How I make $13,800 PER MONTH on YouTube (How much YouTubers make)

So I definitely don't want to give anyone the idea that the only reason I'm doing this is for money because that couldn't be further from the truth, and I would be doing this regardless of how much money I make. But I have a feeling this video might inspire other people just to show them you can make a living off of YouTube, and you can do this full-time as long as you're helping other people and offering more value than what you receive in return.

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here! So I thought this would be a fun idea to pull back the financial curtain on YouTube and share with you guys exactly how I make about thirteen thousand eight hundred dollars per month from YouTube. With this information, you can either recreate these same strategies if you're considering going full-time on YouTube, or want to do a career on YouTube, or for anybody who is just curious how the hell do you make thirteen thousand to eight hundred dollars per month on YouTube.

So I'm gonna be sharing everything with you guys in great detail. And by the way, any time we make a video about a topic like this, there's always a very clear distinction between bragging and actually making a video that's informative and educational, where you can watch it and actually learn and take something from it. So with a video like this, I really want to make it more about the strategies behind what I do than the actual money itself. Plus, I've seen some other YouTubers share their numbers, and I've just found it insanely inspirational, so I figured I would share my experiences too. Maybe you guys can implement some of these concepts.

I'd really quick just want to give a big shout-out to Ryan Scribner, who posted a video the other day about how he makes passive income on YouTube, and it was from that video that gave me the idea to make this one. So just want to say thank you, Ryan, and keep up the good work.

The main part when it comes to this income is definitely the most obvious, and that is YouTube ad revenue. Now on average for my channel, I get paid about a penny per view that I get. It just depends on the type of video and the watch time. There are several factors that go into how much money a YouTube video gets, but overall for my channel, on average, it's about one penny per view.

Now, the amount you see here may seem pretty high, but just keep in mind there is a lot of work that went in behind the scenes to this. This is 16 months in on YouTube, and this is also probably about 1,600 hours of effort that went in to where you see today. Now I'd venture to guess that probably about 70% of the ad revenue comes from videos that I've posted in the last 30 days. The remaining 30% are from my older videos over the last 16 months, but those older videos tend to get traffic for my newer videos, and they tend to play off one another.

This is why consistency is key for anyone who's planning on making a career out of YouTube. You can't just upload infrequently or stop uploading altogether and expect the revenue to be consistent. YouTube is also a very, very slow process. The first month on YouTube, I made a whopping three dollars and 33 cents. Then the next month in February, I almost made a whopping $25. Keep in mind this is with me making three videos a week and probably spending about 20 hours a week creating content, editing it, responding to comments, and doing everything else that comes along with YouTube.

Then the next month in March, one of my videos ended up taking off and getting a decent amount of views, and that resulted in fourteen hundred and forty-four dollars in ad revenue. I remember it was at this point when I started to realize, like, wait a second, this stuff can really start to add up over time. I had no idea that someone could actually make that amount of money from YouTube, and to me, to make fourteen hundred dollars online, to me that was just mind-blowing. Like to me, that may as well have been a hundred grand.

So it was at that point that I decided to invest all the money I made from YouTube to actually buy a legitimate camera, lighting equipment, audio equipment, and everything else so they can actually make better, more consistent content. Before then, I filmed 100% with my iPhone, and then I used iMovie through iMovie tutorials on YouTube to learn how to edit these videos.

So I don't want to hear any excuses that you guys don't have professional lighting equipment or camera equipment or know how to do it. I didn't have any of that, and I still managed to make about $3,000 up until that point from using my iPhone. As long as you're giving value and helping people and entertaining people along with good SEO and some planning, there is zero reason why you can't succeed.

So now, about 16 months later, and about 1,600 hours of work put into this, we're sitting at just over seven thousand dollars per month in ad revenue, and that's nothing to sneeze at. Not to mention, I've had so much fun making YouTube videos and editing and just the whole process and just the creative outlet here. Not to mention some of the really cool people I've met from YouTube, and I've actually ended up meeting some really great friends in the process, and I owe it 100% to YouTube.

Like I said, the ad revenue when it comes to YouTube is fairly inconsistent. Now in December, I made just over seven thousand dollars that month, but in February I made about thirty-two hundred dollars per month. That's over a 50% decrease in revenue. So if someone's relying on ad revenue alone to make a living off of YouTube, it's gonna be extremely difficult and nerve-wracking because at the end of the day, it's really up to YouTube to decide how much they want to push your videos and how much exposure you end up getting. And with that exposure is how much money you end up making.

Now other channels, like prank channels or gaming channels or any other niche, can end up paying significantly less. I've seen some channels that do, you know, 10 million views a month, and they make less in ad revenue than I do, so it really comes down to the type of channel and how much those advertisers pay to be on your channel.

Know one thing really quick I want to mention about YouTube ad revenue is that I have personally found that the more revenue a video generates, the more likely YouTube is to promote and recommend that video to other audiences. Which means that that video and that channel end up getting more exposure. This is one of the main reasons why I highly recommend any content creators on YouTube put ads in their videos. YouTube is a business, and like any business, they're driven by profit. If your video is generating them revenue, all of a sudden, now they have a financial incentive to watch that video succeed.

For them to watch that video succeed, it means they give your channel additional exposure. So in order to grow to your full potential on YouTube, you do need to begin monetizing as soon as you can. Those ads that you do end up watching help out the channel dramatically by giving it additional exposure by showing YouTube that they have a financial interest in the video succeeding.

And I apologize if anyone has ever been bothered by the one to two ads I will sometimes put in a 10 to 20-minute video, but I do want to say that from the research I've done, this ends up helping out dramatically in the YouTube algorithm in determining where I rank and also how much exposure they give that video. Now the second source of revenue that I have when it comes to YouTube is Amazon affiliate links.

Now this is pretty small; it's averaged about $60 per month, but you'll notice sometimes in the description I'll have Amazon affiliate links to link to some of the books I recommend. Now anytime you get a book like that, sometimes I might make a few cents. Sometimes it might be as high as $1, but overall, over the course of the last year or so that I've been doing Amazon affiliate links, I've made about $60 per month.

But it does add up over time, and it's something that you could eventually just reinvest back into the channel. Now for other content creators out there, you could probably do a better job than me at Amazon affiliate links by linking to higher-priced products. A lot of people will link to camera equipment or audio equipment or things with a higher price tag, so you can optimize this in different ways. I just choose to put eBooks because I'm often asked for one of my favorite books, linking in the description.

But again, if you want to make a living one day off of YouTube, you really shouldn't be relying on Amazon affiliate links because overall, the pay is really not that good. Although it is something and it does add up over time. The third source of revenue here is from my program, the Real Estate Agent Academy, and this is something I spent months planning, filming, editing, and putting together that teaches people how to generate business as a real estate agent.

Now this type of real estate agent audience is pretty small compared to the larger demographic of my channel, but it does seem to consistently generate about sixty-three hundred dollars per month with very little advertisement on my end. I'd probably say I'm still a few months away from breaking even on this, given how much time I've invested in planning this and putting it together. Although I think long-term it should end up doing pretty well. But to be honest, though, creating that program was really just a labor of love.

I put so much time into that, I had so much fun doing that, and it's so cool to see my students succeeding. It's cool just to think I'm a small part of their success, and that just blows my mind. Now for anybody out there who's thinking they also want to create a program or a course or something that teaches people how to do something, just be aware it takes a lot of time and planning to actually pull it off. The program that I have is just about a hundred videos and just over eight hours of content.

Now to be able to do that and have the content as condensed as possible in the order that you need it, covering everything, I'm guessing I spent about 300 hours putting this thing together. I just want to throw this out there: if you add up the hours that I've worked as a real estate agent in 2017 and you multiply that by $300 per hour, that works out to about $75,000. That's how much my time is worth for 300 hours as a real estate agent.

So you can see that I don't get quite the same ROI on YouTube even selling a course as I do as a real estate agent, but it is something for me that is so much fun to do. Again, it's really just a labor of love, and I don't look at everything I do as a monetary return where I try to squeeze the most dollars out of every hour possible. But for purposes of this video, I thought it was a good idea to break it down in these perspectives just to give you guys an example of what goes on behind the scenes and exactly what's involved.

Now finally, my last source of revenue when it comes to YouTube is one-on-one coaching calls with real estate agents or real estate investors. I would say this brings in about $400 per month, depending on how many people I talk to. Usually, it might only be two or three, and it's really just on a case-by-case basis. This is another one of those things that usually doesn't have a good ROI, and it's not scalable whatsoever, but this is something that I just end up really enjoying, and it's so much fun talking to some of you guys, strategizing, and seeing how you can improve.

I really do enjoy it, and overall, I have fun with it. If it brings in an extra $400 a month, so be it. Plus, like I mentioned earlier, seeing them succeed feels like it's a part of my success as well, and I just like to see people do well, and that makes me feel great, so I enjoy it.

So all in all, between YouTube ad revenue, Amazon affiliate links, coaching calls, and my program, I end up making about thirteen thousand to eight hundred dollars per month. I would estimate I probably spend about a hundred and thirty hours per month on YouTube making videos, planning videos, editing videos, answering comments, and doing everything else that goes along with YouTube. Doing this is so much fun; I would be doing this even if I made $0 or if I made a hundred thousand dollars from this.

I would be doing this regardless just because I enjoy it that much. So I definitely don't want to give anyone the idea that the only reason I'm doing this is for money because that couldn't be further from the truth, and I would be doing this regardless of how much money I make. But I have a feeling this video might inspire other people just to show them you can make a living off of YouTube, and you can do this full-time as long as you're helping other people and offering more value than what you receive in return.

Now the one thing I've yet to mention in a video like this, especially when it comes to making money off YouTube, is sponsored videos, and this could be a large component to how much a YouTube channel really can end up making. Now just for the record, I have turned down every single sponsor request that has ever come through my email. They offer between one thousand and three thousand dollars per video for a thirty to sixty-second mention. This works out if I do twelve videos a month to twelve thousand to thirty-six thousand dollars per month in sponsored video revenue. That's a lot of money.

One sponsor even offered to pay me five thousand dollars just to put a link in the description to an ICO, and guess what? I turned that down. Most of the sponsors that end up hitting me up are pretty scammy. They seem a little fly-by-night, and I'm just not comfortable putting anything on the channel that will jeopardize my reputation or put you guys at any risk. Plus, there's no amount that someone could offer me where I would feel like I'm ever selling out to you guys because at this point, everyone who watches just seems like family, and there's no way that I would ever consider selling out for something I really didn't believe in.

Now, that isn't to say that one day I wouldn't like to be sponsored by like a Zillow or a Redfin or Trulia or something that I use day-to-day and like really like and stand behind. So if you guys are watching from like Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, hit me up! Slide into the DMs. But for everybody else, the answer is pretty much always a no. For any other creator out there, it's really so important to choose your sponsors wisely. If you end up making sponsored videos, a bad sponsor could really end up breaking your channel and ruining the reputation that you have with your subscribers, and ruining all the work and effort you put in.

Now for anyone thinking of doing something similar or wanting to make a living off of YouTube, just know that you absolutely can, but it's going to be slow to start, and success is not gonna happen overnight. You will need to work up front for a long time at a loss, just with the expectation that if you entertain people and give them enough value, eventually it will come back to you.

So my biggest recommendation for something like this is really just to keep it as a hobby and do it 100% for fun, regardless of how much money you end up making. Then, at a later time, if you see you're actually ending up making money, and you're really loving it and you really enjoy it, and you want to do even more of it, then at that time consider doing it full-time. But make sure you do it with the mindset of I had so much fun doing this, this is what I would be doing regardless of whether or not I was making money.

Going into that with that mindset is really going to make it a lot easier where you don't get discouraged when you look at the views and the views aren't that good, or the ad revenue isn't that good, where people aren't clicking your links, or you're just not making money off of it. You're doing it because you really enjoy doing it. I would not be doing this if I did not 100% want to be doing this on a Sunday night when I could be watching season three of Better Call Saul, which I have been putting off forever because I've been making YouTube videos for you guys.

One little final last note here: if you end up ever selling something on your channel, just make sure you end up providing more information than what the other person paid for. Make sure you always give more value than what you receive. This is the only way for anything to be sustainable long-term, otherwise you're not gonna have happy people. They're not gonna come back, they're not gonna want to associate with you anymore, and they're just going to be upset. That never is a good business model.

The thing that I've always practiced is just giving more value than what I get in return, and this, for me, is the best long-term method possible because it doesn't matter even if you're doing it at a loss for a few years because you just care about what's gonna happen 10 to 20 years from now. So I don't look at anything I do in the short term. Even if it's a short-term loss, I don't really care because I know long-term it's all gonna work out.

If you're considering doing something like this, never give yourself the excuse that you don't have enough time to do this because we all know that's both. I was working 6 to 7 days a week as a real estate agent full-time, and then I would get home about 9:00 p.m. From 9:00 p.m. to about 2:00 a.m., I was making YouTube videos. You will find the time! If I can find the time in a busy career of working in real estate and buying real estate to somehow make 3 videos a week with everything else I have going on, 100% you can do the same thing.

So with that said, you guys, I really hope you appreciate the transparency and honesty in a video like this, and I really hope it's able to help you guys out. So if you enjoyed this, make sure to give this video a like, and also feel free to comment down below. Any sort of engagement on this channel does really help out a lot with the YouTube algorithms. And if you watched it and you've enjoyed this, make sure you also hit the subscribe button and the notification bell so YouTube notifies you anytime I upload a video.

Also, feel free to add me on Snapchat and Instagram; I post there pretty much daily. So if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there. Thank you again for watching, and until next time!