How Much Do YouTubers Really Earn? A Breakdown of Earnings

How much do youtubers really earn? This question has intrigued many people who watch youtube and are impressed by the rise of many youtubers. However, the answer to this question is rather complex! It all depends on factors like views, ad revenue, viewers, sponsorships, and other income streams. This article will break down the various ways YouTubers make money so that you know which strategy best suits your channel.

Ad Revenue: The number one way to earn money on YouTube

Ad Revenue (Most Common Way to Make Money on YouTube) Ad appear pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll during YouTube videos and earn a portion of this revenue. This (unsurprisingly) represents a 55% share for creators and a 45% cut for YouTube. How much YouTubers earn — CPM(Cost Per 1000 view) can be something like $0.25 going up to around $4+ ( depends on demographics of audience, video content).

James Charles, How much do youtubers earn? Mr Beast, Whose the Boss — Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, more famously known as Pew Die Pie

Youtubers such as PewDiePie, YouTube’s biggest creator with 110M subscribers heavily rely on advertisements for the majority of their earnings. With CPM rates ranging all over the place, his massive following plus regular content production have made him among the highest-click earners on its platform.

Sponsorships: Big Brands, Big Money

YouTubers make money With Sponsorships as well. These are the 2nd or in some cases the most important source of revenue for them. In the cases of paid sponsorships, a brand hires a content creator (person who creates videos) to sponsor their products or services in his/her video. The price of a sponsorship also less varies from brand to brand, product to product, and how big the creator following is. If this channel has around 100k subscribers generally it will earn somewhere between $1,000 and $10,000 per sponsored video.

Take Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) or Arun Rupesh Maini (Mrwhosetheboss) , both are tech YouTubers with audiences of 18-19. Both frequently work with tech brands such as Google, Apple and Samsung earning them a lot of income through collaborations. So understandable that brands are willing to pay a premium for their tech endorsement— given how niche and influential they are in their space.

Merchandise Sales: Milking your popularity to the fullest

A significant portion of the YouTubers use their fanbase for selling items like clothes, accessories and even custom products. That can add up to a pretty nice chunk of change, especially if they have many devoted fans. Creators can quickly make and sell their own products on services such as Teespring or Shopify. These sales not only act as brand endorsements for their own YouTube channels providing them with publicity but they also generate large amounts of passive income.

Mr Beast, feastables, Mr Beast Burger. Mr Beast net worth — Mr Beast during a appearance at an event

MrBeast, who is famous for his huge giveaways and stunts to over 100M subscribers has his own line of merchandise. It is called Mrbeast.Store and sells all kinds of items from mugs to T-shirts. These adds millions more per year in addition to his brand collaboration and ad revenue.

Affiliate Marketing: Earning Through Recommendations

With affiliate marketing, the YouTuber promotes products and receives a fraction of each purchase that is made through their link. This approach is especially wide spread in niches such as beauty, tech and lifestyle where creators can recommend products to their audience.

For instance, beauty vlogger James Charles —who boasts over 23 million subscribers — regularly leverages affiliate links through his makeup recommendations. When a viewer buys something through one of his links, he receives some sort of percentage from that sale. This further boosts another way in which he’s making an income.

Memberships: Direct Support from Fans

Additionally, you can use channel memberships and Super Chats on YouTube to enable fans to support your favorite creators directly. Fans want exclusive content and perks for a monthly fee; they pay through memberships, while viewers can have their messages highlighted during live streams by paying – that is your super chat.

Youtuber Lindsay Ellis talking to the public during a seminar

Patreon — Yet another way YouTubers provide members-only content. Producers like Lindsay Ellis, an essayist on movies and popular culture, make use of Patreon to increase revenues. Her patreon dollars coupled with youtube ad revenue keep the coffers full.