In this video the speaker addresses common misconceptions about YouTube earnings—likes and subscriber counts do not generate revenue. He explains how advertisers are charged only when a viewer watches at least 30 seconds of an ad, watches the ad to completion, or clicks the ad, and provides a concrete example of a $100 ad buy yielding roughly 20,000 impressions. The revenue from that $100 is split roughly 45% to Google/YouTube and 55% to the creator. The creator notes that many creators are part of multi‑channel networks (MCNs) that take an additional cut, typically around 10% (sometimes up to 20%), reducing the creator’s take to about $50 in the example. The speaker then discusses sponsorships, emphasizing that they are handled outside of YouTube’s platform and therefore incur no YouTube fee, often matching or exceeding ad revenue for smaller creators. He shares his own situation—consistent 700‑900 views per video, no current sponsors—and asks the audience for their opinion on whether he should pursue sponsorships, clarifying he is not motivated solely by money. The video concludes with a call for feedback and a hope that viewers learned something about YouTube monetization.
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A question that a lot of non-YouTubers have is, how are YouTubers paid? You know, where does the money come from? What percentage goes to YouTube? What percentage goes to Google, the content creator? It's just, you know, something a lot of people are not educated in, and that's what I'm going to talk about in this video. Now, before we get too far, I have to get rid of a couple of myths people have. You You do not get paid for likes on your video. People are like, "Oh, this video has 10,000 likes, they probably made a lot of money." Where do you get that logic from? How does me clicking the like button earn them money? It doesn't. You get money based on people watching your ads. Like, legitimately, how can your brain think that me clicking the like button earns them money? How? And, uh, another thing people think is, "Oh, he has a million subscribers, you know, he earns money per subscription or per someone subscribing to him." That's false, okay? I just wanna get those out of the way. That doesn't even help him in getting a sponsorship. Sponsorships and all that other stuff is based on views per video, not how many subscribers you had. Just thought I'd put those things out there. So I'm gonna run you through the entire process of making money through YouTube. We're gonna start from the advertisers. So let's say you have a business, a brand, and you wanna spend $100 to get your brand out there. Now I wanna mention this: advertisers do not pay if you skip the ad. This is something a lot of people don't know. Advertisers only pay, they only get charged if you watch 30 seconds of the ad, if you watch from beginning till end of the ad, because some ads aren't 30 seconds, or if you click on the ad. You have to do one of those three things. Three, yeah, I was like, yeah, okay. And if you don't do one of those three things, they are not charged, and that's not something many people know. And that's actually one of the cool things about YouTube advertising, because you don't pay unless someone's interested in your product. If they're not interested in it, they're not gonna watch it for 30 seconds, they're not gonna watch till the end of the ad, or they're not gonna click on it. And that's what makes YouTube advertising so effective. They show your ad to roughly 20,000 people. They say that every $100 you spend on YouTube advertising is gonna get your video at least 20,000 impressions, and we'll say out of those 20,000 views your ad got, you know, 100 people clicked on it, and you know, 300 people watched it from beginning to end. So they used up your $100, you got, you know, 20,000 views of your brand, you got your brand's name out there. What happens to that $100 that you gave to Google? What percentage goes to Google, what percentage goes to YouTube, what percentage goes to the content creator? This is something not a lot of people are educated in. So of that $100 that advertiser pays, 45% of it's gonna go to Google and YouTube, and the other 55% is gonna go to me, the content creators. And that's something a lot of people complain about, you know. They're like, the content creator made the video, they drew in the viewer, all the— you know, they say the content creator did most of the work, and Google and YouTube's taking 45%, and they shouldn't, because, you know, if you make— if you would have made $100,000, you know, $45,000 would have gone to them, and you only get, you know, the leftover $55,000. And, uh, me personally, my opinion on it, it's very generous of YouTube to still give us over half because, you know, YouTube's hosting the server, it's their website, uh, it's their— it's everything. YouTube owns everything. Technically, they don't even have to give us 55%. So just be happy you get 55%, people, because a lot of people want that knocked down to, uh, YouTube and Google only taking 25% and a content creator getting 75%, you know, so they make 20% more. So if you made $100,000 a year off of YouTube, you'd actually make an extra $20,000. If they did that and bumped it up, you know, where you'd make 75% instead of only 55%, I'd be making personally about $100 extra a month, or I don't— yeah, a little less than $100 extra a month. So yeah, it would make a huge difference, but obviously it's not gonna happen because YouTube advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry and YouTube's not gonna give up billions of dollars. So yeah, YouTube and Google are all up in their mansion with their 45% of our earnings, and then you get your 55%, so that's $55 because We said the advertiser paid $100, $55 goes to us. Well then, most people are signed with a network, and my network personally takes 10%. So of that $55, 10% goes to my network. So I mean, that's like $5 or whatever. So then I get $50. So out of all this, 45% of what the advertiser pays goes to Google and YouTube, and then of the 55% I get, a percentage of that goes to network. In my case, it's 10%. Most people, it's probably closer to 20%. And then you get what's left over, which is why it's really hard to make a living off of YouTube because you have to be racking in some serious dough from advertisers with all these other people taking money. You literally have to get, you know, tens of millions of views per year. Last thing I wanted to mention though is sponsorships don't go through YouTube. YouTube doesn't take a percentage of that, so a lot of people actually end up making just as much money off of sponsorships as they do ads. Like, I know a couple people that make a couple hundred dollars a month off of YouTube and they make just as much almost off of their sponsorship deals and, you know, people buying stuff from their sponsors and the impression money they get from their sponsors. I personally don't have any sponsors, and this might be actually a good segue. I wanted to talk about that a little bit. I was thinking about, you know, applying for a sponsor or two. I mean, I get a consistent, you know, 700, 800, 900 views per video. I have a pretty solid fan base, and I don't know, what do you guys think? What's your opinion? I'm not gonna rush into it. And there's so many people way smaller than me that has sponsorships. I'm just like, you know, it makes them seem like they're money hungry. I— you guys know I don't do this for money. I could go get a real job if I wanted to. So I'd just love to hear your opinion. What do you guys think? Would you be okay if I got a sponsorship? Would you not? I mean, I do need the money to buy equipment and stuff, but if you guys don't want me to get a sponsorship, I don't care. I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to be a sellout or anything. I'm not doing this just for money. So, uh, let me know what you guys' opinion is on me getting a sponsorship, because I'm pretty sure I can find myself one. I see so many other YouTubers that are way smaller with sponsorships. And, uh, yeah, that's pretty much the video. Let me know what you think, and hopefully you enjoyed. Hopefully I taught you something.
