How much YouTubers actually make

Revenues on YouTube are based on 1000 views if you’re curious

For ad revenue, YouTube collects a payment from advertisers to display their ads on 1000 views of your videos (CPM). They take their cut (which varies) and and you’re paid the revenue per 1000 views (RPM).

With YouTube Premium, viewers pay a monthly $12 subscription fee. This means they’re the ones funding your views in lieu of brands. So YouTube Premium’s payment structure is like how Spotify Premium pays musicians.

And YouTube says it gives “most” of its revenue to creators in its official answer on this question.

I can’t see specifics on what viewers are doing on my channel, but I can see the revenue. Here are stats on two different videos on my channel, one with 1 million views over two years and one with 100k in one month:

There’s a big variance, as one video is 10% premium, while the other is 100%. A lot of factors could’ve gone into that, but I still can’t tell how much of that $12 fee went to me.

Overall, only 10% of my revenue comes from Premium but I’m sure creators have much higher numbers.

I don’t really see anything in my numbers to suggest that if someone, say, only watched one video (mine) in a month and paid $12, that I would earn $6 from it.

It’s more likely that they take the total monthly payments and divide it evenly among all creators based on the monthly price for 1000 premium views.

Like ad revenue, it’s not a stagnant number. Here’s a much more in-depth look at my personal YouTube finances from being monetized before and after the YouTube Partner Program.