How Much Does a Small
YouTuber Make?
My first full year in the YouTube Partner Program — February 14, 2024 to February 14, 2025 — paid $1,767.17. Not per month. Total. Here's exactly where every dollar came from, why one video carried almost all of it, and what I'd do to get there faster.
The full breakdown is in the video, if you'd rather watch.
How I got monetized
I posted my first video on February 19, 2019 — a vlog of my buddies and me exploring an old abandoned railroad viaduct. For the next three years I posted here and there and averaged maybe 50 to 100 views a video.
Then I posted a 7-day water fast video I almost didn't upload because I didn't think it was any good. It took off, and it alone pushed me past the 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours I needed for the Partner Program. I was accepted on February 14, 2024.
The breakdown: $1,767.17
- AdSense: $1,440.40 — YouTube's share of ad revenue.
- Affiliate links: $182.50 — mostly Amazon.
- Brand deals: $144.27 — one paid deal.
Brand deals: $144.27
A brand deal is a company paying you to test and recommend its product for 30 to 60 seconds in a video. All $144.27 came from a single deal with Bitrix24, near the end of the year. I also did two deals — with Arrowzoom and another brand — that paid in free product instead of cash. At my size, brand deals were close to nonexistent.
Affiliate marketing: $182.50
You recommend a product through a link, and if someone buys anything through it, you get a percentage. Most of mine came through Amazon, because people click one link and then buy whatever else they need. I also had a referral link for Drift car fresheners that pays in free months of my subscription, not cash. The stuff I actually recommend lives on my desk setup and tools pages.
AdSense: $1,440.40
This is the one everyone asks about. YouTube pays more when people actually watch — someone who stays 30 minutes and clicks another video sees more ads than someone who leaves after five seconds. That's why good, watchable videos earn and clickbait doesn't.
The honest part: my water fast video accounted for roughly $1,200 of that AdSense, plus about $150 of the affiliate money. Take that one video out and the year looks very different. Luck is a byproduct of consistency, though — it only happened because I kept posting.
What I'd do to make more, faster
- Find your niche. If someone finishes my water fast video and the next thing I recommend is how to rent out a car, they leave. If every video sits in one topic, people binge the channel, and YouTube rewards that. I struggled with this most — I like health, cars, business, music, photography, and YouTube itself, and I just made whatever I felt like.
- Understand your income streams, then prioritize one. AdSense, affiliates, brand deals, merch, memberships, your own site. A tech reviewer should push affiliate links to the gear they review; an entertainer whose videos can't run ads should push merch. Keep the others, but don't send people to the stream they don't care about.
- Keep posting, with discipline. YouTube is simple, not easy. Pick a schedule and stick to it. After 100 videos you'll actually have enough to judge what's working; before that, you're throwing spaghetti at the wall.
And 3.5: don't let perfection delay the content. I used to sit on videos for months polishing the script, edit, and thumbnail. Set the camera up, talk, cut it, post it.
Keep reading
- YouTube Subscriber Count Clock — how I track the exact number on my desk
- 7 Day Water Fast Results — the video that paid for most of year one
I'm a YouTuber in Charleston, South Carolina. I've been posting since 2019, and I share the real numbers behind the channel and my Turo fleet. More about me.
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