How Much Money Do Small Youtubers Make? (with screenshots!)

Have you ever thought to yourself “How much money do small youtubers make?” We know that the sky is the limit on Youtube and that there are youtubers making millions every year.

But what about the smaller youtube channels with more attainable numbers? People who are just earning a little extra on youtube for fun or on the side.

Well today I’m going to go over how much some small youtubers earn along with how much I made as a small youtube channel with 6,000 subscribers last year.

I know it’s kind of taboo to talk about how much money you earn or to wonder how much money other people earn. But guess what, I don’t care! I think we’re all curious about how much money people make, especially when it comes to something that most people aren’t doing, like making money on youtube.

Before we get to the actual numbers, I think it’s important to go over a few things first.

How do Youtubers make money?

When most people think about what youtubers make, and what we’re going to go over today, is making money on youtube with ads. If you’ve watched any videos on youtube you’ll have noticed the ads that come on during and sometimes in the middle of videos.

When a youtuber has ads up on their videos they’re getting a portion of the money paid to youtube for displaying that ad.

There are a lot of other ways to make even more money using your youtube influence, but this is the main way to make money from youtube directly.

How does Youtube pay you? How often does Youtube pay?

Youtube actually pays out via Google Adsense since that’s who’s actually running the ads on the videos. And Google Adense pays out on the 21st of each month. You must have made at least $100 to get paid out or else it rolls over into the next month until you hit that $100 threshold.

If you want you can get an official paper check from youtube, but I personally just find it easiest to get the money direct deposited into my account each month.

Do you have to pay taxes on Youtube income?

Now, I’m not an accountant so your situation may be different, but for the most part yes. If you’re earning any sort of income on Youtube you’re technically supposed to pay taxes on it. If you earn over $600 in one year via Youtube (Google Adsense) you should get a 1099 form from them.

Exactly how much small youtubers make

So I didn’t want to just share my numbers in here because I’m just one person. I decided to do a search on Youtube for other people who recently shared their Youtube earnings and included them in my own youtube video. You can scroll down to the bottom to watch that if you’d like! Otherwise you can keep reading to see what some small youtube channels make.

A few things to keep in mind:

All youtube channels are not created equal, some will make way more and some way less.
The number of subscribers a channel shows is how many they have at the time of recording, that has obviously gone up as they’ve been posting over the last year.
When I calculate averages, they are just that: averages. How much you make from month to month varies a lot.

Channel: Swell Entertainment
Subscribers: 6,670
2019 Earnings: $926.31
Monthly: $77 on average

Channel: Coralie Anne
Subscribers: 18,400
2019 Earnings: $739.47
Monthly: $61 on average

Channel: F&H Reviews and Tutorials!
Subscribers: 4,290
2019 Earnings: $5,166.08
Monthly: $430 on average

Channel: Diane Cohn
Subscribers: 2,480
2019 Earnings: $774.23
Monthly: $64 on average

As you can see it’s not all about how many subscribers you have! One of the highest earners above made far more than everyone else on the list and has less than 5,000 subscribers.

How much did I make on Youtube last year?

As you can see above I made $660.82 in 2019. But if you look closely at that graph you’ll see that it increased quite a bit towards the end of the year. But let me break it down the way I did for the other channels.

Channel: Hustle & Slow
Subscribers: 6,400
2019 Earnings: $660.82
Monthly: $55 on average

And if we take a look at the last 28 days (at the time of filming the video) you’ll see that I actually made $160 in those last 28 days which is much higher than the $55 average from 2019.