Editorial Addition (Jan. 2010)…. here’s a newer post on how much YouTube partners make. Since this post gets so many daily views via search engines, let me answer your question simply. It’s a fraction of a fraction of a penny per view. It’s not enough to cover the mortgage for most, and it’s certainly not yet the reported $2.50 per 1,000 views. It’s often far less, and varies greatly on whether the views have InVideo ads (YouTube charges $25 per thousand and shares that with creators) or the flat square ads (cost far less for advertisers, and doesn’t pay creators). Although I can’t reveal my income, I can tell you it’s highly influenced by my top 5-10 videos, which get millions of views per month (as opposed to the new ones). That said, if you get millions and millions of views per month and live cheap, you could quit your job.
YouTube’s Fred was rumored to be making seven-figures, but Google clarified that as six figures. But if you take his 350,000,000 views and multiply it by a conservative $1 per 1,000 views…. you’re talking $350,000.00. I’m making more on YouTube than I made in my first job out of school, but with four kids and a lot of debt, it’s not enough for me to pull a Sxephil, Shaycarl, or Michael Buckley and rely on it as a primary income source.
Oh how’s THAT for a blog title, when you’ve signed a confidentiality document that precludes you from talking about your revenue as a YouTube partner?! Don’t worry, YouTube. I’m not breaking rank. But I’m very interested in what people THINK partners are making.
Before YouTube, I’ve always been transparent about my revenue related to online video. I feel that’s part of my role on this blog… to give creators a realistic sense of what they can make in online video (beyond food). Alas, YouTube prohibits it for reasons that aren’t quite clear to me — are there tiers? If compensation varies, then I can be sure I’m at the bottom based on my complete lack of negotiation skills.
I do believe that some prominent YouTube partners are beginning to earn what amounts to a full-time job through the site. But I also understand that some of the early Partner contracts are up for renewal about now.
- Could some be overstating their earnings? Yes. But some partners are doing $10K a month, especially those that already had an audience and moved them to YouTube. And some creators get millions of views consistently.
- When some say they’ve quit their day jobs, is that because their costs are so low that even a couple grand a month can sustain them? Maybe.
- Could the earnings be based on a point of time where, say, they had a video featured that was monetized? Sure.
While there’s no question that many could still earn more money per hour doing something else (like consulting or bartending), I am happier with my income from YouTube than what I was making from YouTube before I became a partner (zero). And while I’m not sure whether the per-view profit is as strong as Revver’s and Metacafe’s (I don’t even have access to any such metrics), I’m not getting any significant views on those sites anymore. So YouTube is far outperforming them.
My advice remains: if you’re looking to get rich, create a bunch of mortgage blogs and sell adsense. Or go into financial services or recruiting like the former co-worker that just called me to “network.”
But if you love video and the community around it, then it’s nice to get an income subsidy that helps you justify the time commitment to yourself, wife and family. I remain optimistic that more of the top creators of YouTube will be able to quit their day jobs, but that’s partially because amateurs will slowly get trumped by the semi pros (whose day job is performing or video creation). It’s already happening. While the amateur vloggers are holding top positions, we’re seeing more semi-professional content done by comedy troups, bands or known offline celebrities.
Now here’s the purpose of my post. I’m curious what people THINK partners make. I can tell from a lot of comments that people WAY over estimate what creators make: “You get paid for this shit?” “You’re asking us for ideas? You’re the one who gets paid.” I can’t participate in this thread, but it will be fun to watch.
And if you’re not a Partner yet, don’t let it upset you unless you have hundreds of thousands of monthly views. Grow the audience and reapply later. Even if YT did make you a partner, it’s not worth it unless you have some views. Take it from a guy that tried Google ads on his blog for a while, and quickly realized that it wasn’t worth the cosmetic interference.
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“Grow the audience and reapply later”……..why waste your time with that nonsense? VUME(see link) pays EVERY member for EVERY hit on your videos AND photos! whether u have 1 video or 1000! (A small catch though,u have to provide most of the traffic) Btw,that wasnt me who posted the first comment,that was dan,im steve
I get the impression that some of the people who were made partners in the first go-round got some pretty nice deals, but that now that things are up for renegotiation and youtube has a more accurate picture of the financial viability and worth of the program, some of those great deals are likely to be substantially reduced.
For me, it ain’t about the money. It’s all about my ego. Yup. I am truly that shallow and self-absorbed. And I wish you’d stop making blog posts inspired by my comments. I mean, it’s starting to get embarrassing. I’m not surprised that you’d want to mooch off of my brilliant sense of humor, but really. It’s like you’re stalking me.
I think that more than becoming a partner, I just want to be featured. What does it take?? WHAT DOES IT TAKE?? AGGGGGG!!
I think you don’t make anywhere near enough to pay off your credit card debt. I think you spend more than you make. I had a part-time job once when my kids were little working at a fabric store. I love crafts and sewing and I think I spent more than I made at the store, but it was fun and I didn’t care. Also, it got me out of the house a couple of nights a week. Ask any mom of young kids and they’ll tell you they’d pay to get a night out once and awhile.
dan feh – steve has the same crap every he they post- i don’t even bother any more – scram!
sukatra: get out! it’s my posts he’s sucking the brilliance from.
I created an account with nothing on it and applied for youtube partners just to see what would happen.
btw – tubemongrel I think may be over estimating their numbers- I started a channel, upload a few videos on it, removed them after a few weeks and tubemongrel still says I am getting hits. so maybe someone can explain that.
youtube partners – my guess renetto gets the most.
T#1 – 30k to 50k –
T#2 – 25k
T#3 – 10k
I think those numbers will change next time round and you’ll soon see more outrageous videos to boost viewer ship.
speaking of – I think participation is a big key here – if you can draw more people in with simple tasks they can throw together fast, along with silly give-a-ways I think ratings will boost.
outside subject sexual innuendos or pics (always a guarantee hit) any subject that is topical, everyman or technical along with any of the following words in the title: cats, baby, any popular TV shows or personality of the day.
I like, Cats Eat Paris Hilton’s Baby – that’s got potential viral written all over it! might make a good response video too. photoshop fun!
so which partner is going to anonymously put the pay scale up on a web site? Could be one of those, I’m not denying. it sort of non-contract binding questions. Still surprised it’s not floating someone on the net, I mean if youtube can keep partners a secret for so long maybe 911 was an inside job
I really should read these things before I submit them
jischinger
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Don’t read your posts before you hit the enter button – they’re hilarious!!
I know how much partners make, but I’m not going to tell anybody so people can hate me, watch my videos so they can tell me they hate me and that I suck, get millions of views, become a partner, and profit.
Hey Nalts,
I have some questions about the history of video blogging and the history of Nalts (you).
Did the guys who made YouTube intend for it to be used as a video blogging site?
Have you ever been to a YouTube gathering?
What do you think are the genre antecedents to video blogging? Do you think it came out of reality TV?
Can you write a post where you watch your first two videos and then your last two videos and reflect on how your style has changed and why?
Where do you live?
Do you use StickAm? I tried to use it but I don’t understand how to do it.
OK!
Jenna
YouTube ID: jennafeindel
ps. I think YouTube partners make $500 a year.
Here’s what doesn’t seem to make sense – YT is rather reluctant to admit that the community is comprised of members that greatly contribute on a consistent basis traffic to the site. Yet the partnership program exits partly as a means of enticing creators to stay loyal to YT and not jump ship to another site like Revver or MetaCafe. If you don’t need the partners or the community, why even spend the time on any of it?
Also interesting to note, sxephil and whatthebuck both spend a lot of time plugging their own websites (and i’m sure they get a lot of traffic), and I notice they don’t use YT embeds on their sites.
I had one partner tell me it was “pennies”, so I’m guessing unless you get around a million views, it’s going to take a long time to accumulate that US$100 (or whatever the threshold is) for them to actually send out a cheque.
Psychomelody: fine! I’m not going to watch you now or ever again – however, if you tell me maybe, just maybe I’ll watch.
sukatra: you’re so easy!
Jenna: all of us here have (fill in the blank) that anyone of us could answer those question for him.
sukatra or anyone else want to fill in the blank?
I heard the partners signed 30 million dollar a year contracts. That doesn’t count endorsements. Was I given bogus info?
jischinger: Haha! You can’t fool me! You wouldn’t watch my videos either way!
About $800 per million views. Original partners make a bit more than that. What surprises me is how varied the deals are with the “big” names. There’s about 6-8 Partners that I know have let the cat out of the bag, and none of their deals are identical.
I’m interested in what the “Platinum Partnership” entails. Damon Wayans claimed Google guaranteed him 60 million impressions for his channel, which made me wonder how Google plans to back up that promise.
Maybe with some kind of tool for searching the internet. An “engine” if you will.
Whatever the Tier One income level is, those who receive it seem desperate, DESPERATE I say (sell out their own father with incest allegations desperate), to increase it.
I just don’t get why Youtube doesn’t open up ‘Adcents’ qualifications to everyone. 98 percent of them will never ever ever in this lifetime meet the $100 threshhold for payment so Youtube keeps all that ad income.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again until it’s no longer true: I’ve tried all of the revenue-sharing sites. ALL of them. Each and every %$^&# one of them, and so far, only Revver has actually paid me. Oh and that $5 Motion.tv gave me to STOP posting videos to their site. Yeah. So Revver and Motion.tv. That’s it.
Oops. Viewbug. How could I forget Viewbug. My videos have won (and been paid) $45 on Viewbug recently. I think out of pity, but I’ll take it.
Oh, and I made a couple of thousand on non-revenue-sharing websites. But that’s off topic.
Apparently my videos exposing the partnership “buzzed” a nerve in the halls of “san Demis”. Chad called me and is now paying me 5000 a month, this is my last week on the regular job. Oh wait, did i just violate my nondisclosure agreement? he asked me who else deserved that kind of money i could only think of nutcheese..uhgm uhm uhm i meant Nalts. i allways get those two confused. its the renetto style glasses i guess.
All I need is $5 to get marquisdejolie to stop posting? Sounds like a deal!
You can access my PayPal account via this post link, Matt.
I’m in the YouTube partnership, were paid fairly a small amount.
I get millions of views and earn about $250 a month ^_^ It should be more though!
Mririan,
you should be getting that pretty face on other sharing sites, like revver. youtube is not the only paying site, but Nalts can tell you that or simply do a search for charlestrippy on google and find the sites he is on. i am sure you can have the same impact on other sites as you do on yotube.
Never be affraid to explore the possibilities!
they get paid $2.50 per 1,000 views.
wonder if that was the real Mririan???
There’s a bunch of fake Mririans running around???
Wether it’s Mririan or not, the $250 a month doesn’t sound right. Do the math. If she gets paid $2.5 per 1000 views, and averages 1 million views per month (per video). So that comes to $2.5 x 1000 = $2,500 PER VIDEO! Her latest video close to 500,000 views and it’s only been out 1 friggen week – which translates to $1,250 just for that 1 week. Not bad for staring at a webcam for about a minute.
Yeah, MY Partnership math isn’t working lately, either. I doubt if folks are getting $2.50 per thousand views on YT these days. More like 2.5 CENTS per thousand views. Or less. Text ads pay nowhere near what InVideo ads paid.
For 1M views at 2.5 cents / 1000 only comes to a measly $25 per 1M views. If that’s the case, YT is severly cashing in on it’s so-called “partners” .
I feel used.
My static ecom site gets aprox 1,000 hits a month, yet produces close to $9-10K / month in revenue. These are highly targeted hits, with people willing to spend though.
I can’t believe you until you post a link.
nalts…how much do YOU get paid? LOL.
2 cents a view and 15 cents a comment
I just partnered with youtube tonight and i’m awaiting their response..i have several videos that i have shot and edited and i have a plan in mind to make a video go viral, very hard to do but not impossible..good luck to anyone out there thinking about making it big !!it’s a dog eat dog world !
^ If you figure out that making a video go viral thing, Daddy B, I’ll send you a dollar to share it with me.
I remember seeing a video on youtube posted by soulja boy… It said that he got payed 15 cents for ever comment, and 2 cents for every view his videos got….
That video has been removed.
Soulja boy must’ve been pulling your leg. YouTube doesn’t pay for comments. Why would they?
Actually i saw the video today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EgmXXjNcWk&feature=related
Soulja boy vid JustinTC was talking about
i have heard they do pay for both views and comments. i’ve heard it’s $2.50 per 1000 views. i can think of one partner who has asked for both views and comments because it makes money but he didn’t say how much. He went on to say that even if he could tell us he wouldn’t which just sounded arrogant. Anyway he’s started to annoy me and I might unsubscribe.
Most partners are worth more than they make tho. He is not one of them.
i was thinking about this the other day, and i guessed that it was something like two and a half mills ($0.00.25) per hit. that turns out to be the same as the $2.50/1000 hits that several other people suggested
I believe youtube partners should get paid a lot, i mean the website is one of the richest in the world, a lot of that money should go to the people who are making people go to that website.
^ Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for damned near free, Peter?
Something that kinda stood out for me was Philip DeFranco (sxephil) was studying medicine (or something similar – i think), and yet near the end of his course he dropped out to make more videos… It makes it seem like me may be getting more income from YouTube than from being a doctor – which is insanely high.
Maybe he just couldn’t cut med school, Luke.
@#41 Peter: “i mean the website is one of the richest in the world,”
Your’re way off. They are losing sh*tloads of money each month because their costs are way higher that the ad revenue they are earning. So actually they shouldn’t pay anyone who posts videos on the site (from a financial point of view) These YouTube guys got really lucky to be aquired by google otherwise http://www.youtube.com would now be 404 – file not found.
^ Go to Google Adsense. Any income is posted monthly.
$20 per 5000 views. Comments payout $.02 per comment over 1000. It’s posted in the YouTube help section – don’t understand why everyone thinks it’s such a mystery.
Magibon videos now average 150,000 views, not 1 million. She’s putting out 3 videos per month and is getting paid $20 per 5000 views.
So, that equates to 20*30*3 = $1,800 per month
Japan is expensive. I doubt Youtube income is her only source. Also, I doubt she’s paying rent for housing when she has tons of fanboys in Japan who would be willing to give her free room and board in exchange for uhhm.. other benefits (if you know what I mean)
can you link to the $20/5000 hits in the YouTube help section? I cannot find it there. Trying to decide whether it’s worth reediting all my videos to get rid of copyrighted music.
i’ve been a youtube partner for around eight months, i get over a million views (average 1,200,000) on most of my videos and the money i have earned so far is a staggering….$30.16!
pfft. it doesn’t make sense. i have contacted google about this, but i never get a reply.
i think they pay out the big companies differently.