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Have you ever watched a YouTube video from your favorite channel – from Connor Franta to iiSuperwomanii – and thought, “Could this be my job, too?” There seems to be hundreds of YouTubers earning millions of dollars from making quirky videos on topics ranging from music to video games walkthroughs to instructional videos to personal vlogs. And as YouTube continues to grow, being a creator on YouTube sounds more and more like a plausible career choice.
But how much do these top stars – and the average YouTuber – actually make? How do they even earn their money? And can you really quit your day job and make videos online as a career?
If you click on a video to watch and an ad plays before it, the video’s creator is making money. After YouTubers submit videos for monetization, the ad’s company pays YouTube for the placement and YouTube pays the creator. The more people who watch the video with the ad, the more a creator makes. Because YouTube has partnered with Google’s Adsense program to split the profits, the site keeps 45 percent of a video’s ad revenue, says Business Insider.
But video monetization is not the only way creators can make money.
Companies and corporations can also pay creators to advertise their product. Creators are required by law to say that a video is an ad for a product in the description. Despite the fact that they are essentially commercials, unboxing, product placement and “trying a new product” videos are very popular. If a creator is big enough for companies to reach out to them, accepting their products is another way YouTubers can make money off their videos.
So how much do YouTube’s top creators really make?
The five most subscribed non-music channels on YouTube include PewDiePie (51 million), HolaSoyGerman (30 million), Smosh (22 million), elrubiusOMG (22 million) and VanossGaming (19 million). Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, made a cool $7.4 million in 2015 making videos of himself playing and commentating on video games, according to the Huffington Post.
However, there are other players in the mix that may not have as many subscribers, but reportedly make more money. In a surprise to just about everyone, one channel named DisneyCollectorBR makes videos trying and playing with new children’s toys and earns between $1.4 to $21.9 million per year. In fact, videos featuring games and children’s toys have the top fifteen earnings on YouTube (not including music video channels like VEVO).
So it seems like unboxing and play X-Box could have you set for life.
Per thousand views, creators can make between one and five dollars. So for every million views, YouTubers can make around $1,000. Obviously, not everyone will make that much money per video. However, some less popular but high-earning creators still make videos on YouTube as a full-time job.
Not everyone can accumulate tens of millions of subscribers, but there are a lot of creators that have surpassed one million, such as up-and-comer Alexis G. Zall. One million subscribers used to be a rare accomplishment on YouTube, but now that number is somewhat common. To be considered a YouTuber, you can produce just about anything, but an average creator that people would consider successful has at least one million subscribers.
So if creators with one million subscribers has around 200,000 views per video with two uploads a week, that’s 400,000 views per week. Using a median of $1 made for every thousand views, their weekly earnings come out to around $1,000. Consequently, their yearly earnings would be about $52,000. It may be even more than that if their channel continues to grow throughout the year.
But being a YouTube creator also means being a personality.
Yes, YouTube and companies can pay you money to advertise their products, but many current creators also appear on TV and have podcasts that bring in cash. Some creators are successful business people who branch out beyond YouTube. For instance, Hank and John Green – who co-produce channels such as VlogBrothers, Crash Course and several others – have helped creators become recognized in mainstream media. Hank Green co-created VidCon, the largest conference dedicated to online video which attracts tens of thousands of people every year, and most recently the YouTube Creators Guild to “actively promote the interests of online video makers.”
So a simple answer is yes, you can make a successful career on YouTube. If you have camera equipment, some ideas, social networking skills and an ability to work hard, you can be a fairly successful creator, though maybe not as much at first and maybe not as much as you were hoping in the long run. Making videos is a full-time job along with networking and building an audience, and a good chunk of people have been able to make enough money to call it their full-time job.
But how long does it last? How long can YouTube creators work and earn enough money to live on? Maybe they’ll only get their 15 seconds of fame and flop.
The problem, as most see it, about basically anything related to online culture is that things don’t last very long. Some sites and apps, prove this point. For instance, Vine, once an extremely popular app that lets you create six-second videos, was recently shut down when all it’s big creators moved to different platforms such as Instagram.
In a similar way, as currently popular YouTube creators become older, they may not attract the same audience as they did at the height of YouTube popularity. Already, younger creators are making the climb up and gaining subscribers rapidly, such as the Merell twins who were featured on the hit TV show “Jane the Virgin.” Soon, younger stars may steal the spots of “classic” but outdated YouTube creators.
However, online video is still relatively new so the future is uncertain. No one saw ASMR being such a popular genre of video, so literally anything could happen – we’ll just have to keep checking YouTube to find out.
