When I first started diving into the YouTube why´s and how´s in order to find out all about the most successful YouTubers in the world I found they all share some things in common. So I´m going to reveal my findings with you!

So, how much does a vlogger earn? The simple truth is that it varies a lot depending on the monetization method, their current YouTube subscriptions, amount of videos and views, engagement, among many other factors. 

That is why most people find it hard to know how much money they can make by posting good content on YouTube.

Here I´m going to lay out the fundamentals in order to give you a little more clarity on the matter and hopefully get you fired up!

How Much Money Can a YouTuber Make?

As I´ve just said, there are many factors that can how much money you can make through YouTube, so we´re going to dive right into each and one them in this post.

In the beginning, there were Ads…

Adsense is the first step on the monetization scale, but it is also your lowest profitable source of income, probably.

Most channel owners on YouTube can hardly make a living just by posting good videos and content, that´s a reality.

So, we are going to take a little, very tiny income example of a brand new channel a compare it to the biggest ones in order to attain a brief idea of what the numbers are in this line of business.

First of all, a recent YouTube video is not going to be found for a couple months, or at least some weeks. That is a simple algorithm fact you have to know and realize right now. 

Secondly, if you try to compete for a big keyword like “how-tos” obvious tutorials everybody else already thought about you´re screwed. That is way too hard to compete for a new channel. At least at first. Keep that in mind. 

Now, in order to be helpful, and just to give you some sort of guideline to your query, here it is.

According to TubeMogul, on average, a YouTube channel can make around $7 dollars per 1,000 views, but if you take more recent data you can guess that is less than that in most cases. 

For example, a video creator that is obtaining approximately 1 million views per month gets around $US2000. 

That being said, there are no accurate measurements to know right from the get-go how much money you´re going to make. That number simply doesn´t exist!

Remember that YouTube already gets 45% of the ads earning and CPM rates are usually pretty low, but…

Here´s the catch, there are also channels that get paid almost $30 or even $40 bucks per thousand views because they have an audience from countries or from people that no one else is getting into, and that, for YouTube is valuable.

Check out this post from Digital Music News.

Nobody actually wants to confirm that, and it´s a well-kept secret, what if you niche down or can talk a foreign language and want to make YouTube videos you might want to give it a try.

Don´t dwell too much on the idea of being the next PewDiePie, 5-minute Crafts, or HolaSoyGerman (funny Spanish channel), yeah they might make millions a year, but they also got started several years ago, when things were not this complex and competitive.

Just to give you an idea here are the most popular YouTube channels as of September 2018, ranked by number of subscribers (in millions)

We need a new approach, here´s a tip for you niche down!

¡Niche Down!

A really effective and easy way to distinguish yourself and stand out from the crowd right from the start is to choose a niche that is not so competitive, or that even has no competition whatsoever, how amazing would that be! right?

Well, the good news about YouTube is that it´s still a really big opportunity to earn an income and create a brand site or persona.

If you try to niche down and select something that is not that common, maybe it is your approach, the topics you pick to talk about, whatever it is, I promise it will pay off eventually.

It is about being helpful, giving the people what they want but didn´t find. A better explanation of something, a more clear way to show it, a sport or hobby, or profession nobody is talking about.

5 Most Common and Profitable Monetization Methods

Now, just to give you a quick peek of the potential this line of work has here are the top earners of a 2017 statistic. (Annual earnings in millions of US dollars)

“These earnings include advertising revenues as well as sponsored content and event appearances.”

The real secret to income success on YouTube, and I would dare to say or any other platform or money making scheme is diversification.

It doesn´t get much more complex than that really. Yes, Adsense is a good source of income but there are so many more possibilities for YouTube that could not even believe. Let´s dive right in!

Google Adsense

Of course, the first source of income will be your ads. The Ads shown in your videos and the amount paid for each and every click you get depends on the niche or topic you talk about in your videos.

That means that if your channel is about teaching people to program or learn about talking a language is going to be much more valuable for some companies that paid YouTube to show their ads, than a channel that, let´s say solely dedicated to entertaining.

Ad revenue is almost always going to be one of your lowest sources of income, that´s why there are other four you can tap into and that been proved to be very profitable.

Affiliate Marketing

The second and one of most profitable ways to increase the revenue that you get from your video content is Affiliate Marketing.

Basically, selling other people products and services so you can get a commission every time somebody buys from them through your links.

A simplistic way to put but that´s how it works.

Amazon Associates

One of the most used services to accomplish that is the giant Amazon.

You´ll find a lot of products, from any kind, and with a huge variety and great commission to take advantage of. You can do reviews on different products, like say books if that´s your thing, maybe sailing products if that´s your niche, rock climbing, or whatever you like to talk about.

You will certainly find a good product to sell on Amazon.

Now, always keep in mind that is not only to get a commission is also trying to provide value to your audience, so…

Make sure that you are not offering a crappy product, do your research, read some of the reviews before you link to them.

One really good thing about affiliate marketing and selling through Amazon, in particular, is that you won´t need a really big audience to start earning a decent income.

Clickbank

Another great and very popular way of getting into affiliate products and services is Clickbank.

They have a good amount of online courses and info products that are very well sorted out in proper order so that you can find your own niche and see if there´s a good product that you can offer on your channel.

They have courses for people that want to learn how to sing, dance, how to eat, how to do digital marketing, how to lose weight, and whatever you may think, they have it!

Great commissions, make sure to check it out!

Info Products

Now, if we`re talking about taking things to the very next level, then this is THE way to do it.

When you´ve reached a certain point within your own niche you´ll find that one great way to monetize and provide lots of value at the same time is by creating your own informational product.

It can be a video course, an ebook, a pdf, even audio files, whatever you may think it could work.

There`s no limit for your earnings and if you do it well you could be providing serious value to your audience in such a “personal” way that they`ll always remind you.

Be creative, give more than what`s needed, always be super helpful if possible.

Brand Sponsorship

This is another great method to earn a sustainable income and take advantage of the potential YouTube has to offer.

Good creators earn up to 6-figures (and even more than that!) when they promote sponsored products and/or services, but how do they do it?

Well, the good news is that it has never been easier. Nowadays there are great intermediaries like FameBit which connects great brands (like Adidas, Canon, Sony, etc.) with awesome creators who are willing to make some branded content.

You´ll turn your passion into a business in no time and you will be collaborating with some of the biggest and best brands in the world.

There`s a submission process you have to go through and you´ll be ready to monetize your channel in a whole different way!

Self-branding

Talking about thinking long-term this is the perfect approach to get the most out of your videos!

Not everybody thinks about the fact that you, yourself are a brand in one way or another, you´re “selling” your content in exchange for people´s attention.

And that has worth, believe it or not.

Self-branding is about making yourself an awesome “product” for people to consume, it´s about learning a little bit about marketing, graphic design, using patterns, among other strategies.

Then, reaching out to your audience in order to actually sell them something, let`s say a T-Shirt (as many other YouTubers already did, but it`s just to give you a commonly known example) will be much easier and you´ll be amazed at the results.

How to Earn More from YouTube?

First of all, get off the pressure, there´s no point on calculating each and every possible number. Everything you could think of is always going to be an estimate, and even maybe a wrong one. So, what´s the point??

Get started! That`s the best way to learn and accelerate the process of earning a proper income through YouTube, you´ll get more done by doing than by thinking about it, and you´ll learn a ton more too!

First, learn then earn my friend. 

Content is King. That is the second rule and there´s simply no way to ignore it, okay?

You can make a crappy quality video but the content MUST be good, meaning you have to deliver useful, helpful, insightful content, something that takes some sort of research to know about, not obvious superficial information.

Trust me, if you provide value and help people out there is absolutely no way in hell that you won´t attain some level of success eventually. It´s just a matter of time, effort and patience.

What you should be focusing on, as Google (and therefore YouTube), is on the content and then the way you deliver it. That`s it.

That being said, the quality of your video may usually be in a second place but it is still pretty important.

Basic Quality Video means that people can look at you or what you´re filming with a decent resolution and that the audio is easy to understand. Speak loud and try to be as clear as possible. Having a script can always help.

It doesn´t mean you have to have the best possible camera, you can start filming right now with your phone (remember the first rule, get started!).

Now, if your goal is to simply entertain people, tough niche by the way, then maybe video quality should be a major concern.

¡10 Tips to Improve Growth!

1. Post regularly and have a schedule. YouTube algorithm likes that, it means they can trust you to deliver each week and provide for your audience on a consistent basis.
2. Embed your YouTube videos on Social Media and any other possible online platform. Having a blog would be great.
3. Try to keep your videos shorter at first, 4 to 7 minutes long, it´s about delivering great content. Then you can worry about watch time.
4. Choose your title keywords carefully. You don´t want to compete with a huge channel for the same keywords being a small brand new type of channel.
5. Make use of playlists. They are great to position yourself with much ease, and maybe on topics that are very competitive.
6. Include an Intro and Outro. If it´s possible and doesn´t take you much time adding an intro and outro gives a bit of a more “pro” look to your channel. Even if your video quality kinda sucks.
7. Create a really good and compelling video trailer for your channel so that every new visitor converts into multiple views and a possible subscriber.
8. Create evergreen video content. It doesn´t to be for all of your videos, but once in a while should do the work.
9. Long-tail and specific keywords. This is a great way to get started! And it won´t matter if your very first videos are not that good if you`ve done a good keyword research first and the competition is low.
10. Ask viewers to like and share your videos. 

Related Questions

How much money do YouTubers make per subscriber? YouTube doesn´t pay per subscriber, it pays according to monetized views obtained. Clearly having more subscribers will result in lots of more views. That being said, after some research and due to recent statistics each subscriber could worth approximately between $0.04 and $0.41 if we´re just talking about Adsense earnings.

How much money do YouTubers make per thousand views? It`s been said that you can typically earn about $2 to $4 per 1000 views from the Adsense program being a brand new channel. Of course, this varies depending on CPM, CPC, Watch Time, Viewer retention, quality of traffic, and other factors.