How Much Does YouTube Pay?

For 1k, 100k, 1 million views. Including case studies, examples, and behind-the-scenes screenshots from a YouTuber with 30k subscribers.

realistic, woman portrait, camera at eye level — ar 3:2 — v 5.2 — @flash2k8 (fast). Once again, do not examine these women’s hands. Also, I don’t know why half of them are red-headed. This article may contain affiliate links.

The short answer? Your favorite YouTuber’s YouTube earnings are probably lower than you think.

The longer answer to “How much does YouTube pay?” is that it depends. It depends on the topic of the video, the length of the video, the number of views, and whether the YouTuber in question has any outside sponsorships or affiliate deals.

To illustrate with an example, this past July 2023, I got around 70k views, which netted me $956.26.

Source: My YouTube Analytics.

This means that YouTube paid me around 1.3 cents per view, or $13 per 1,000 views. This is pretty typical across the industry. Most creators report somewhere between 1 to 3 cents per view.

However, every new subscriber doesn’t just represent an ad view; it’s also a potential for revenue from other sources. For example, in July of 2023, I also got 174 subscribers to my mailing list on ConvertKit via YouTube, one of whom went on to buy a $217 course. I say this just to illustrate…