If you are a YouTuber in your early days of content creation or are a seasoned pro who has not yet had that viral moment, you probably watch that view counter with great attention. And as you see the numbers rise, you likely ask yourself, “How much is this going to earn me?”
A search online will normally show that $3 to $5 is the average per thousand views, and it’s actually quite wide of the mark.
That figure is a global average, and averages can skew the real data considerably. These figures blend finance channels earning in the high teens per thousand views and comedy content that might scrape a single dollar or two and not much else. Furthermore, it adds the lucrative USA market, where advertisers spend big, to the markets where lower ad spending is more common.
Piece it together, and you get a wildly inaccurate number that doesn’t represent most channels, including yours.
So, before you start assuming your small level of viral success could be what launches you into the influencer stratosphere, let’s see what your payout could actually be.
What drives YouTuber income?
Two things move your YouTube income more than anything else: your niche and your viewers’ location.
Niche sets the ceiling. Advertisers are happier to pay more to reach someone watching finance or business content than a prank video, because in monetary terms, that person consuming the finance content is worth more than the person watching comedy.
The gap isn’t small either; a decent finance channel could earn several times more than an entertainment channel even when viewing numbers are the same.
Audience location is the next major factor. If the majority of your viewers are in the USA or UK, you’ll earn considerably more than a creator in lower-rate markets, even if in the same niche.
In simple terms, your earnings follow where your viewers are, not where you are based.
The figure that captures this is the RPM. This is your revenue per thousand views, and is the amount you make after YouTube has taken its share and after you account for views where no ad ran at all.
RPM is always lower than the CPM figure, and it is the only figure worth planning around.
When does a YouTube video start earning money?
Before any of the figures we reference start to apply, your video has to be in a position to earn. Ad revenue doesn’t come in from day one. There are specific requirements each YouTuber must meet before ad revenue is even possible.
- At least 1,000 subscribers
- 4,000 valid public watch hours over the past 12 months
- 10 million Shorts views in 90 days rather than 4,000 watch hours if short-form content is your thing
Before you reach 1,000 subscribers, there are ways to still earn, although it isn’t quite as lucrative as advertising. Once you reach 500 subs, have around 3,000 watch hours and have recent, regular upload activity, you have access to “fan funding”. This means channel memberships and “Super Thanks” are made available to you.
It’s perhaps also worth noting that if your most recent video takes off and hits 50,000 views, and your channel isn’t monetised, it won’t earn you a penny. However, you are edging closer to monetisation as you’ll be building up the watch hours that get you there.
What a YouTube Video earns
For a UK-focused channel in a fairly average niche, a realistic RPM is around £1.50 to £3 per thousand views once you’ve taken away the cut for YouTube.
On these figures, it means YouTubers in the UK could expect to have rough earnings as shown in the table below:
| Views on a single YouTube video | Rough earnings (at £1.50-£3 per thousand views) |
| 1,000 | £1.50-£3 |
| 10,000 | £15-£30 |
| 100,000 | £150-£300 |
| 500,000 | £750-£1,500 |
| 1,000,000 | £1,500-£3,000 |
It’s important to understand that these figures are illustrative and not a guarantee of your potential earnings. Your own niche could see you jump way above these levels, but also well below.
Two things nudge these numbers too. Longer videos, typically around 8 minutes or more, often have mid-roll adverts, giving creators the chance to earn more per view than YouTubers who make only very short videos.
Timing also matters, perhaps more than people think. Advertiser budgets surge at different times of the year, but with each surge comes a fall. Advertisers will spend more in the run-up to Christmas, then tighten the purse strings in January. This means a video could earn much more in November or December than it would in January.
How much do you keep from YouTube revenue?
You may have seen your YouTube video earn a decent sum, but what is really important is how much you get to keep. There is often a misleading assumption that what a video earns is what you receive, but the numbers can be very different.
Earning a pound or two from a video won’t change much, but if your channel takes off and the numbers keep rising, HMRC might want to know about it.
Money from YouTube counts as income, and once you earn more than £1,000 from it, you’ll need to declare it and pay tax on it once your total annual income passes your personal tax allowance.
This applies to all income from your channel, not just viewing figures. So if you have a paid subscription, affiliate links, advertising revenue or sponsorships, you’ll have to declare it.
Quite often, many creators don’t see some of these aspects as income. If, for example, a brand sends you a product to feature in your next video, it kind of feels like a freebie. You didn’t pay for it, and they didn’t give you any money to talk about it. To HMRC, though, that gifted product could be taxable. The same applies if you are handed event tickets or have trips paid for in exchange for coverage.
Plenty of creators reach their first tax return with no idea why this matters and no record of items they have been given.
The pitfalls of uneven income
Unfortunately, the nature of YouTube income means it can rise and fall quickly. Earnings spike at the end of the year, but plummet in January. Without taking stock of this, it becomes easy for a creator to spend the money as it lands, then be hit with a huge tax bill months later with no money left to pay it.
However, as with any business, there are tax advantages that could soften the blow of how much could be owed to HMRC.
Tax deductions
Being taxed like a business means you can deduct like one. Cameras, lighting, editing equipment, and even a share of your bills can be added to your deductions, reducing how much tax you need to pay. Remember, a deduction doesn’t hand you back the full cost. It lowers the profit you’re taxed on, so what you actually save is the tax you’d have paid on that amount. For most creators, it’s around 20% of what they spent.
Why guessing is no good
When it comes to settling with the taxman, there is no use in guessing how much was spent and what income was generated. This could be costly and get you into lots of trouble. That’s why many YouTubers look for an accountant for influencers rather than just assuming they can navigate their tax responsibilities on their own.
Knowing which gifted items to declare, what can be claimed back and how much should be set aside each month is the difference between a manageable tax bill and an expensive, unaffordable surprise.
