How To Make Money On YouTube (The REAL Numbers)

Everyone always asks the same damn question about YouTube. How much does it pay? How do you make money on YouTube? And that question is exactly why most creators are broke. You see, YouTube doesn't pay you. YouTube is just a traffic source. What actually pays you is what you build on top of that traffic. And nobody talks about this because it's a lot easier to make a thumbnail that says, "I made $47,000 from YouTube." And then show you the AdSense screenshot, which I can by the way. I've made well over $400,000 in a single year from YouTube. So, last year I made I think $450,000. This year I made around $333,000. And because most of the people think that's how you make money from YouTube, those videos do really well. But that is not how money actually works on YouTube. So, that's what we're going to be doing today. I'm going to be showing you the real numbers that YouTube actually pays at every level with every different type of channel. And with all the different monetization methods as well. And also, why AdSense is honestly the least interesting part of this whole equation. And the metric that I use that explains why some creators make literally 1,000 times more per view than others making similar types of content. And I'm even going to show you an exact example of someone in the same niche, same views, making the same type of content, making 26 times more money. And by the end of this, you're going to understand exactly how YouTube money actually works. And you're going to have a pretty clear picture of what you should realistically be making if you do it the right way. So, let's jump into it right now. Okay, so first let's break down the actual reality and the actual numbers behind how YouTube works. So, right now, or at least in the last report that they put out, there's about 69 million YouTubers. Okay? So, about 69 million YouTubers. And there are about 3 million monetized channels. This means that they are partners of YouTube, meaning the ads that pop up on the channels, when those ads up, the monetized partner actually gets a percentage of it. Right now, they're giving about 55%. My channel is monetized. I have other channels that are monetized, and getting monetized, generally speaking, I think is a great idea. Because the way I think about it is you're getting paid to promote your products and services, which is great. But if you look at the numbers here, right? 69 million and then 3 million monetized, that means only about 4.3% of active users or active creators are monetized. That's a pretty low amount of people. And keep in mind, when it comes to being monetized, that just just means you have 1,000 subs and 4,000 hours of watch time. So, it's a pretty low bar to get monetized. So, only 4.3% of creators are monetized. With that being said, there's probably a good amount of people that just don't even care about getting monetized. And there's also probably a good amount of channels that didn't meet the criteria to be a YouTube partner, but they're still making money anyways. But even with all of that, you could still maybe say that, you know, 10% of creators are monetized or could be monetized. That's a pretty low amount. And then, let's also keep in mind that just because you're monetized and you have a thousand subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, that does not mean you're making a full-time income. I would estimate that only about 1% of creators are making a full-time income just from AdSense alone. That is a very small percentage. That means 99% of creators are not making a full-time income from ads alone. So, another way of saying this is that if you're relying on AdSense only to make money on YouTube, statistically speaking, there's probably a 99% chance that you're not going to be able to make a full-time income. And let's also come at this from a different perspective. There's about 8 billion people in the world, right? So, about 8 billion people. And YouTube already has about 2 billion monthly active users or MAU. So, that means already about 25% of the world's population is watching YouTube on a monthly basis. And one key thing to kind of realize here is pretty much everybody who's watching YouTube likely falls into the category of people that actually have money because they have a computer, they have got an internet connection, and so advertisers are willing to actually advertise to those people. So, even if we had the other 6 billion people watching YouTube, it wouldn't actually increase the advertisers money that much. Additionally, almost everybody in first-world countries and first-world English-speaking countries are already watching YouTube. So, another way of saying that is they've pretty much maxed out the amount of people uh that can watch YouTube. So, you're YouTube and you want to make more money, so how can you make more money? Well, you can get those people to watch more content. But, the problem is many different studies have shown that people are already watching like 10-plus hours of content per day. Now, there's a lot of different numbers out there. You know, some say 8 hours a day, some say like 11 hours a day, but basically people are watching content or consuming content on their phone or their computer or their TV screen or their tablet, etc. almost all day long. So, there's really not that much more time that you can squeeze out of that. Again, sure, you could get a few more people, you could get a few more hours here, just like you could, you know, go from 2 billion to 4 billion or 8 billion, whatever, but you're not going to 10x the company. That's what YouTube wants to do. They want to make 10 times more money. So, people are already consuming 10 hours plus per day of content. So, if you're YouTube, you can't really get that many more people. You can't really cause them to consume more content because at some point they have to, you know, sleep and work and hopefully spend time with their family and friends. So, how you going to make more money? Well, it's pretty obvious. You got to make more money per person. Okay? That's how you do it. You make more money per person. And that's why you've seen YouTube launching all of these initiatives lately. They've got Brand Connect, which basically hooks you up with sponsorships. They're allowing people to buy physical products right on the platform. They started memberships so that people can actually pay to get extra content from you, etc., etc. They are doing their best to make more money per person on the platform. And so if all the signals are pointing towards not trying to get more views and instead trying to get the right views that you can actually monetize better, then why is it that almost everybody is obsessed with getting more views? That is clearly not the thing that's going to make you more money. What's happening, guys? Quick break. This week we are hosting a free one-time live workshop. And I want you to join me at my apartment here, and we'll be doing a live training. And it's called how to finally make money from youtube.com in 2026. Now, if you're watching this in the future, check the link in the description and pin comment below to see if we're still doing the training. You know, it's a limited time, but we may still be doing it. So definitely check that link. Uh if not, we'll have some other free training for you. So click the link anyways. And for everyone who shows up live, we're giving away the newest version of the Niche Validator Pro that's going to help you find your niche or help you dial in your niche if you already have one. Uh but yeah, you will be able to interact directly with me. I'm going to be answering questions on how you can grow a YouTube channel just like I did. I'm going to be telling my backstory about exactly how I did it, giving details that I don't give anywhere else, and basically telling my story and telling you guys exactly how you can do it as well. So if that's something that's interested to you, you know of people have messaged me all the time about growing on YouTube, growing their personal brand, basically starting an online business, which I think YouTube actually pairs with literally any other online business you want to start, and I show you exactly how that works. So again, click the link in the description below, uh attend the online training. It's just 1 hour. It'll be the most valuable hour that you spend this entire year. So don't miss out on it. Click that link, and I'll see you there. So let's go ahead and go over what you should be doing instead, and let's really break down the numbers behind all of the different ways that you can make money on YouTube. Because you have less than a 1% chance of making a full-time income just from AdSense alone. However, with that same channel that's not making a full-time income from AdSense, you could be making significantly more from other monetization methods. Just like my client Carla for instance, who reported that she closed a hundred thousand plus dollar contract from a channel with 1.5 thousand subscribers that gets like a hundred or two hundred views per video. So, let's break down the numbers and talk about how this actually works. If you have a mass market entertainment channel, okay? So, mass market entertainment channel, the AdSense from that is probably going to be like one to three dollars, okay? Per 1,000 views, all right? So, this is per 1,000 views. This is also known as CPM or RPM. But basically, the money that you get is one to three dollars per 1,000 views. If you have a mass market educational channel, the money you're going to make per 1,000 views is probably somewhere around five to ten dollars. And this is just from AdSense alone, right? Then, if you have niche educational content, you might make something like, you know, ten to thirty dollars per 1,000 views cuz you're really serving like a very niche audience and advertisers might want to get in front of that audience even though it doesn't get that many views. Now, let's say that you start monetizing from affiliate or sponsorship or low ticket products or medium ticket products or, you know, anything between zero and three thousand dollars. This could also be like a group membership. This could be SaaS. There's many different things this could be. With mass market entertainment content, you might make somewhere between three and ten dollars per 1,000 views on average. If you're really good, you might be able to get a little bit higher than that, but that's going to be what it is on average. With mass market educational content, you'll probably make anywhere between ten and thirty dollars per 1,000 views from all of these different monetization methods on average. Now, if you are very skilled, you can make more than this. I have seen people who are quite skilled, you know, making this range where it's like $30 to $100, even a little bit over $100 in some cases. But, you really do run into a wall where you just simply cannot make more than that at a certain point. And if you make niche educational content and you sell some of these, in many cases, you might be able to make somewhere between, you know, $30 to $100 per 1,000 views. This is typically what I see. Now, by the way, you can definitely get higher than these numbers if you work with an expert on monetization. So, a lot of my clients and a lot of my students, people in my community, are able to get much higher than this. But again, this is just the averages of the typical of what I see. Then, when it comes to high-ticket products and mass market entertainment content, to be completely honest, like for the most part, it just doesn't work. Because when you make entertainment content, people don't really see you as an authority. And so, therefore, it's really difficult to sell a high-ticket product. Now, high-ticket product is anything over $3,000. Some people would say it's anything over, you know, $1,000 or $2,000, or whatever. I'm going to say anything over $3,000. So, this could be a realtor. If you're selling houses, obviously, you'd be selling a high-ticket product. This could be someone who is doing a service. So, if you're a law firm or a cosmetic dentistry, this could also be like an online business, some sort of online consulting service, or a consultancy, or a coaching program, or an agency, et cetera, et cetera. Anything over $3,000. It could be a high-ticket physical product that's over $3,000 as well. But yeah, generally speaking, entertainment content does a terrible job selling these. There are a few exceptions. I think an example of that would be Law By Mike. You know, he gets tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of views, and he does sell high-ticket because he has a personal injury law firm. So, there are exceptions here, but to be honest with you, it's just really difficult to sell high-ticket from entertainment. Then, you've got mass market education content. Now, generally speaking here, what you're going to see if you're selling high-ticket is you're probably going to see numbers in between 300 to 1,000 dollars per 1,000 views. And then if you're selling high ticket and you're making niche educational content, you're going to see numbers anywhere between 1,000 to even 10,000 dollars per 1,000 views. And it actually goes above 10,000. I've seen it as high as 30,000 dollars per 1,000 views for this type of content. Now, generally speaking, if you're making niche educational content, you're not going to be getting that many views. Okay, so let's break down all of these and let's do it with a different color. Let's say you want to make 100k per year. How many views do you need to get for that? Well, if you do the math here, you really only need to get 10k to 100k views to make 100,000 dollars a year. And if you want to make a million dollars a year, you only need to get 100,000 to 1 million views in an entire year to make that. And if you break that down monthly, that's about 8,000 views per month to 80,000 views per month. That is pretty doable. Now, on the other end of the spectrum over here, let's just say you're doing high ticket and you're monetizing pretty well, right? So, let's just say you're making 3 to 10 dollars per 1,000 views. We're going to go ahead and just use this one right here, right? So, you're making mass market entertainment content and you're making 3 to 10 dollars per 1,000 views. So, to make 100k per year, you're going to need 33 million views. And that is yearly if you're making 3 dollars per 1,000 views. Or you're going to need 10 million yearly views. But either way, you have to get 33 million or 10 million long-form views. And this is long-form, right? This isn't like getting views on shorts. This is long-form content. And to make a million dollars a year, if you want to make 1 million a year, you're going to have to get 27.8 million monthly views. Okay? Now, this is why so few people actually make a full-time income when they're making entertainment content. Now, I'm going to go ahead and fill in all of these and I'm just going to assume that you're making the top number, not the bottom number, okay? And I'm going to tell you how many views that you need to get per year to make this much money. Okay, so with just AdSense alone, you're going to need 33.3 million views, very, very difficult to get. I've never gotten that many views in a year. And this is just to make a hundred thousand dollars a year, right? This isn't to make a million dollars. If you're making ten dollars per one thousand views, you're going to need ten million views. If you're making thirty dollars per one thousand views, you're going to need 3.3 million views. Same thing with this one, 3.3 million. If you're making a hundred dollars per one thousand views, you need one million. It's starting to get better. And if you're making a thousand dollars per one thousand views, you only need a hundred thousand views in an entire year, very realistic. And then of course here, you'd only need ten K views over an entire year. So, this is why it just makes so much sense to make niche educational content, especially when you first begin. If you're not going to do niche educational content, then do mass market educational content and try to sell something either high ticket or at least medium ticket or low ticket, right? So, try to be over in this area. And if you can, be over here, because this is by far the best. Now, I know what you're thinking, "Shane, how do I choose my niche? You're right, how do I choose a niche where I can actually do these things? Like, how do I choose a mass market educational niche or a niche educational content niche? How do I choose the right video ideas to make? And how do I actually monetize those videos?" Well, first of all, we've made videos about that on the channel and you should definitely check those videos out. But second of all, I have a live training where I'm going to go over exactly how to do this. It'll be the first link in the description and the pin comment below and I'm doing that live training this week, so do not miss out on it. And on that live training, I'll be teaching you exactly how to do this and I'll be giving away an AI that helps you select the ideal niche for you. Then at the end, I'll answer any question that you have, so definitely do not miss out on it. Now, if you are someone who really wants to skip the line, if you're somebody who does not want to go through all the trial and error, all the headache, all the inconveniences, all the time wasting of figuring YouTube out on your own, then go ahead and book a call with me down in the description and the pin comment below. That'll be the second one down there. The types of people that typically want to do this are business owners who want to grow and make money on YouTube. They want to grow their brand. They want to get leads, etc. YouTubers who are already crushing it, they want to crush it even more. YouTubers who are getting a lot of views, but they're struggling with monetization, and maybe they want to pivot over to a better business model, or professionals like doctors, lawyers, IT workers, etc., who basically were in the same situation that I was. I was a pharmacist, so I was making really good money. I didn't have that much time on the side, and I wanted to learn YouTube quickly. And you really want to treat YouTube like a business, right? That's the main thing. People who want to treat YouTube like a business. If any of those apply to you, then go ahead, book a call by clicking the second link in the description and the pin comment below, or scanning the QR code on the screen. With that being said, check out this video right here where I go over exactly how I helped Thomas completely outsource himself from his eight-figure YouTube business. So, I helped him automate things, optimize things, streamline his content, helped him hire the right people, and just make the entire thing incredibly easy. And you can check that out by clicking right here.