Creators on YouTube don’t need hundreds of thousands of subscribers to start earning money or to turn the gig into a lucrative side hustle.
A creator must be a member of the YouTube Partner Program to qualify for the platform’s monetization features. To start earning money directly from YouTube, creators must meet a threshold of 500 subscribers, three public uploads in the last 90 days, and either 3,000 watch hours in the past year or 3 million YouTube shorts views in the past 90 days. Once accepted, eligible creators can earn money from features such as channel memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers, Super Thanks, and the ability to promote their products with YouTube Shopping.
For AdSense, to start earning money from YouTube, creators must have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past year. That qualifies them to get a split of the ad revenue that comes from their videos.
In 2023, in place of the shorts fund, YouTube also began sharing revenue from shorts ads with creators.
Amanda Wan, who had 8,500 YouTube subscribers when she spoke with Business Insider, said she filmed longer videos — between 10- to 15-minutes long — to help reach the required watch hours.
Check out how much money 28 YouTubers make per month
The most common way creators earn money directly from YouTube is through Google-placed ads
Even smaller creators can cash in. Jen Lauren, a creator who had 5,000 subscribers on YouTube when she spoke with BI, said that in one month, her channel made $349 from ads. (Read more about how Lauren makes money as a nano influencer.)
YouTube creator Shelby Church told BI that she likes to include four ads on a single video that’s over 10 minutes long, which helps increase her monthly revenue. (Here’s how much she made from a video with 1 million views.)
Some of the different types of ads you can include in your YouTube video are:
- Display ads, which appear on the upper right side of your video above the video suggestions list.
- Overlay ads, which appear as a banner within the lower portion of your video.
- Bumper ads, are non-skippable ads that must be watched by a viewer before your video. These ads last six seconds or fewer.
- Sponsored cards, which display relevant video content on the right side of your video.
- Mid-roll ads, which can be placed in videos over 10 minutes long. They can be both skippable and non-skippable ads. A creator can decide whether they want mid-roll ads to be auto-generated by YouTube or manually placed.
Once those ads start earning money, the creator will receive a check in the mail from YouTube after they have earned at least $100.
“I think my first paycheck was like $124,” said Zoe Pritchard, who had 23,000 subscribers when she spoke with BI. “I was so excited. I went and bought a ring light with it.”
Creators who earn money on YouTube must also keep in mind that they will need to pay taxes on any income they make from the platform.
Jen Lauren
So, how much money do creators make on YouTube?
For every 1,000 ad views, advertisers pay a certain rate to YouTube (CPM). For long-form videos, YouTube takes 45%, and the creator gets the rest. YouTube’s central monetization metric is called revenue per mille (RPM), which shows how much revenue a creator earns per every 1,000 views after YouTube’s cut. Some subjects, like personal finance, can boost a creator’s ad rate by attracting a lucrative audience.
Check out how much money 8 YouTubers make per 1,000 views
For shorts payments, YouTube first pools revenue from ads on shorts and then pays an undisclosed amount to record labels for music licensing, and creators receive 45% of the remaining money based on their percentage of the total shorts views on the platform.
BI spoke with six creators about how much they were paid for shorts in the first month of ad-revenue sharing.
Here’s how much those 6 YouTubers made in the first month of the shorts monetization program
Overall, BI has spoken with dozens of YouTube creators, from under 5,000 subscribers to over 9 million, about how much money they make.
Here’s our coverage of how much YouTuber creators earn monthly:
- Nas Daily, an education creator with 9 million subscribers
- Ali Abdaal, a productivity and entrepreneurship creator with 3.6 million subscribers
- Tiffany Ma, a lifestyle creator with 1.8 million subscribers
- Andrei Jikh has 1.7 million subscribers and films videos about cryptocurrency
- Nate O’Brien, a personal-finance creator with 1 million subscribers
- Manny Ortiz, a photography creator with 663,000 subscribers
- Kelly Stamps, a minimalism-lifestyle creator with 600,000 subscribers
- Bloo, a VTube channel with 504,000 subscribers
- Charlie Chang, a personal-finance creator with 350,000 subscribers
- Joshua Mayo, a personal-finance creator with 270,000 subscribers
- Charli Prangley, a web and graphic design creator with 200,000 subscribers
- Erin Winters, a business creator with 200,000 subscribers
- SemideCoco, an ASMR creator with 150,000 subscribers
- Levi Hildebrand, a zero-waste creator with 125,000 subscribers
- Kelsey Rodriguez, a YouTube painter with 100,000 subscribers
- Sarah Lavender, an ASMR creator with 100,000 subscribers
- Chloe Tan, a college life creator with 80,000 subscribers
- Kelly Anne Smith, a personal-finance creator with 50,000 subscribers
- Macy Schmidt, a lifestyle creator with 50,000 subscribers
- Marissa Lyda, personal-finance creator with 50,000 subscribers
- Erica Boucher, a creator with a DIY candle-making channel with 31,000 subscribers
- Aisha Beau Frisbey, a lifestyle creator with 30,000 subscribers
- Jake Tilk, an entrepreneurship YouTuber with 18,000 subscribers
- Meghan Pruitt, a college influencer with 6,800 subscribers
- Jen Lauren, a nano influencer with 5,000 subscribers
This story has been updated to include new details and coverage.
