How Much I Make With 2 Million Subscribers

What's up you guys! It's Graham here.

So, after nearly four years of making videos here on YouTube, I'm gonna break down exactly how much I make with a channel of about two and a half million subscribers. Because recently, I wouldn't even believe it myself if I didn't see it firsthand, but here we are.

So, I'm going to pull back the curtain of my entire channel and share how much I make and how I got here. Because I know at least for me, I've really enjoyed watching videos like this from other people who choose to share their experiences. So, I'm just going to cover everything I possibly can, and hopefully this is going to be helpful to anyone who wants to make their own YouTube videos one day, or even if you're just curious how much a YouTube channel makes with two and a half million subscribers. Here you go!

Now, for those who are new to the channel, let me bring you up to speed. On Christmas Day of 2016, I started this channel to share my excitement towards saving money, personal finance, investing, real estate, and credit cards. Back then, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea how to film a video, and I had no idea how to edit a video.

But after years of telling myself that I didn't have what it takes, or that who would want to listen to what I have to say, I finally posted a video. See, for me, YouTube was always my go-to place for entertainment and education. I wouldn't watch TV; I wouldn't watch movies. But I would find myself spending hours watching YouTube videos, absorbing as much information as I could and using it as a tool for learning.

I knew I always wanted to make videos, but I was held back by the fear that no one would want to watch me or, even worse, I would get a dislike. Thankfully, though, after many years, I was able to push past that fear and finally post my first video. And once I did, I was hooked.

When I saw how much it helped people on their quest towards financial literacy, it just made me want to create even more and more and more content. Back then, I was working full-time as a real estate agent, and every single day after work, I would get home and film and edit YouTube videos until about two o'clock in the morning because it was just that much fun. No joke! It actually got to the point where I looked forward to making YouTube videos every single night because it became my outlet for self-expression and talking about the topics that I found really interesting.

So, without further ado, let me take you into my YouTube studio and I'll show you exactly how much I make. We’ll start back at the very beginning, and when I was first making videos, I was making nothing. In fact, I purposely turned off monetization because I was worried it would distract from the message of the video. But then I started thinking to myself, maybe YouTube would be more likely to recommend monetized content because that way they're able to generate revenue from it. So I decided just to give it a shot and turn on monetization.

So now, officially, on January 20th, 2017, monetization was in full effect, and I made a whopping seven cents! But it doesn't end there. After continuing to post three videos a week, one month later I was earning an average of about one dollar a day. And I know it sounds kind of corny to say this, but I was thrilled to the moon and back to be able to earn one dollar a day from YouTube.

For some context here, at the time I was making about $500,000 a year in gross commissions as a real estate agent here in Los Angeles at The Oppenheim Group. But I was more excited about making a dollar a day on YouTube because that was just so foreign to me. Now by that same time next month in 2017, I was earning an average of $12 to $20 a day. All of a sudden my video started picking up a little bit; they were getting a little bit more views, and YouTube was recommending it to a small audience.

I think YouTube began seeing consistent uploads combined with high user engagement, which meant that people who watched my videos would be likely to comment, subscribe, hit the notification bell, like the video, and then go and watch other of my videos. Which, by the way, if you like the video, subscribe or comment down below; it helps me out tremendously.

But anyway, when YouTube sees those videos getting good signals, it's likely to push that video out to an even larger audience. That is when I realized that if I upload consistently and I keep making content people enjoy watching, the YouTube algorithm will work in my favor, and I can grow the channel. Well, lo and behold, it worked.

Later on that month, I started making about $20 a day when one of my videos started taking off. It was the first video I had ever made, and it was how I got into real estate and real estate investing just out of high school. When I saw that happening, I just knew internally that I was onto something, and I had to keep this going because for the first time in my entire life, I felt like I was contributing towards something that was much bigger than just myself. I felt like I had purpose. I was teaching people personal finance, and I was having a lot of fun doing it.

So this is when it officially clicked, and I dove headfirst into YouTube. Now, throughout the rest of the year, it certainly had its ups and downs. But throughout 2017, most days would earn at least $20 or as high as $250, depending on the video. And this is when I was posting three videos a week and spending about seven hours a day, seven days a week, working on YouTube, on top of working full-time as a real estate agent and investor.

Now, in total for the entire year of 2017, I earned $26,966.69 from YouTube. Then in 2018, things picked up even more. Now the way YouTube works is that once you get a backlog of videos on your channel, it starts to work a little bit like a snowball in that you start getting more views, which gets you more views, which attracts you more views. So the more you post consistently, the faster it grows, and that's what happened here.

In the beginning of 2018, my base ad revenue was about $100 a day, with some days about $120. But then in April of 2018, things began picking up a lot. My videos started getting more views and attracting more subscribers, and those subscribers would continually watch each and every one of my videos. So, everything started growing rather quickly.

At this point, most days were about $200 to $350 in ad revenue, and consistently that just kept increasing. In July of 2018, it was a high of $855 per day. And even though the views slowed down a little bit after that, the trend was consistently the same. The highs just kept getting higher, and the lows just kept getting less frequent.

Then in November of 2018, everything changed. I was able to get my hands on what many would consider to be the holy grail of credit cards: the $10 million JPMorgan Reserve Card. In a last minute decision, I decided to film an unboxing video and post it on my channel to share my excitement for getting the credit card, and almost instantly, that video went viral. Within a week, it had a million views and it brought in an entirely new audience to the channel, giving me so much more exposure that catapulted everything to the next level.

That single video elevated everything. On November 15th, I earned $3,420 in a single day from ad revenue. After that, my views stayed consistently high to the point where every day earned just over $1,000 in ad revenue, and throughout the entire year, I earned $170,945.60 just from ad revenue on YouTube, not including anything else like program sales, sponsorships, and affiliates.

So, as I mentioned in this video, everything else combined earned just over $256,000. After that, in 2019, I realized that I was really onto something here, and there's a big audience that wants to learn more about saving money, personal finance, investing, real estate, credit cards, and smashing the like button for the YouTube algorithm.

So this is the exact moment where I decided to give it 100% and double down on everything that I was doing. It just seemed like this gut level feeling that was pulling me in that direction, and everything was lining up for me to do this. So I did. This is when I started taking content really seriously, and it was very strategic about which videos I would post and when.

I would make sure that each video flows from one to another so people can watch them continuously. I began networking with other creators to learn what they were doing. At this time, I also created my own program called the YouTube Creator Academy to teach other people how they could make videos on YouTube and grow their channel.

In addition to that, in the beginning of 2019, I started the second channel, The Graham Stephan Show, so I could diversify my content and make reaction videos and take phone calls in more of a talk show style format. So now I had two channels that played against one another. If one channel got views, a portion of those people would watch the other channel and vice versa.

At this point, I was probably working about 10 hours a day on YouTube, on top of working as a real estate agent and investing in real estate. But I made it my mission to post one video a day, every single day, without missing an upload. Now, I'll be honest, it was incredibly challenging to keep up that level of consistency and most nights I was up until about two o'clock in the morning trying to get the next day's video uploaded with no downtime at all.

But I was somehow able to make it happen, and it all paid off. As far as how much I made from YouTube, though, this is where it gets utterly insane. In the beginning of 2019, most days were averaging about $1,500 in ad revenue. But in March, something new happened: I got a Tesla.

Now, at the time, my car lease was coming due and I had to find a replacement. It just so happened that the $35,000 Tesla Model 3 was announced. So I crunched the numbers and I realized that, wait a second! This is a nearly free car for me to drive with all the tax write-offs and incentives. So I bought it, and I was super happy that it was only going to cost me net $78 a month.

So I chose to turn that experience into a YouTube video while I documented the process of buying a Tesla. I was actually really nervous about posting it because it's not the usual finance content I post on the channel. So last minute, I included the mathematics behind how the car's final price was $78 a month, that way everyone watching would be able to understand my reasoning behind the purchase, and maybe it could better help them understand the incentives of buying the car.

Within days of posting, the video got over a million views, and on April 7th, I made over $6,900 in ad revenue from the channel. Then a month later, I made a video posting about how much I made from a viral video, and that video ended up getting over 1.2 million views too. After that, it just seemed like my entire channel grew considerably day after day, and the ad revenue increased to $2,000 per day on the low end to $6,000 per day on the high end for the rest of the year.

In total for that year, I earned $1,141,043.43 for my main channel in 2019, and my second channel, The Graham Stephan Show, earned an additional $170,428.75. I also earned another $500,000 from program sales and another $90,000 from sponsors and affiliates, bringing my total 2019 YouTube income to $1,904,000.

Now, since posting that video, things have continued to grow beyond my wildest dreams. In fact, most days it doesn't even seem like something like this is even possible, but here we are. And after almost a year since updating everyone on how much the channel is earning, here you go! Beginning in January, the channel was consistently bringing in about $3,000 to $6,000 per day in ad revenue.

But then the illness struck. Almost instantaneously, overnight, ad rates went back down to about $2,000 as everyone began cutting back. When that happened, I was completely expecting ad rates to stay down, or at the very least, maybe it takes a year or so for advertisers to come back. To my surprise, that did not happen. Unbeknownst to me, as all of this was going on, people suddenly began taking an interest in personal finance and investing.

Not only that, but people were home all day, and they wanted a free source of entertainment, and that would be YouTube. As a result of that, I was able to bring everyone consistent content about the current state of the economy and tell everyone not to sell their investments and keep buying in as the market was collapsing, and bring everyone updates about each stimulus proposal as it happened.

I tried my best to shift my content around what people wanted to see and cover newsworthy topics because, frankly, a lot of these news outlets just would give you these scary headlines without explaining the full context of what this really means and how it actually affects you. In terms of revenue though, by April, the channel was back to where it was in the beginning of the year, earning about $4,000 to $6,000 a day.

Then it started growing even more. Throughout that month, most days earned anywhere from $6,000 to $8,000 a day, with May 19th bringing in over $10,000. Since then, I do my best to stay as consistent as possible without ever missing an upload. I read nearly all the comments to see what you think of the videos and what types of videos you want to see next, and I spend as much time as I possibly can to try to bring you the best content I could possibly make.

Still to this day, the channel earns anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000 per day, with some recent days exceeding $11,000. That means in total for 2020 so far, this channel has made $1,583,755.81 in ad revenue, and The Graham Stephan Show has made $297,857.35. I also started a podcast with my colleague and editor Jack called The Iced Coffee Hour, and we post episodes every single Sunday morning, and so far that channel has earned about $8,000 this year.

That means, so far in 2020, all three channels combined have made $1,889,972.57. That number is in addition to program sales, sponsorships, and affiliates. So if we go ahead and add everything up, it's most likely going to be so far over $4 million in 2020.

Now it's absolutely incredible to think that something like this is even possible and that I get to spend every single day doing something I find fulfilling and so much fun. I owe all of this to YouTube for making this possible and you for watching the channel and your support. I could not have done this without you, and I'm really happy to give you the content that you want me to make, and do my best to bring about more financial awareness and show people that saving money and investing in personal finance can be fun.

That's why I always do my best to read the comments, respond as much as I can, and listen to what you have to say. It means so much to me that we've built such a supportive community where we each want each other to succeed. Because this saying is very true: a rising tide lifts all boats. And if we learn something new, it's up to us to share that with everyone around us and help each other succeed.

So there you go! That's exactly how much I make from where and the steps that I've taken to get there. I really hope this video is helpful! Because if I saw a video like this five years ago, before I started making videos, it would just get me so excited to film everything I possibly could.

And if you're anything like me, and you think you don't have what it takes to make YouTube videos, I want to tell you that's absolutely best, and you could do it! And if you don't believe me when I say that, I literally posted on Reddit five years ago that I don't have the personality or charisma to start my own channel. I'm not the type that would do well in front of the camera. That was me over five years ago, and a lot can change. Everything you need to learn is already on YouTube for free, and if you don't know something, it's as easy as one search away.

My content is far from perfect; I make mistakes, I'm human, but I love making videos. I like sharing information, I'm obsessed with investing and saving money and personal finance and credit cards, and trying to get you to smash the like button for the YouTube algorithm. And if I could encourage you to do the same, then I've set out what I've meant to do.

And lastly, if you made it this far in the video and you enjoyed it, it would mean a lot to me if you just give it a quick like. It helps out the YouTube algorithm, and if we get this video in front of people who would find it helpful, that would make me very happy.

So again, thank you so much for everything. And with that said, thank you so much for watching! I really appreciate it. Make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell if you have not done that already. Also, feel free to add me on Instagram; I post pretty much daily. So if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there.

On my second channel, The Graham Stephan Show, I'm posting there every single day. Don't post here, so if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day, make sure to add yourself to that. And lastly, if you want two free stocks, use the link down below in the description, and Webull is going to be giving you two free stocks when you deposit $100 on the platform, with one of those stocks potentially worth all the way up to $1,600.

So if you want the two free stocks, use the link down below. Let me know which two you get. Thank you so much for watching, and until next time!