Hello and welcome to In the Kitchen with Matt.
I am your host, Matt Taylor.
Today I have a different video for you.
I'm going to be talking about the business of YouTube and how
many subscribers it takes to be a full time YouTuber.
For those of you who do not know, this is my
full time job.
I am a full time YouTuber and I also am a food blogger.
But I'm not going be talking about the food blog side
of it.
I do earn money from that, but I'm not going to be talking
about that movie focusing on primarily on YouTube and kind
of the business of YouTube.
I get the question a lot.
Like how many subscribers do you need to be a full time
YouTuber?
And so I'll be talking about that.
And that's the whole focus of this video.
I've been sick for the past week and a half.
I just don't feel like doing a recipe video right now.
But I still wanted to put out some content today, and so
that's what I'm going to focus on.
And again, like I mentioned, I am a full time YouTuber.
And when someone asked me what it takes to be a full
time YouTuber, my first question is, well, what is full
time mean to you?
To me, it means that is my sole source of income.
I could pay all my bills with the money that I'm earning
from YouTube, and I don't have to have any other
side hustles.
And for most people, I think that's what it means.
But first, you got to ask yourself, well, what does
it mean to be full time?
What is it going to take?
How much is it going to take to earn each month there each year
for me to be full time?
And that's kind of what that's going to be
different for everyone.
For me, it might be less or more each month than I need to
pay all my bills and it might be for you.
So just keep that in mind.
So it's going to vary a bit depending on your personal
circumstances as far as your needs go.
And also it's going to vary depending on the channel type
of channel that you have.
Every channel is different, so it's kind of hard to compare
one to another because there's a lot of factors that go into
the earnings that you have.
Specifically from AdSense, I'm going to be talking
mainly from AdSense.
That's the money that you generate from ads because
that's the one of the easiest ways to get started on earning
money on YouTube.
And this video is pretty much for those who are if you're
already in a YouTuber and you're generating money,
you're going to know a lot of these things already.
But this is just kind of information for those that are
just wondering what it takes.
And maybe some of the smaller YouTubers out there that are
wondering what what what's the goal that they need
to get there.
So if you're going to be generating income from
AdSense first, you need to get monetize.
And in order to do that, you need 4000 hours and watch
time across all your videos within one year.
And then you also need at least 1000 subscribers and then you
can get monetize and start earning generating money
from the ads.
Now you can start earning money before then on your channel.
Being monetized is not the only way that you can earn money
on your channel.
There's a variety of other ways and that all kind of
goes into it.
But for this video, I'm going to focus primarily on earnings
from AdSense because it's just the easiest to quantify.
Other ways that you can earn money is through sponsorships
and through affiliate links and through directing people from
your YouTube video to different products that you're selling.
Like if you have your own website and you're selling
products on that website, or if you just have a link to your
product directly in like we say, if I have a book on
Amazon or something or a course and I'm selling another site
like Udemy or something like that, then I could put
that link and I could direct my viewers on YouTube to go to
that link and buy that course or video.
I'm going to be talking about those things.
It's just hard to quantify those as much, and it's just
easier just to talk about AdSense.
So just keep in mind your number could be lower if you
are also doing these other things on the side.
I'll go into it now.
Earn on top of your AdSense revenue.
Okay.
But for this, for all intents and purposes, just to make it
more simple, I'll just talk about AdSense, just about money
that you generate from your ads.
Okay?
And so every channel is going to be different.
Mine is a cooking channel.
A cooking channel niche.
Historically, it doesn't pay as high for the ads as something
like the finance niche.
So there's other channels out there just because of the niche
that they make about two times as much as my channel does for
the same amount of use, if that makes sense.
For example, I have a variety channel,
my other channel, and that has a higher CPM and RPM.
That's a cost to the cost to the advertisers.
And then the RPM is revenue that I actually make that's
higher than this channel.
So keep that in mind.
It depends on your niche.
So the figure that I tell you, the amount of subscribers that
you need is going to vary greatly depending on
the niche.
Also, it varies on where you live, where you happen
to be located.
I'm in the United States and probably 50 to 60% of my
viewers are from the United States.
And so the ads that played on my videos in those locations
are going to be worth more than, let's say, if you
live in India, okay.
Or if your channel is based in India and most of your viewers
are in India or Southeast Asia or somewhere around there,
they just don't your channel just doesn't earn as much
revenue from the ads that are playing are shown.
So keep that in mind.
And also, there's the time of year it it'll fluctuate.
Advertisers pay more or less at the beginning of the year.
They just pay less for the ads because they want to stretch
out their marketing budget.
At the end of the year.
The last quarter, they are willing to pay a lot more money
for those ads because they want people to buy presents and
things like that for Black Friday and Christmas.
So just keep that in mind.
There's a lot of variations that go into it.
Okay.
So first of all, YouTubers don't get paid
for subscribers, but when you get to a certain point on
your channel, you can allow the subscription channel.
Like you could have people that actually subscribe specifically
to a paid version of your channel, and then you can
set an amount per monthly, like $3 a month, $5 a month.
And so a lot of YouTubers can earn money that way, but you
have to have quite a bit of subscribers to get
to that point.
And for me personally, my type of channel, just even though I
could have that, there probably wouldn't be enough people that
would subscribe to make it worth my while to even
do that.
So when people ask how many subscribers you need,
first of all, you don't get paid normally on your channel.
That's normal.
Just a normal YouTube channel.
You don't get paid for subscribers.
It's all about the views.
So you want a lot of use because you want a lot of views
of videos, because you want more chances of people to
see your ads.
Click on your click on your ads, things of
that nature.
Okay.
So you don't get paid for subscribers unless you have the
actual channel subscription, which some people do.
Some people don't.
And so for me, for me personally,
for this channel, it took me right around 100,000
subscribers before I was earning enough meaning I had
enough videos out there that were generating enough views
and enough of my subscribers were watching them and new
people were watching them to generate enough to where I
could earn enough from AdSense that month to pay for
my bills.
And at that time I think it was around like 23 or 24 or 20 $500
that month that I was able to earn.
And that was like my, this is like.
Late January, late 2019, when I first earn enough to pay all my
bills and I live by myself.
I have a small account home and so my expenses aren't a ton.
That's why I said it's going to it's going to depend on
your lifestyle, what you need, what your number is,
3000 a month, 5000 a month, 8000 a month that you're going
to need to where you can do this full time.
Otherwise, you might just be doing that as a hobby and
generating a little bit of money here and there and still
working your normal job full time.
Okay.
So for me, that number was fairly low in my mind, and for
others it might be higher, so it might take longer.
And also when I mentioned a niche, someone that has maybe
like in the finance niche, once they get to the 45, 50,
60,000 subscriber mark, they probably are generating
enough views from their videos to where they can equal that
same amount that I was making.
And then if they had the same amount, like I say,
like I mentioned, 100,000, if they had that, they would be
making double what I was making at that time,
if that makes sense.
So now I make way more than I did back then with about
245,000 subscribers as of this video of like 244 or something
like that, I make more than that.
Like, if you look here at my AdSense, you can see how
much money that I generated or about to generate this month.
And so that's pretty good.
And then again, that's not my only source of revenue
for the channel.
I do have some I do get some sponsors once in a while.
I don't do that a whole lot.
And then I do have some affiliate links.
I don't make a lot from that.
Like on my Amazon affiliate links, I only make
about 150 a month.
So it's not really much to talk about.
So for me personally, it's all about the AdSense on
this particular channel.
And then I have my food blog which generates income
as well.
So there you go.
Bottom line, a good goal to have is right around the 100 K
subscriber mark and that's a very good goal to have.
And depending on your niche, you could probably get there
sooner than that.
As far as a full time revenue goes and for some of you,
you might have to wait longer than that and it's all
about the views.
So a good goal would be 100,000 subscribers and then anywhere
between 500 and a million views a month or 500,000 and a
million views a month.
And that can get you there to full time revenue again,
depending on your niche, depending on where you live and
where your viewers are based.
So there's a lot of stuff that goes into it.
So they go, I hope you enjoyed this video.
I'm really passionate about YouTube.
I'm very grateful to the YouTube platform to give me a
platform that I can earn a living doing what I enjoy
and being self-employed.
It's amazing.
And I really also feel blessed for all the subscribers that I
have and everyone that continues to subscribe and all
of you that support the channel and watch the videos.
And I really love it when you actually try out the recipe and
then comment how successful you were.
Awesome.
So once again, thank you all for being a part of the show.
And until next time I am at Taylor, this is my cooking
channel in the kitchen with Matt.
Take care and happy baking and cooking, everyone.