Three years ago Graham Stephan started his YouTube channel to share his enthusiasm towards personal finance, saving money, investing, and real estate. When he posted his first video he had no idea if anybody would ever watch it, but now his channel has grown far beyond what he ever imagined. 
Graham has always felt that it was important to share exactly how much he’s made throughout the entire process. His viewer support makes it all possible and he feels that he owes them full transparency. He shares exactly what he’s learned along the way, taking his viewers along together as part of the journey.
In a video released in early 2020, Graham shared his earnings over time as his subscriber base grew. He wanted to share the details and everything involved in as thorough a manner as he could. He wanted to let us behind the curtain to show how it works.
The first thing Graham wanted to clear up is some of the confusion surrounding how much money YouTube creators make. There are a lot of articles reporting 96% of creators don’t earn enough to cross the poverty line, others claim that even YouTube stars with over one million viewers make just $17,000 a year. Over the last few years, and after talking to dozens of other creators throughout various categories, Graham feels that those numbers only represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of what’s actually possible.
Graham points out that the difference in earnings depends entirely on how well the creator runs their channel like a business. Simply making a video with a five-second advertisement at the very beginning is not going to make a lot of income. For most YouTube creators, the money they are making from ads is just a drop in the bucket.
Most every creator on YouTube works towards making money from Google Adsense, those 5 to 15 second ads that show up in the beginning, middle, and end of videos. To be eligible to place those ads on their videos the channel must have at least 1,000 subscribers and have accumulated 4,000 hours, or more, of watch time before submitting for review. During the review process, it will be determined if the videos are advertiser-friendly, if the advertisers will pay for ads on that content. Channels that contain a lot of profanity, mature or risque content, or copyrighted material are not content advertisers usually want to be associated with.
If a channel is advertiser-friendly then they will pay a premium to put themselves in front of that content. How much an advertiser will pay depends on the subject of the video and how desirable the target audience is in the eyes of the advertiser. A few other factors that can influence how much an advertiser might pay is the time of year, the length of the video, average watch times, and whether or not the video has multiple mid-roll ads.
Videos that are mostly generic, non-specific content that doesn’t really center around one specific audience usually earn at the low end of the scale, two to three dollars per 1,000 views. A channel of this type that gets 5 million views will earn between $10,000-15,000 just from ads.
However, some content is more desirable to advertisers. Car channels tend to earn around $5 per 1,000 ($25,000 for 5 million views), beauty channels might get $7 per 1,000 and some topics, like business or investing, frequently get between $15-30 per 1,000 views. Ad revenue is a little difficult to determine exactly but most channels are probably making between $4-7 per 1,000 views for clean, family-friendly content without any copyrighted material.
Graham reports that having a channel with over one million subscribers and about 7-8 million views earned him $129,122.99 in ad revenue in one month. Keeping in mind though that his channel is in one of the highest paying categories (business, personal finance, and investing) so advertisers pay more to get in front of his videos.
Remember though that ad revenue is only a small percentage of what YouTube creators can make. Many creators do sponsorships, when a brand or a company pays a set fee to be mentioned at the beginning of a video. For example, many of David Dobrik’s videos are sponsored by SeatGeek. Companies will pay a lot for a 60-second mention in a video that is likely to get tens of millions of views.
Graham (and other creators) can’t discuss the exact amounts paid for those mentions because they can’t be disclosed per the contract. Based on his own experience with sponsorships though, a channel with over one million subscribers in the finance niche may be offered between $4,000-20,000 for a 60-90 second mention in a video. Graham is careful to work with legitimate sponsors. Some fly-by-night, scammy companies might offer more money but he doesn’t want to be involved with, or give any promotion, this type of business.
Graham doesn’t like to do too many sponsorships. For the right company, he’s open to working with them but he wants to be able to make content that focuses mostly on information rather than around a particular sponsor. Sponsorships are a good way to increase income beyond just ads, it can really add up.
Having a variety of products for a merchandise line is another way to earn that can be associated with your channel. David Dobrik uses a lot of copyrighted music in his videos and that means he might not make as much ad revenue from YouTube. Selling associated merchandise and sponsorships probably add a lot to his earnings that make up for lower ad revenue.
Merchandise lines do exceptionally well for creators with a very recognizable brand and a variety of products. Cycling through limited-editions merch can do a lot for the bottom line too.
Graham knows of some larger creators (1-5 million subscribers) that make $50,000-150,000 a month in profit from merch sales. While most creators can’t expect to make that kind of money from merch sales, Graham estimates that a channel with a million subscribers could make $3,000-10,000 a month from a merch line, depending on how much promotion, the strength of their brand, audience loyalty, etc.
Another common way that Graham and other YouTube creators make money is by affiliate marketing. This is promoting a service, company, or product and getting a commission any time someone signs up or buys something. For example, Amazon affiliate sales are, by far, the easiest way that most creators get started. While the commissions from Amazon usually range from a few cents to a couple of dollars, putting an Amazon affiliate link in the video description can really add up over time. Graham puts Amazon affiliate links for his camera equipment in all of his video descriptions and reports that he made $10,342.81 in 2019 from these links.
Amazon isn’t the only way Graham uses affiliate marketing to earn money. He made about $8,000 from Acorns by providing links in the description. He’s also added links for Weeble and other offers that his viewers might benefit from using.
Another way that creators make money is by creating a product or service their subscribers would be interested in buying or using. Graham has created two programs: Real Estate Agent Academy and YouTube Creator Academy. He created these programs to supplement his income and to provide a way for people to access his advice without having to coach people individually. In 2019, those programs together did just over $500,000 in profits for Graham. He didn’t do any paid advertising, he just left links in the video descriptions and sometimes mentioned them during the video.
Creating online education programs, consulting, and speaking engagements are other ways YouTube creators can make additional income. Subscription services are yet another idea, especially for channels that are not as friendly to advertisers. Creators make a membership website where viewers can get access to uncensored content that can’t be put up on YouTube. Logan Paul is a great example of a creator making bank with this technique. In an interview, Logan said he had 100,000 subscribers who each paid $5 a month membership to see his uncensored content.
Graham’s journey on YouTube started in 2017. That year, he worked around 50 hours a week planning, editing, and posting videos three times a week. He’d stay up until 2:00 am answering comments. The $26,963.69 he made in 2017 was less than minimum wage for the entire year’s worth of work.
At the beginning of 2018 Graham’s consistent posting schedule and hard work paid off when he hit 100,000 subscribers. At this point he started taking YouTube more seriously, he began reinvesting into his channel. He created a studio, began posting higher quality content, and diversifying his income by creating the Real Estate Agent Academy. He also started doing consulting, speaking engagements, and adding Amazon affiliate links in his video descriptions. By the end of 2018 he had almost 300,000 subscribers.
Graham’s earnings in 2018 were just over $265,000. A large portion of that income came from the 14 million views he had on YouTube where he made almost $175,000 of ad revenue. An additional $86,000 came from selling his programs. The rest of his earnings that year came from Amazon affiliate sales, consulting, and public speaking engagements.
Things really took off in 2019. Graham reached over one million subscribers and ad revenue jumped to $1,141,231.43 with almost 80 million views on his primary channel. His other channel, The Graham Stephan Show, was another $170,428.75 from ad revenue and had just over 16 million views.
The much larger audience has also boosted program sales for Graham. He sold over $500,000 with his two programs. Additional sponsorships with brands like Audible, SkillShare, and Simplisafe added over $50,000 to his earnings too. Another $40,000 or so came from affiliate marketing, private consulting, and a few other opportunities that came up throughout the year.
In the end, 2019 saw Graham making just over $1.9 million from YouTube with 1.3 million subscribers. Even Graham admits this amount sounds absurd. It’s absolutely incredible and mind-blowing to go from less than minimum wage in 2017 to almost $2 million in 2019.
Graham advises that the best way a YouTube creator can make an income from their channel is by running it like a business. The number of subscribers doesn’t have a direct correlation with how much money the creator can make. Graham has seen channels with 100,000 subscribers making $1 million a year and he’s seen channels with one million subscribers make less than $30,000. Diversifying income beyond Google AdSense is key to the business savvy YouTube creator. Oftentimes, additional sources of income can make significant amounts of money.