How Much YouTube Has Paid Me in the Last Year
Building an income from YouTube takes time and dedication, but you can absolutely make it happen! Here’s how much Youtube has paid me in the last year.
How Much YouTube Has Paid Me in the Last Year
Want to watch a video version of this post? I’ve got you covered!
Sometimes I forget how great it is to be monetized because YouTube is not my primary income source (passive income is the best, people). I usually share monthly income reports, but today I’m diving in to the whole, entire last 365 days.
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My YouTube Journey
I started my YouTube channel in 2016, but at that time I was just using it as an asset for my blog posts. I wasn’t optimizing anything, I wasn’t posting consistently… you get the gist. In June of 2017, I realized I was almost at 500 subscribers on YouTube without doing a lot.
I remember thinking, if I can hit 500 subscribers on YouTube without doing a lot, I can probably hit several thousand subscribers when I put strategy into it.
So, I made the decision to go full-force with YouTube as my platform. My channel got monetized right around the same time, in July of 2017. In September of that year, while I was doing an intensive Mastermind course with Tim Schmoyer, my channel had 1,700 subscribers.
I know the monetization requirements were different at that time, but I know that I hit them right around July 1, 2017.
How Much I Made in the First Year of Being Monetized
In the entire first year of being monetized (from 2017-2018), I made about $4,600 from YouTube. I was just getting my footing and I still didn’t have the strategy figured out. The first day I was monetized, I made $0.09. I didn’t start making a few dollars per day until January of that next year.
My Second Year Earnings (July 2018-July 2019)
In that second year, I made almost $15,000 from YouTube. Again, I had very few subscribers even then, but my earnings increased a ton.
How Much YouTube Has Paid Me in the Past Year (July 2019-2020)
I made $31,224.52 in my third full year of being monetized. That’s INSANE, y’all.
I quit my corporate job when my oldest son was born – this year, that makes 10 years ago. That job was my first, full-time, corporate job out of college, and I stayed there three years before I quit. I received a performance review before I quit where they told me I would be getting a raise from the company.
For whatever reason, because of that conversation, I remember what I made per hour when I left the company. I made about $15 per hour. If you do the math, my salary was $31,200. At my corporate job, with a four-year degree, as my only income.
From July 1, 2019, to July 1, 2020, just my YouTube revenue was the same amount of money as my corporate salary.
That’s insane. I had a “good job” here and was making good money. Now, with YouTube as a secondary income source, I made more in my third year of monetization just from YouTube than I did there,
My Earnings for the Past 365 Days
This was filmed on August 14, so I wanted to include my earnings for this year up to this point. From last August 14 to now, I made $32,846.20.
Like I’ve talked about before, my income started climbing in March 2020. I can only imagine what that’s going to look like in one year from now as my channel continues to grow.
It’s insane to realize I made more money in one year just from YouTube than I made at my corporate job. Looking forward, it's possibly going to be double or triple what I made in my corporate job… It makes me super appreciative of the grit that I had to branch out on this entrepreneurial journey!
It took my six years from starting my business(es) to start my YouTube channel, and it took me a solid few years of having my channel before I really made any money from it. But I am so very thankful for it now.
Sometimes, the people who make these videos show their overnight success. They had one video that went viral or just took off two months ago, and now they’re making $10,000 per month from YouTube. My channel has always grown very consistently – I’ve never had something that completely skyrocketed my channel.
I just want to show you that people on YouTube who blow up and have this massive growth do happen (which is incredible and amazing), but slow and steady growth will get you there as well. It can be really frustrating to see people who enter my niche and suddenly blow up. But to see that I am consistently making more money from YouTube than I did in my corporate job, make me realize this is awesome. Whether or not I skyrocketed to success doesn’t matter.
