Hello, and welcome back to the channel
where we talk about disability, accessibility,
technology, YouTube.
All those things under one little nice umbrella.
And this is my third time trying to film this video
'cause I keep screwing it up.
Ah, third time's the charm?
So today we're gonna be talking about
or I'm going to be talking about how much money I made
on YouTube, Google AdSense alone in 2021.
YouTubers do like make this videos for transparency,
and also because viewers get a little bit curious
as to how much YouTubers can make
and also to clear up any sort of myth
about how much YouTubers tend to make or how they make it.
Even last year, I did video on what I made in 2020.
So I will link that above and down below,
so you can go check that out if you wanna go
and compare for yourself,
but I will be talking about some of those numbers anyway
but if you wanna go check that out,
we'll have that for you.
If you're gonna be curious about this for next year
and hopefully I will have even more information
to add because I'm gonna look at it
a little bit more closely for the next year.
Subscribe, hit the notification bell
so you don't miss out on future uploads.
And also if you wanna help me make things even better
for next year report, that's always appreciated.
Like I mentioned,
I will be talking about only Google AdSense
and what YouTube pay me YouTube/Google pay me.
I know some YouTubers like Swell Entertainment,
mention brand deals and stuff like that.
But for me, if I'm going to talk
about what Google/YouTube pay me,
it doesn't make sense to talk about the brand deals
because although yes you include the brand deal
in your YouTube video,
they are still completely separate companies.
So that's not how it works.
Although maybe next year I can talk about all the ways
that I make money and then put that all into one report.
So really quickly before we get to the actual detail numbers
I do want to reiterate basically,
that you do not get paid by your subscriber count.
One of the myths that I see from time to time
is that YouTubers get paid by their subscriber count.
So if somebody just has over a hundred thousand subscribers
they obviously must be making a lot of money.
I've seen some people think
that you get paid a dollar per subscriber.
I wish, that would be great,
but unfortunately that's not the case.
In fact, I see people like in the planner community,
for instance, they don't have that many subscribers
but they make more money monthly
than how many subscribers they actually have
because it's view count, it's CPM.
It's the kind of niche that you're working with.
So for example, tech YouTubers, beauty YouTubers
even planner community people, their ads make more money
than say talking about disability and accessibility.
And although actually accessibility,
you talk about tech a lot,
but it's just, it's still not on the same level.
It's not on the same plane field.
So me talking about disability
just isn't very popular with the ad people.
It's unfortunate, it is what it is.
I don't like it, but just letting you know.
This video is not a bragging video because you'll see.
(laughing)
So in 2020, in terms of views, I had 732,147 views.
To me that is a pretty decent number.
Now keeping in mind that my channel now does not do as well
as it did back in like when YouTube was really blowing up,
especially 2015 and 2017,
I wanna say was were like my prime years.
So things were going really well, but even in 2020,
considering this was the start of the pandemic, okay?
And when you think about it everybody's really stressed out
during the pandemic, right?
But especially if you're a disable creator,
dealing with chronic pain and chronic fatigue,
and also if you're, I've been open about this
but living in an abusive household for all your life
that's gonna change this year,
but you look at all of that and that contributes too
and I'm owning up to the lack of uploads,
lack of consistency, 732,000 views is pretty good.
And I know a couple of those views,
came from videos that actually ended up go going viral,
viral to me anyways.
And in terms of sub growth,
again, sub growth does not matter in terms of how much
that you get paid but just for curiosity's sake,
I end the year with 91,621 subscribers,
I did have a goal to hit 92,000 by the end of 2020,
that did not happen, unfortunately.
Also did not happen for 2021,
we'll get into that in a minute.
So that was about a 3,000 subscriber growth in 2020.
Not bad, again for me, my niche considering.
And so with all of that into account,
the amount of money that I made
was $2,094 and 62 cents around there.
One thing to keep in mind though, is as YouTubers
as self-employed people, you get 1099, it's not W-2s.
So that means we get all that money
but we still have to take out a percentage
and send it to the IRS.
So yes, I made two grand from YouTube in 2020
but I didn't get to keep all of that.
So I would put away about 15 to 20%,
put it into saving's account
and then I would pay my taxes with it.
In 2021 that is when things,
2021 was a year.
It was a year for me.
It was a year or everyone mentally and physically.
I did not upload as much as I could have as I should have.
I did want to upload more consistently.
I had plans.
I had lists of videos that I wanted to do.
I wrote out outlines and scripts and things like that.
Please don't think that I was just sitting around
and doing at absolutely nothing.
It's just, once it got to the point
where I would want to film,
it would either be like my brain's just completely shut off,
my body was like, absolutely not.
Or things were going on behind the scenes
in the household with, you know who.
And it was just overall really bad and I couldn't film.
Even in that period of time
when my abuser did finally go back to Germany
but then ended up forcing herself back in September.
It was just, it was a lot,
especially doing what the other things like a car wreck.
Oh God, it was horrible.
That contributed to basically what I like to call,
(indistinct)
(laughing) this nice little downslide,
landslide of an avalanche in analytics.
In terms of views, 428,300.
So about a 300,000 loss.
I know when I just wanted to get videos done,
I just couldn't get myself to do it.
I was a wreck.
I was a wreck in 2021
and usually I would want to upload videos two times a week
and then it would turn,
and well let me see if I can at least get one a week
but then it would just turn into like one a month.
I still have videos that I wanted to put up in July
that I still have not been able to do because, but we will.
2022, we're changing things around,
it's gonna be a bit of a slow start.
But so 428,000 views
and I had a sub gain or sub profit of 139.
So we were ending the year with about 91,769 subscribers.
Not good to say to least.
And I know some people are gonna be like,
you should be grateful for that, and creators are.
But the fact it doesn't matter is,
when you're you're using YouTube as a business
or a part of your business, what you want is growth.
You don't want to go backwards.
You don't wanna be at a standstill.
You want growth and so obviously,
I was not contributing very well to the growth.
So there wasn't the consistency
that I needed in order to be able to get that growth.
But also there was a time period
where once was finally getting consistent again,
around September before.
Every single time that I would upload something.
The analytics in terms of subscribers would just go,
I'm talking double digits almost or actually double digits,
which is unfortunate.
And again, that doesn't mean anything
with how much that I got paid
because at the end of the day,
I almost made what I made in 2020 at $1,965 and 94 cents.
Again, some of that gets taken out,
put it into a saving account
that I have to pay for taxes this year.
So even though there was a bit of a drop in views
and definitely a drop in subscribers,
I still ended up making almost the same amount.
And I didn't even upload for Vlogmas very much.
That's not new,
I always say that I'm gonna prep for Vlogmas,
but Vlogmas is a stressful time
when you have to do it differently than everybody else.
One thing that I know changed with the ad revenue
is that I put in more ads than usual
and I even had to go back and make sure that ads
were actually placed because sometimes YouTube
wouldn't place ads where really they should be.
I like to put one at the very beginning
and one at the very end.
And if it's long enough, put one in the middle
and then sometimes YouTube would just be like,
yeah we're just gonna put an ad at the very end,
which does nothing for anybody
because most people don't make it to the very end
of the video and watch that,
or click on that depending on what kind of ad that it is.
So when I finally figured that out,
what I ended up doing was I would go back
to a lot of videos and check the ad placements
and be like, okay, why do I not have ads on this video?
Or why is there only one at the very end
where like that's not going to help me or anybody.
So put one at the very beginning
put one at the end or put one in the middle
and then put one at the end as well.
And then depending on how long the video is,
if it's longer than like 20 minutes,
three or four, from front to end, from beginning to end,
if it's shorter obviously you don't wanna put so many ads
because you don't want to gear the viewer away
or bore the viewer away, annoy the viewer away.
So yeah, creators, many of you are smarter
than me in this department,
so you might not need my voice,
but just in case, especially if you're newer,
and you just got AdSense onto your videos,
just keep an eye on that because I'm imagining
that even in 2020, I could have made way more
if I had known that, if I had realized that
and put ads where they actually should have been.
So yeah, all in all while the analytics
in terms of views and subscribe account were not great.
I did vaguely briefly look at my like audience retention
and watch time and that was actually pretty good.
And ad revenue itself, they were close considering,
but for 2022, this probably won't happen
in the first half of the year
because I'm trying to prep for it
but because I'm going to be making a cross country move
that's obviously going to be taking some time,
just getting things situated and set up.
But I am hoping that once that gets settled,
and it'll be a safer environment,
it'll be a more common environment.
And it'll be a separate environment
where my workspace is not my bedroom,
that'll give me a just a better environment to work with.
And I'll be able to create more content on YouTube.
I did recently quit Twitch
to try to focus more on YouTube,
but thankfully,
I am not just running on YouTube AdSense alone.
That would be absolutely silly of me.
That would be absolutely silly of anyone,
please, please please do not try to rely on YouTube.
AdSense alone, Google AdSense alone,
unless you do make a good amount, which some YouTuber do.
So if you do good for you and I mean that genuinely
but if you're like me, it's just not gonna cut it.
So thankfully I do have a Patreon.
If you don't know what I do on Patreon,
I've had it for years right now,
the tiers have been changed,
the perks have been changed.
They change every once in a while.
Right now you have newsletters,
you don't get access to videos early,
because considering that I have to get the captions
and stuff like that it just doesn't work as easily.
You do get, like, if I have an outline written out
or script written out, things like that, YouTube thumbnails
that I like to sprinkle in here and there,
you do get some little early access to the content,
but also if I have a poll like say,
Hey what video do you want me to review for?
Or what movie do you want me to review for film, "Friday,"
things like that or which comes first
or the poll, things like that.
So you get a little bit of like creative privilege
was just the name of that tier actually.
If something comes up first, it's because of you.
And also I started doing fiction writing again,
for the first time in like a decade,
I do write articles and stuff
in terms of like accessibility and stuff.
I also write for a local newspaper here
from time to time, Queen City Nerve.
So I do make money off of that as well.
But some of the stuff that doesn't seem fitting
for the local newspaper, we put up on my Patreon,
but I decided I would try to get back
into little fiction writing
because sometimes that's just easier.
You could just make stuff up
and it doesn't have to be right all the time.
Though, like just having the creative freedom,
although complicated and hard to use your imagination.
At least for me,
I thought it was a nice little thing
to bring back into my life
and I hope those you view that are pledged to that,
are doing that.
So I'm not only relying on AdSense
but I also have a corporate job.
Can I call it a corporate job as if it's nonprofit?
I like to call it a corporate job,
'cause it sounds the fancy.
So I do have like a little bit of a contract at ASL
or whatever technical term you wanna use.
And so that's helping me out a lot.
And of course I do get brand deals,
I have signed with a talent agency last year.
You don't know how low you've been low balling yourself
until you get managers that know what they're doing.
And they yell at you nicely, of course nicely.
But they yell at you for being like,
why were you charging this tiny amount
when we can give you this much?
And so that's been helping out a lot.
Know your worth when you're doing the deals,
if you can get someone to help you do that,
trust me it changed it everything for me
in the last couple of months financially like, oh my God.
Yeah, hopefully that settles some curiosity a little bit.
And next year we'll see how things go.
I would definitely like to improve in B 2020s in analytics.
I know that's going to require work for me
but I'm ready to get that going.
It's been a process.
And once we are out of A and onto to point B
then we can really make that happen,
and I'm very hopeful and I'm keeping positive about that.
If you made it to the end of this video.
Thank you very much.
Again, subscribe, if you haven't
and you would like to see more videos from me
if you would like more in exclusive content,
consider pledging to my Patreon.
I appreciate you being here.
Thank you.
And I will see you later.
Bye.
(upbeat music)