so it recently occurred to me that the general public has no accurate concept of how much
YouTubers make what's the most you've generated in a month from your YouTube channel 25 like 40
000. 245 000. I think I need a meal once wow and also keep in mind that not all YouTubers
make these giant amounts this video has made me that much money assuming YouTube hasn't changed
their layout since I posted this video this money will be a combination of my 55 Revenue share I
get from YouTube's AdSense system as a member of their partner program and the money I will
get from the very brave company that I somehow convinced to sponsor today's video if you are
part of the roughly 30 of people that watch my new videos and the first day they are uploaded
then firstly thank you but you might also notice that the number down there is negative and that's
because I have also decided to include how much it cost me to make these videos I've done this
for two reasons the first is because I thought you might find it interesting especially if you
have ever aspired to start a YouTube channel of your own I've also done it to highlight a
big problem that I think is worth talking about monetization drastically affects what you spend
your time watching here on YouTube without you even realizing it if you aren't watching on the
first day this video goes live then the title was this video has made me negative 953.56 because
that's how much I spend all in on making the video you are watching right now well what can
I say that might surprise you after all most of my videos are made from edited movie scenes and
stock Clips compared to some of the things you watch on YouTube I don't need to give piles of
cash away film in exotic locations or get a new car every other week but I still employ
an editor who I want to pay very well for the work he does in making the videos come to life
and on top of that there are licenses for the software applications I use as well as licenses
for other mundane things such as cloud storage Drive email servers and accounting software
the barriers to entry for a YouTube channel like mine are very low but they are rising
especially if you want to stand out in an Ever more competitive landscape of high
budget content and this is causing perhaps one of the biggest problems on the platform and no I'm
not talking about people saying naughty things or getting their channels to monetize thoughts
I'm talking about something that greatly impacts the way you consume hours of videos every week
so it's time to learn how money Works to get a totally transparent Insight on my own little
YouTube business this week's lesson was made possible by ground news and I couldn't possibly
think of a more appropriate sponsor for this video because their business is about making media you
consume as transparent as possible want proof of that they are paying me ten dollars for every 1
000 views I get on this video understanding the biases political leanings and funding sources of
the news that you consume is crucial for making sure that you have the best possible idea of what
is really going on Crown news brings together new stories from multiple outlets and gives
you a visual breakdown of who is reporting on it and where the outlet falls on the political
Spectrum I use groundnuts to get a better idea of my own reading habits it lets me know if I'm
falling into the algorithmic rabbit hole of news stories telling me what I want to hear
instead of what I need to know their platform has radically changed the way I build a picture
of world events and I don't think I could ever go back back to reading whatever headline was just
the most attention grabbing go to ground.news forward slash how money Works to try ground
news for free or subscribe to get access to all the features you see here and support a small
team of Independent Media Outsiders working to make news in this video more transparent
for most of my videos that sponsor segment will be most of my income I work with a sponsor manager
who works with sponsor agencies who then work directly with companies on big ad campaigns
across multiple channels I make a good amount of money from these because I have worked so hard to
grow a loyal audience that I have some level of trust with so not only are these sponsors getting
their message in front of a few hundred thousand viewers they are also indirectly getting my stamp
of approval because I don't work with companies that I don't personally believe in and trust me
when I say there are plenty of nfts and crypto companies that have tried but no matter how much I
get paid for this YouTube the company hosting the video and giving me the platform that I need to
reach my viewers gets nothing I know it's not the fashion to defend giant tech companies and a big
reason that sponsorships have become so popular with creators is precisely because YouTube and
other platforms have no way of intervening in the process but this does seem kind of unfair doesn't
it minus Tech tips did a great video on the parabolic costs involved in storing and hosting
as much video content as YouTube a company like Netflix that only hosts the content it chooses and
only streams to people that directly pay at money through a subscription still struggles to turn a
profit so the fact that YouTube is still around at all is kind of a miracle that we take for granted
the point is that even if only 10 percent of video uploads transitioned to 4K per year over the next
few years YouTube would need to find some way to grow their revenue or they could risk becoming
non-viable of course this is thanks to the other way that I and most other YouTubers on this
platform make money the YouTube Partner program any Channel with over a thousand subscribers and 4
000 hours of Total video watch time outside of YouTube shorts content can apply to join the
YouTube partner program which is an agreement to split revenue between the advertisers you
see before after and during videos as well as the banner ads you see around the YouTube watch
page most people in the partner program have the same generic agreement where they keep 55
of the revenue generated from their videos and YouTube keeps the other 45 it might be different
for larger creators that have individualized agreements with YouTube but I wasn't able to
find any direct evidence of this in my research that sounds very generous but YouTube doesn't do
this for charity before you ring me up I just want to let you know I'm not going to be giving extra
money to charity so can we just skip that part the platform needs full-time creators to make
content that keeps people engaged for long enough for those ads to get into the viewer's head the
robust and easy to use monetization system that YouTube has set up makes it very attractive to
creators wanting to build a following on the site but also to establish figures and companies that
already have a following and want an extra way to monetize it examples include twitch streamers
posting highlights onto their YouTube channels and even television programs making entire episodes
free to watch on YouTube securing creators with a large consistent Advertiser friendly audience
is vital to YouTube because a vast majority of videos on the platform lose their money
every minute over 500 hours worth of content is uploaded to YouTube and that is terabytes of data
that need to be stored every minute YouTube does have sophisticated processes to condense video
files but it's not magic the files also need to be replicated onto dozens of data centers around
the world so that when you click as a viewer on a video you can start to enjoy it without having to
wait for that information to be sent through undersea cables from wherever it was stored
filling up multiple hard drives every minute is not cheap and most of the stuff they are storing
will never make them their money back the average video on YouTube gets about 1 000 views in total
over its entire lifetime YouTube now runs ads on all of these videos whether you are part of the
YouTube Partner program or not and based off my own analytics between my channels 1 000 views will
gross the site about four dollars four dollars will not pay for the disk space that the video
takes up in the data centers around the world and that's ignoring all the other overheads that
go into running the world's largest video site it's also ignoring that the average of 1000 views
is heavily skewed by the 0.1 percent of video creators that get millions of views YouTube loses
a lot of money on most videos but everybody is still welcome to upload because the top creators
make up this loss and then some without big budget creators the free video sharing platform just
wouldn't be viable Mr Beast one of the largest creators on the platform says that all of the
revenue he gets from his videos gets put back into making more videos I just want to make the best
videos on the planet and the point of this video was to show that even on a much more modest scale
making videos is not easy and it can get expensive very quickly making money spending money to making
money losing money on some videos on some other videos have to make money to make up for it my
channel is one of the channels that would be a net moneymaker for YouTube but it took a while to get
there and to be a hundred percent transparent with all of you watching if YouTube didn't share their
ad Revenue with me I would have given up making videos long before this channel was big enough to
arrange direct sponsorships I know most YouTubers only ever talk about how they just love making
videos and they would happily do it for free if they could but even if that were true most of
them wouldn't be willing to lose money on making their videos and this rarely acknowledged fact is
significantly changing the content that you watch here on the internet certain niches are monetized
much more heavily than others business finance cars and Technology are very attractive subjects
to certain advertisers because an audience that is interested in computers is all also likely to be
interested in the latest video games and pieces of Technology an audience that is interested in
business is also more likely to be interested in starting or running their own business trading in
financial markets and making the most out of their financial products like credit cards advertisers
pay a lot more to hit these demographics which means that the YouTubers including myself who
would make videos about these topics make more money than YouTubers who make videos about other
topics as they make more money they can afford to produce more videos with higher production
quality which means you are probably watching a disproportionately represented share of content
from higher paying niches to be clear YouTube is not intentionally pushing more heavily monetized
content it's just creators can afford to make more of the more heavily monetized content someone
could do YouTube full-time by running a finance channel that gets a hundred thousand views a
week but there isn't a chance they could do the same with similar views on a science history or
gaming channel this means that mid-level creators in these fields need to keep their day jobs which
is a recipe for Burnout if they are also trying to make videos without being able to hire outside
I'd help the net result is simply less of these videos get made this feedback loop makes sense
and has always been a suspicion but this link is hard to prove without reliable data but luckily
YouTube perhaps unwittingly gave everyone access to the required data last year with the rollout
of hashtags on videos when you apply a hashtag to a video you get a drop down of suggestions with
the number of videos and the number of channels that have used that hashtag hashtag travel for
example has 3.3 million videos produced by 814 000 channels so let's compare heavily monetized
content with content that is harder to monetize I have how money works and how history works and
I can tell you that my History Channel earns significantly less preview than my Channel
about business and personal finance so let's test the theory with these subjects hashtag
history has about 915 000 videos made by 210 000 channels and hashtag personal finance has about 74
000 videos made by 10 000 channels at first glance this looks to disprove my theory but
wait a quick Google Trends query reveals that people search for history at 80 to 90 times
the rate they search for personal finance so proportionally personal finance is an order of
magnitude over-represented on YouTube before even considering that history is naturally
better suited to video and personal finance is more at home on websites displaying pertinent
information something even more revealing is the channels to video ratio hashtag history has 915
000 videos made by 210 000 channels which means that each channel in this genre makes 4.4 videos
on average hashtag personal finance has 74 000 videos and by 10 000 channels which means
that each channel is making 7.4 videos on average almost double that of History similar comparisons
with different hashtags in Google Trend results yield similar results but I would encourage you
look at the data for yourself because it's free and easy to access every one of the videos on my
history focused Channel loses money and I am only able to keep it going by funneling money from this
channel into that one I hope that one day it will be profitable but it's very easy to to see why
subjects that really deserve more videos just can't keep up with the torn of videos from the
more lucrative niches and as long as Google makes it possible for advertisers to hyper Target their
ads on specific audiences that is not going to change it's really my own fault anyway I give my
videos titles like colonialism wasn't profitable if ever there was a video to scare advertisers it
would be this one but you should go and watch it anyway a special thanks again to groundnews
for making it possible for everybody to keep on learning how money works oh here he goes with the
ego again who crowned you the top internet star I did when I became bigger than all you [ __ ]
oh please laughing baby had four times as many views as you