Earning from youtube

I am a YouTuber with 100k subscribers and average of 300k monthly views. My income can vary wildly. There are good months and bad months. Sometimes I make $500 and other months I make $1000. Without accurate analytics, it’s impossible to determine exactly what a YouTuber makes.

This is because we don’t get paid per subscriber, or per view. We get paid depending on ad views and ad clicks, which viewers have the option of skipping. Skipping ads before 30 seconds means the YouTuber doesn’t get paid. Only a YouTuber has access to analytics of ads viewed, it’s not publicly visible like a video view count.

There also isn’t a fixed price for advertising. The price of advertising varies depending on the keyword category, and also the location of your audience.

For example, ads are more expensive in first world countries like the UK where business is very competitive, but ads can be much cheaper in countries like India where there is less competition. In fact, my audience in India is 5x larger than my audience in the UK, but my UK audience makes me more money than my Indian audience, with 5x less viewers! That’s because they watch more ads and the price of ads is higher in the UK.

To get an estimate, you can use a website called social blade.
YouTube,Twitch,Twitter and Instagram statistics.

Type the YouTuber’s name into the system and view their profile. However the estimate will underestimate their minimum earnings and over estimate their maximum earnings. So if you pick a number somewhere in the middle you might be pretty close to what they earned.

However this is not pure profit. Take into account they have production costs, gear costs, etc while making these videos, and for all you know, they could even be operating at a loss, or barely breaking even. Especially if they need expensive gear, a studio or an editor.

Edit:

I’ve had a few requests come through about YouTube Red, which has a slightly different payment plan.

I’ve written a longer answer about that here:
How does YouTube red video views get reported to you?
Do they count for as much as somebody who watches the full 30 seconds of an ad?

Basically, YouTube Red Revenue is very minuscule for the average YouTuber, and is only really rewarding for the more established Gold level (1 Million subscribers or more) YouTubers.