It would be no lie to call this age the age of the “Social media revolution.” The COVID-19 pandemic further cemented it.
Many people today are earning their livelihood through various activities on social networks. YouTube is one of the most prominent spaces for creators to showcase and leverage their talents.
Over the years, live streaming has become a popular tool for creators to engage with their audience. Two platforms are particularly popular among streamers: Twitch and YouTube.
If you want to become a streamer on YouTube, you must be wondering how much you can make. So, how many YouTube streamers can make?
YouTube streamers can earn revenue from ad views. YouTube pays between $0.1 to $0.3 per ad view. So, if you have 500 views, you can make between $50 to $150 (but you won’t earn all that). More views or a bigger audience size means more revenue. Additionally, streamers can make money from Live Chat (Super Chat and Super Stickers), channel memberships, selling merchandise, and affiliate marketing.
Live streaming has become more popular since the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak. Today, it is the most effective tool for creators to make money and brands to casually plug their products into their target market. Let’s learn how much you can make from YouTube streams.
How To Make Money From Streaming on YouTube
In recent years, the world has seen a consistent popularity of live streamers and live streaming platforms like Twitch. Initially, it worked with gamers only; now, live streaming is on the rising trend among non-gamers as well.
Live streaming is the most effective way to engage and connect with your audience to showcase your talent or market your products.
Besides Twitch, YouTube is one of the endearing platforms for streamers. Today, the audience is more interested in watching live streams than any form of content.
To become a streamer on YouTube, you must weigh your opportunities before hopping on the bandwagon.
Now, let’s discuss how you can make money from streaming on YouTube.
After the pandemic, there has been a consistent surge in live stream popularity. As per reports in 2021, live streams accounted for over 40% of the total watched hours. Today, there is a rise in live shopping trends on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Ads Revenue
You can make money from YouTube live streams via ads. First, you must become a YouTube Partner to enable the monetization features.
To become a YouTube Partner, you must have:
- At least 1,000 subscribers and over 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months; or
- 10 million public watch hours on Shorts in the last 90 days.
Once your channel is monetized and your live stream is eligible, you can start making money from ads. You can have the following kinds of ads on your live streams (if eligible).
- Pre-roll ads: ads before the stream.
- Mid-roll ads: ads during the stream (automatically or manually inserted ads).
- Display and overlay ads.
Live Chat
Another way to make money on YouTube live stream is via Live Chat features Super Chat and Super Stickers.
Viewers can purchase various live chat features like chat animations (Super Stickers) or pay to get their comments highlighted or pinned on top (Super Chat).
The revenue of these purchases also goes to the creator, while some percentage of YouTube keeps with it.
Channel Membership
If you have a loyal audience, you can set up a membership-exclusive channel for them with premium content. Streamers can make money from such memberships as well.
Streamers can make further money from selling their merchandise and also via affiliate marketing.
How Much Streamers Can Make on YouTube?
The amount of money a streamer can make depends on their chosen monetization strategy. For ads, YouTube pays between $0.1 to $0.3 per ad view. So, if you have 500 views, your revenue will be between $50 and $150. But note that YouTube takes its cut from that revenue.
A larger audience means more ad revenue; for example, 50,000 ad views mean a revenue between $ 5,000 to $15,000.
Not only this, but you can also make money from other tools as discussed above: Live Chat (Super Chat and Super Sticker), Channel membership, selling merchandise, and affiliate marketing.
For Live Chat features, YouTube keeps 30% of the purchases made by your audience and gives 70% of the proceeds to the streamers. Similarly, 70% of the subscription fee is given to the broadcaster.
So, the more loyal audience you have, the more revenue you can generate via various monetization tools.
Conclusion
Live streaming is the present and the future of digital content creation. So, it is time to learn more about it and how you can make money from various platforms.
In this article, we learned YouTube streamers can make money from stream ad views (between $0.1 to $0.3 per view), live chat (Super Chat and Stickers), channel membership, selling merchandise, and affiliate marketing.
The crux is to have a loyal audience with quality content to increase your chances of making money on your live streams.
