News December 5, 2018

A data scientist worked out how many YouTube subscribers you need to earn $20K a month

In a Medium post, UK data scientist Taimur Abdaal has outlined the number of subscribers a YouTube user would need to hit monthly monetary milestones.

Using his experience working with early stage start-ups, and his work as a data scientist at Nested from 2017–2018 – along with his degree in Maths & Statistics at Oxford – Abdaal said influencers (aka artists) will need 100,000 subscribers to make around $2,000 a month.

Source: How to Make a Living on the Internet by Taimur Abdaal

Abdaal understands that subscribers don’t directly translate to views; he stated in his post that users could expect 20% of their subscriber base to watch each video.

So where should the rest of it come from? Abdaal said there are four routes to take to build your subscriber base:

Running ads alongside your content
Sponsorship deals with brands
Direct donations and subscriptions
Hawking your own wares

Taimur Abdaal

The quickest route to earning revenue on YouTube (aside from creating engaging content) is to become eligible for the YouTube Partner Program. The streaming giant’s monetisation tool, which runs pre and post-roll ads with your content, is available to users with at least 1,000 subscribers.

“Once you’re a partner and choose to display ads, you can earn roughly $1 per 1,000 views,” said Abdaal in his Medium post. “With 1,000 subscribers, you might make enough to cover a cup of coffee a week if you post regularly.

“To hit $500 per month through ad revenue alone would require roughly 500,000 total video views per month. Posting two new videos a week, you’d need approximately 60,000 views on each.”

How many followers you’ll need to hit monetary milestones:

taimur How to Make a Living on the Internet

Source: How to Make a Living on the Internet by Taimur Abdaal

Abdaal said if you want to reach the milestones sooner, you need to get creative.

“This typically involves creating a product or service to sell to your followers,” he said. “If you’re in a skills-based niche, you can do very well by creating a paid online course for your followers. If not, creating branded merchandise — T-shirts, mugs, hats — works too.”

Still think is hard to make bank just on streaming platforms? Forbes has released a list of YouTube’s highest-paid stars, and the top earner is a 7-year-old boy who reviews toys for other kids.