Today, let’s talk about something that everyone always wants to know – how much money do you make on YouTube? Now, I know many people have done this topic before. There are plenty of videos on YouTube about how much money you can make with the platform. Even I’ve done one! If you want to check it out, head over to my YouTube channel, DayJobHacks and watch my video How Much Money Do You Make on YouTube.
So today I’m going to share with you my process for how I make roughly two thousand dollars a month with around three thousand subscribers. I’m going to show you real numbers. There’s no magic behind this; only dedication and hard work.
If you’re wondering how much money YouTubers earn, this article will help guide you and show you the exact numbers, the metrics, everything you need to know.
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DayJobHacks YouTube Channel
I created DayJobHacks YouTube channel a little over a year ago. I started producing videos in early winter of 2019. We are now in the summer of 2020. I still only have roughly three thousand subscribers, which is a start but nothing miraculous.
All I’ve been doing is producing two videos a week for a year straight. I committed to this project as part of a training program inside PowerhouseAffiliate.com where I was showing what results you get by just being consistent with creating content.
Let’s get into the nitty gritty of how I monetize my YouTube channel. If you’re thinking about building a channel yourself, then this is something that you need to consider as you continue to build your business online.
Today DayJobHacks currently has 3,000 subscribers. I’ve been consistently doing 1-2 videos per week. I’ve never actually gone over that average. I’m currently at 98 videos and I’m going to show you the revenue now and how I decided to monetize the videos.
When you start your YouTube channel, you won’t get any money until you reach a certain level of popularity. You need to have 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours before you qualify for the YouTube monetization program. After that, every time somebody watches your videos, they see an ad if you monetize them and you get paid.
You get paid based on an average per 1000 views, like a CPM.
In this case, I’m making roughly $39 CPM on this channel. It’s important to note that every channel has a different rate based on what topic you choose. If you’re going into a highly competitive niche, such as pets or insurance, that has a lot of competition, then you’ll probably make more money from your YouTube channel than if you’re going into a broad topic about nothing.
There are many YouTubers out there with millions of followers and millions of views, but they’re maybe only making a dollar CPM. Why? It depends on how narrowly focussed your niche is. In this case, my niche is affiliate marketing, making money online, buying and selling traffic online, and getting visitors to your website. That is the reason why my CPM is high is because this is a highly competitive niche.
You can see in the screenshot my revenue for the month. $313 U.S. dollars based simply on people watching the YouTube videos. The really important thing to note is that the graph is constantly going up. That’s a good sign. The more videos and more consistency you have on your channel, the more your graph is going to continue on the upward trend.
A Word About Passive Income
You hear people talking a lot about passive income, the idea that you can generate income without working. That’s the holy grail of online business.
Let me be clear… This is not passive income.
If I was to stop making videos today, I would continue to make some money, but my graph would start to go downward. The momentum I’ve built over the years would disappear. YouTube’s algorithm will start delivering my videos less until I don’t exist anymore.
So, this is not passive income. You need to maintain this train. If you publish 100 videos and you’re consistently publishing 1-2 high-quality videos each week, then you will maintain that subscriber growth and your graph will continue to trend upward.
Diversify
If you’re only relying on YouTube revenue, this is what you can expect in a highly competitive niche. But if you’re serious about building a thriving online business you will want to diversify your income by creating your own products and selling them and/or affiliate products through your YouTube channel.
That is precisely what I do inside my videos.
None of my videos are just blatantly affiliate promotions, but every so often I will drop an affiliate link in the descriptions, or I will link to a training program that I’ve created in my particular niche. So, for example, if you’re going into a particular niche that you are interested in, and you have a skill in, you should consider building your own course or building a product. Then you can monetize your YouTube traffic by including links for your subscribers to follow.
I’m going to show you precisely how much money you could make by doing that. In addition to the $313 just from YouTube, you can see in my Google Analytics, that I’m also promoting my own product. PowerhouseAffiliate is a training platform and a community for affiliate marketers. It generated $1500 in revenue from YouTube alone.
As you can see, that is the drastic increase from the three hundred dollars that I got from YouTube. This brings me up to roughly $1800 a month simply from diversifying my income. So that is the second piece, which is to either create your own products or sell affiliate products related to your niche.
No matter the niche that you’re going into, you are sure to find a related affiliate product to promote. You can check out ClickBank, which has many products that you can sell that aren’t yours, but you still earn a commission every time you refer them.
Or you can use a system like I’ve done. I’ve set a template inside of my YouTube channel settings, so every single video has a section where it lists the tools I use. Here is a screenshot of one of the descriptions from a YouTube video on my channel.
When people click those links, it becomes part of my affiliate earnings. If somebody clicks a link and buys something, they’re supporting my channel. They’re getting a great product because I use these on a daily basis but at the same time, I’m earning commission. It’s a win-win for everyone.
For example, let’s look at Bluehost.com. This is a very newbie friendly hosting platform allowing people to build Websites online.
Part of my training in the YouTube channel talks about building websites, and I often recommend the hosting company Bluehost. Here’s an example for last month. 42 clicks from YouTube. Nothing magical going on here, but at the same time, I earned $130 dollars in addition to the $313 from YouTube and the $1500 in my own product sales.
That brings me closer to the $2000 mark with still only 3000 subscribers.
And then if you look at Adplexity. This is another one of the tools in June that had one sale. Nothing miraculous here either. $75 there in affiliate revenue.
Next we have OptimizePress. I recommend this tool for landing pages and squeeze pages. The revenue was $40 for the month. Sure, it doesn’t sound like much, but all these little things add up over time
Real YouTube-Generated Income Results – June 2020
| YouTube | $313 |
| PowerhouseAffiliate.com | $1500 |
| Bluehost | $130 |
| AdPlexity | $75 |
| OptimizePress | $40 |
| TOTAL | $2058 |
So, imagine if I had 30,000 subscribers, and was still producing really high-quality content on YouTube. You can expect that these numbers would be 10 greater, because of the numbers and the metrics.
This is this is where you need to consider going. If you’re building a YouTube channel, you need to start monetizing your channel, not just with the YouTube monetization program. If YouTube ever changes their policies, if anything happens and all your videos are gone, you’ll lose all that revenue.
That’s a huge hit, but if you’ve diversified properly, you’re still going to have your backend systems in place and your product that you own. You’re actually, in fact, building your own business.
Many YouTube channels are collecting leads in their videos. So, I also do that in all of my videos. If you look at the videos on my channel, you can see many of my videos are actually “how to’s” in my niche.
Doesn’t matter what niche you’re in. If you’re into fishing, you can start talking about how to catch salmon in June. You can start talking about the fishing rod you’re using, or the lures you buy. Then you can start selling those through an Amazon affiliate program or other affiliate programs out there.
I’m doing affiliate marketing because I have an expertise in affiliate marketing.
I’ve been doing it since 2002 and made a lot of money doing it. So as you can see, many of my videos talk about that. They provide people with real true value, but at the same time, occasionally dropping some information on where they can get the tools that I use to have such success in my niche.
You can see how attainable this level of success on YouTube is for anyone who wants to put the time and effort into it. You can potentially earn $2000/month or more just by doing this type of project.
I committed to this over a year ago. All I did was consistently do 2 videos/week. Imagine if I had published 4 videos/week. I probably would be making more than double the amount of money I’m making or even more because it’s a snowball effect.
Final Thoughts
YouTube has long been an exceptional platform for creators to promote their brand. It costs nothing to set up an account, and with a lot of hard work, and consistently high-quality content, many YouTubers have proven that you can, in fact, generate a decent income. The more consistency you have and the better you get at producing videos that people are searching for, the more free traffic you will get from Google, and the more revenue you will generate.
What are your thoughts on YouTube as a revenue generator? Do you make money from YouTube, either from the videos directly, or by promoting your own, or affiliate, products? Leave a comment below and let us know!
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