Most people who are familiar with how the Internet works know that a person can make money online. The ways to earn money from the Internet are as big as the Internet itself.
With dozens of platforms easily accessible to users, the possibilities are endless. As a matter of fact, YouTube is one of the popular ways that people earn money online.
However, being a YouTuber to the point of making income is not that simple. Not everyone who tries their chances in becoming a YouTuber makes money — let alone a regular income.
What Percentage Of YouTubers Make Money?
It is estimated that around 8.86% of the entire channel in the platform YouTubers can make money on YouTube. In other words, around 1 in 12 channels are able to earn money by posting their videos.
In order to get a rough estimate of the actual percentage of earners, let us do the math.
As of 2022, there are around 113.9 million YouTube channels currently on the platform. And of this number, around 10.1 million channels have at least 1,000 subscribers.
Now you might be asking, why are YouTube channels with at least 1,000 subscribers important? Well, the 1000-subscriber mark is the minimum threshold a channel should have in order to be eligible for monetization.
While 4,000 hours of watch time is also needed, it’s easier to estimate based on subscriber count. If a YouTuber meets all of these qualifications, they can start to make money through the platform.
Do Youtubers Make A Lot Of Money?
Being the second largest social media platform, the number of content creators starting a YouTube channel is growing by the day. Which means the chances of earning money are at their toughest.
Thus, asking how much a YouTuber makes on the platform on average is a difficult question to answer. The potential income that a content creator makes can be very different from how much another YouTuber earns.
Instead, a better metric when talking about earning on YouTube is how many are able to earn at all.
While YouTube doesn’t offer a clear-cut number to determine how many creators actually make money, estimates can be done. And with millions of channels now up on YouTube, expect the number of earners to be small.
Why Is It Hard to Make Money on YouTube?
The common way to earn money on YouTube is through ad revenue. When a YouTuber is eligible for monetization, they can opt to place ads on their videos.
But even if there are ads displayed on a video, it is still not guaranteed to turn into revenue. When viewers skip ads too early from a YouTube video, creators are not paid their commission. And more often than not, the case of ads being skipped early is a common occurrence.
On the other hand, YouTubers who have a bigger following usually spread out their sources of income. These big content creators are able to earn money through sponsorships, referral links, etc.
Since the number of qualified creators is small, those which are big enough to land other deals are smaller.
Only 1.75% of all YouTube channels have at least 10,000 subscribers. Consequently, the percentage of YouTubers making money grows thinner as the platform becomes more competitive by the minute.
