Making Money on YouTube

March 16, 2025

When someone sets out to create a YouTube channel, their motivation can be plotted on a sliding scale. At one end of the scale we can place the label ‘Make Money’. At the other end, the label ‘Something Else’. I expect most people start out over toward the ‘Make Money’ end, also known as the Land of Rude Awakenings.

I place myself somewhere in the middle, but leaning more toward the ‘Something Else’ end. If I were never to make a dime from YouTube, I’d still want to make the kind of videos I put out about Korea, I’d just do it less often. The time I invest in it now would have to go into something that brings in a regular paycheck. I’m hoping that won’t ever be necessary.

Making the grade

Ad revenue is the first big target upon which creators set their sights. This comes through membership in the YouTube Partner Program. Getting into that requires acheiving specific milestones and a stressful application process.

Entry to the first tier of YPP requires the following:

A creator who meets these thresholds is eligible to apply for the program. Upon acceptance, they have a few ways to pull in some revenue:

When you see a ‘Thanks’ button below a video, that means the creator has ‘Super Thanks’ enabled. You can click the button to give a one-off donation. A ‘Super Chat’ is a one-off donation you can send in the live chat session of a live stream or premiere video. In both cases, YouTube takes a 30% cut. If you happen to be donating via the YouTube app on an iPhone or iPad, Apple also gets a 30% cut (this is known as the Apple Tax).

Channel memberships allow the creator to set up different tiers of ‘perks’ for different amounts, though only the fixed amounts YouTube lists are possible to select. There’s no freedom to set the cost of any tier outside of those options. They do this because it simplifies handling multiple currencies. With fixed, somewhat equivalent amounts in all supported currencies, users around the world are never captive to fluctuating exchange rates. The creator’s income will vary because of those rates, but their members pay a consistent fee each month. When you see a ‘Join’ button below a video, that channel has memberships enabled. Again, YouTube takes a 30% cut, but they don’t show the ‘Join’ button on their iPhone/iPad app, so there’s no Apple Tax for it.

The shopping option allows the creator to link their YouTube channel with an existing online store they’ve set up with a supported provider. Then they can enable specific items to be shown directly on their YouTube channel, and viewers can buy directly from the page where they’re watching a video.

Most new YouTubers aren’t paying much attention to these options. They can work for small channels in certain circumstances, but more often do not. I enabled ‘Super Thanks’ as soon as I was able, but I’ve only received a couple of them. In contrast, I’ve received several donations on my Ko-fi page, which I set up as soon as I launched the channel. I keep a much larger share of the donations there. I only enabled channel memberships when YouTube offered me a nice cash bonus to do so. I’ve had a handful of members supporting me from the beginning and a couple more have come in since, so that’s been nicer than I expected. I’m always thankful for all the financial support I receive.

The Golden Goose most new YouTubers are chasing is ad revenue though Google AdSense. That unlocks when the following requirements are met:

Some people get there quickly. Others chase those numbers for years.

The AdSense rollercoaster

When I started, I had no idea if I’d get to 1,000 subscribers or, if I did, that I’d be able to get enough watch hours within that 12-month sliding window. There are channels out there with a few thousand subscribers that go years without ever getting enough watch hours, stuck in limbo somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000. Once you surpass 12 months, then with every new day, the watch hours for the oldest day are deducted from the total as the watch hours for the new day are added on. Well, it doesn’t happen in real time. There’s a day or two of lag as the watch hours are validated, but that’s the idea.

It was a major relief when my first Q&A video took off and pushed me over the threshold for both numbers. When I published it in late April last year, I had 750 subscribers and something north of 3,000 watch hours. I’d become eligible for YPP in late March and had been watching the watch hour count slowly tick up from 3,000 every day since. Then that one video pulled in a few hundred watch hours in a couple of days. I became eligible for ad revenue on May 1st.

It took a few weeks to get the remaining virtual paperwork sorted. The easiest parts were setting up bank details and filling out the tax forms. The nerve wracking part was verifying my address. Google sends a PIN via snail mail to the address associated with the AdSense account. The creator has 90 days to enter the PIN on a verification page. It took several weeks for my PIN to arrive. I twice requested they send a new one. But once I had it in hand, I was able to complete the process in time for my first payment to come to me in June.

The ad revenue is nice to have, but it’s extremely inconsistent. There are numerous factors that determine how much I end up getting paid. YouTube takes a 45% cut of whatever the advertisers pay. The amount paid by advertisers varies per advertister, by time of year, by channel niche, by viewer location. YouTube doesn’t show ads on every view, and when it does try, some viewers are using ad blockers.

Channels making videos about finance tend to bring in the most ad revenue while gaming channels bring in the least. For most creators, it’s all over the place. Last month, February 2025, was my worst to date at $16.08. The best was November, with $197.08.

When YouTube Premium members watch my videos, I get a small amount of the total pool of Premium fees in lieu of ad revenue. That was $3.31 in February and $34.77 in November.

Channel memberships and Super Thanks top things off. Together, that was $25.86 in February and $28.56 in November.

Google sends out payments between the 20th and 25th of each month, but only if the accumulated total exceeds $100. I’ve only met the threshold in a single month on four occasions. I usually have to wait for the total to accumulate over two months. For example, my total for December was $95.32. So close, but I had to wait until January’s total of $55.09 was added on. That meant I got paid for both months in late February.

This is why you see so many sponsored videos on YouTube. AdSense revenue is great when views are up and advertisers are paying, but it’s unpredictable and unreliable. Brand deals can bring in much more money and can be set up in a predicatable and reliable fashion for a period of time. Watch any ‘How I Make Money on YouTube’ video and you’ll usually find that brand deals are a major component.

Courses and digital products can be lucrative for certain niches, particularly those involving educational content. There are channels out there with extremely low subscriber and view counts that are pulling in tens of thousands of dollars per month because they’re reaching the right viewers, the ones willing to fork over the dough for a high-priced course, personal coaching sessions, and so on. On channels like that, making money is usually the point.

My view

For my channel and the kind of content I create, certain brand deals make sense, but most do not. I’m hoping to find as many of the former as I can.

Though I did go through training to learn how to coach as part of my job, and though I can think of ideas that would be applicable to my channel, I can’t really see myself offering coaching sessions. However, as a former teacher, putting together in-depth courses on different eras of Korean history is an intriguing idea. It’s just a lot of work that I don’t have the time for. Since making money is not my primary motivation, that’s not where I need to be spending most of my time.

As for digital products, sure. That’s something I’m willing to pursue. It’s something I’m pursuing right now in the form of a book about life in Korea in the 90s. But that book and most of the other content I’m planning to produce will be available on a pay-what-you-want basis, meaning free if you want to pay nothing. That just aligns with my motivations for creating the channel. Making money is secondary to telling the world about Korea as I see it. Only if I were to write a more personal book, or something that required a lot of research, would I charge a fixed price.

I originally set out to write a different blog post. It was going to be a story about a couple of contrasting product offers I received and why I rejected one but accepted the other. Somehow, it morphed into this thing about making money on YouTube. If you didn’t know, now you know!

If you’d like to leave a comment about this blog post, you can do so in the comment section of the YouTube Community post where I announced it.