribers, three video uploads in the last three months, or 3,000 watch hours for long-form content (3 million views for Shorts videos). If you plan to sell products from other brands, which is only possible if you’re located in the United States or South Korea, you need to meet specific video view thresholds, or have 20,000 people subscribed to your channel.
With the requirements being what they are, it’s easy to see why most YouTube channels aren’t even eligible for monetization in the first place. Rudimentary calculations suggest that the vast majority of monetized channels generate what can be described as an insignificant amount of revenue.
The social media analytics online page Social Blade has a calculator that you can use to estimate the potential earnings of YouTube channels. Let’s say your videos generate 1000 views per day and let’s assume the CPM (cost per 1000 ad impressions) on your channel is between $0. 25 and $3. You would earn between $7. 50 and $90 per month. Diversity is wide because CPM rates are influenced by factors, from the country of the audience to the type of video and niche of your YouTube channel.
If you’ve ever managed a YouTube channel, you know that achieving 1,000 prospects is no easy task. The effort of creating unique videos, advertising them on social media, and building a subscriber base, all while adhering to YouTube’s indistinct rules, is not easy. justified through a monthly income source of $90.
If we assume that a mid-level YouTuber is someone who runs a vital channel in a safe niche, but not as popular as Mr. Beast, that is to say that he makes a very comfortable living.
If they receive approximately 50,000 daily views, with a CPM of between $0.25 and $3, that amounts to between $4,500 and $54,000 annually, according to Social Blade. Again, this is a very wide range, but it represents just ad revenue. Unlike struggling and up-and-coming creators, mid-level YouTubers have decent-sized followings and communities, which likely means they also have sponsorship deals, sell merchandise, receive commissions from products their fans purchase, and so on. Depending on their niche, they may also have a Patreon set up or engage in other types of crowdfunding.
In general, mid-level YouTubers make more money from sponsorship deals than they do from ad revenue. They may not be as wealthy as Elon Musk, but most of them earn more than the average American executive (more than about $116,000 a year) and can comfortably live off their YouTube earnings.
YouTubers like Mr. Beast, Jeffree Star, and Markiplier are worldwide celebrities and, as you might have guessed, multi-millionaires. They might be YouTube’s top creators today, but they all started from the 1,000-subscriber bottom and worked their way up, which should also count for something.