It's based more off watch time than anything else it seems, and it's completely dependent on people clicking on the ads, which is inconsistent. Calculated by view though, it comes out to an average of 1/5th a cent per view for me anyway. Since I've hit 1000 subs, my ads seem to be better and paying more, so that number is likely to go up, but my best video so far as far as revenue goes was for the Code Black. 20,650 views, 37,462 minutes of watch time, $27.37 in revenue. I'm sure Tamer has some videos that are close to $100 in revenue, but those aren't the norm. If the ball isn't that popular or doesn't have a lot of hype, it just doesn't get views. My Timeless video is at 17,000 views right now, but my Torrent video is at 7700. They came out at the same time, I released the videos at the same time, but one drew numbers, and the other didn't. It starts to snowball a bit once you get a lot of videos up, because people will still view your old ones at the same time more are watching the new ones, but you really have to have a huge channel to be able to make a living at it. It's nice getting a little deposit every once and a while, but the time it takes to build a channel is significant, and it's almost harder to keep it going up. Once you have a growing subscriber base, nobody wants to sub to a channel that only puts up one video every few weeks, and the only way to grow is views and likes. YouTube has algorithms that seem to be based on number of likes and ratio of likes to dislikes that filters the search results. The top results in a search are always going to be the most popular videos, and it takes some work to get the ball rolling.
You have to reach a minimum $100 to get a deposit for the month, it took me two solid years before I got my first deposit, and at roughly 3 years of making videos more frequently, I'm going to get only my third deposit ever a little later this month. While I can't divulge what I pay for equipment, I still pay for it, and it's likely not as cheap as you expect it to be. My most popular video comes nowhere close to breaking me even on just the ball cost, let alone the time and resources.
Now if you elevate yourself to the level of Justin Wyman who does Motiv's videos, that's a different story, BUT he started out as just a guy who loved the equipment doing all the videos on his own dime and put enough work into it that he's EARNED every bit of his current situation. That's a hell of a lot of dedication and sacrifice, off the charts respect for him.
Not trying to scare anyone away, but in the bowling world, YouTube is a labor of love.
How much does youtube pay?
