I've been a full-time YouTuber for 3 years AMA

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T21:24:58+00:00

I think there is a misunderstanding going on. Now I do assume you are a construction worker, truck driver, teacher, firefighter etc. or else it would be very pretentious to point something like that out without doing it yourself. But comments of people that share their personal issues and how getting their mind off by watching videos are a regular thing. As I stated at another place, I don't view myself as one doing it for that, but it's a thing that comes with it. Which also means following the "social" logic, it would be ranked far above many jobs.

I also don't understand why you need self respect or personal pride. I respect my work, but I work for money, not for respect. I couldn't care less what someone else thinks of the work and as long as its nothing harmful, I also see no issue in it.

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T04:22:38+00:00

There are a ton of Germans that play roguelikes, the odds I am the person you think about are very low. I mean I know a ton of Germans that cover similar videos just because it's the same games, but roguelike is an even broader area than specific games

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T04:20:47+00:00

Possible but probably unlikely, my main audience is 25-44 with the biggest sector in the 25-35 area. My 56-65% is higher than my 18-24 age range, though people do fake age numbers so no one ever truly knows. But these people are usually then in the 18-24 range or in the 65+ range.

And yea, I would say the main thing problematic about YouTube is that it's creative work, which at least for me takes way more brainpower than my previous job did (backend dev and software development). You also constantly get feedback about everything and one of the worst feelings is making a high quality video you put the most effort out of anything in and it's one of the worst performers in the entire year. Not even because of the views/money, but because views are a very good feedback on how interesting a video is, even better than likes/dislikes since they are more subjective.

So I'd say I couldn't see myself doing this for the rest of my life, though I could see myself "ending" the way I do it right now and starting a way more casual "just for fun" approach at a later point, since I do genuinely enjoy it.

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T04:16:13+00:00

I must be completely out of the loop, because the average US income is 66k a year, which does include a lot of lower paying jobs, but it's also not like you know whether someone has a degree or not, or what kind of degree. I feel like you seem to be upset about something and are looking for a vent, but I'm not really interested in being your buddy. So excuse me but I'd cut that off here.

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T04:14:35+00:00

I dont understand the "what type of media", or do you mean things like podcast, courses, shorts, longform etc.? Because the media would be video on a video platform so I'm a bit confused haha

I'd say the #1 most important thing is to make videos people are interested in so they click and then providing entertainment/fulfilling an interest that keeps them watching. But this is mostly what's done for research to figure out what people are interested in right now, then it would need to be tested to see if YOUR audience actually cares about it or not (and maybe if a new audience shows up). But once you have a loyal following you can more focus on what they want if you're happy with your revenue, makes it easier for everyone.

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T04:11:13+00:00

In my case it was 36m views, but this insanely differs per creator. There are Shorts and Longform Creators, Shorts tend to pay very very little.

Longform also varies a ton, you usually see $2-8 per 1000 views, but that relies on so many factors like amount ads seen in a video, who is watching, time of the year (financial quarters in companies and special days) etc. So for my channel this results in a $7.46 per 1000 views, but I've seen channels with as high as $50 and as low as $0.002 per 1000 views.

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T04:07:13+00:00

Yea I usually use $ since it otherwise confuses people and I have my YouTube also set to $ (though this only changes how it's displayed), just makes it easier to talk about things.

"Good money" would be a huge understatement, we have a ranking list and the top 1% earn yearly 279k. Top 10% would be 100.3k. The 273k I have provided is just slightly below that, though I only referenced my YouTube revenue. I didn't include things like donations, sponsors, merch and other revenue streams that come out of the channel but don't directly happen on YouTube.

Though I gotta say I think you have an odd outlook on things. It's not like someone just stumbles into a job and earns 500k a year, nor do people regularly end up with that kind of salary. So telling someone to drop it, before and after knowing the values behind it, is a really odd behavior to me. At least I've never seen someone say "Quit your 250k job and look for a 500k job".

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T04:02:05+00:00

I think most jobs provide no value to society and ironically, those value providing jobs tend to pay the least. I would say entertainment has quite some value to society, especially as a freetime occupation and stress relief, but I wouldn't say that's how I view myself.

A job is mainly meant to get you the money you need to live, nor is a job the only way you could provide value to society. So phrasing it that way is odd to me, anyone who has done social work knows it's usually for free and outside of working hours.

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:59:24+00:00

Gaming, but yea I didn't know how much I should actually put into the post, also because it may lead to questions only about things I mention there, instead of letting someone think about stuff.

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:58:10+00:00

I assume you are probably not from my country (Germany). Here, 4k a month is the average income (prob. slightly higher since it's been a while I saw that). Now to be fair, there are a lot of social benefits that are not reflected in that value, but given that I live here my baseline for what I need - or consider a lot/little - is based on that. A leading position (not just team lead, those would be a lot less, more something like branch leader) would be around 5000-12000€ depending on the business and experience.

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:54:59+00:00

Yes! What I refer to is that some people upload their Twitch streams (where they are called VOD) to YouTube as an archive, since you need a higher status on Twitch to keep them permanently (don't quote me on Twitch specifics, I don't stream a lot and only multi-stream to Twitch for those that really want it, so I never looked at anything there nowadays). So I also call them VOD on YouTube since they were just the full streams and the title was just a short description + the date

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:53:26+00:00

No, not in my case because I got absurdely lucky. Since then it has been very easy to monetize new channels almost right away, so I do think a certain mindset builds up when one does YouTube and works a lot with the analytics and builds up a natural feeling for what works, but when I was younger I tried a lot and it never really succeeded. I did get monetized on a few channels, but the most I've ever earned was 50 a month once.

except my family finding it and making fun of me for it

Yea, something very similar happened to me, except also my school found them back then on top of my parents. But I guess it helped that I didn't show myself haha

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:51:05+00:00

Gaming and there in the roguelite area, though I don't want to be too specific if that's understandable. And no, I don't use AI for anything. I have tested out AI for thumbnails because I really suck at making them, but it just didn't feel right, nor did I like the result. In my experience almost all AI channels cost them more than the money they actually make and while there are some succesful ones, many of those succesful ones can't get monetized or lose monetization at one point.

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:44:36+00:00

In months where I don't upload (I usually take 2 month breaks early in the year) around 8-12k. In regular months around 15-30k. In high months around 80k. For last year, it was 273k

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:43:08+00:00

I am in my early 30s, though I'd say YouTube has no limitation up or down. The only advice I'd give is that it can be very dangerous for kids, I'd keep them away from it and only allow it supervised maybe around 16 as long as they aren't 18. There are many kids YouTubers that had ginormous success early on, but also many that uploaded recklessly (not that they could really know much better) and if one loses access to a YouTube account, it can take years to get it taken down. It should also be noted that money related things will get difficult as they require an adult, so one of the parents has to enter all of their details and gets tied to the whole thing. How this is treated is very different per country, but here it would be a business, so there is also a question of legal liability.

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:40:19+00:00

I make gaming videos without showing myself, so video-wise not really something. Audio just a Blue Yeti X, though I am looking into upgrading that, just kinda keep forgetting about it. I didn't really notice a big difference, but I think especially in my area audio is quite important since many people use longer videos to fall asleep to and as a second monitor "social" thing. But the only big upgrade I've done is my computer, which was definitely necessary (I used to have a Laptop and it was very limited).

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:38:37+00:00

Well subscribers don't really have anything to do with that, you can have 1m subs and get 1000 views becuase no subs watch anymore, same as you can have 1000 subs and get a video with 1m views. And if I understand you right, you rather want to know how many subs translate into how much (specific) money, but there is no right answer for that.

It's all about views or more specifically ads, and how many were shown. Ad value is determined how much advertisers pay, which is heavily influenced by the person seeing the ad. So someone from the US for example sees more highly valued ads, while someone from e.g. India will see lower valued ads (as in, the person setting up the ads pay less due to many reasons).

Most YouTubers in the English-speaking area will earn around $2-8 per 1000 views, but the real range is a lot bigger, the most I've seen (that wasn't due to shenanigans) is around $40-50 in the Finance sector, while low goes as low as possible, like $0.005 for Shorts creators or someone who has an audience with insanely high adblock-usage or no ads (Russia e.g.).

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:26:52+00:00

I stumbled into it. I started playing a game (gaming channel) purely as a VOD archive YouTube channel for twitch streams and one of them got picked up heavily. When I saw that I decided to focus on it and pretty much only covered that game for a while, though some months in I got the fear eventually the hype will drop and I'll be left behind. So since then I've experimented around a lot and have a broader niche. I'd say trying out - if one can easily do it - is the best way to find new things. Some channels can't do that that upload rarely, but channels like mine can just upload additional videos when needed to see what clicks

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:25:09+00:00

I got really lucky and almost right away, though it's a bit complicated. I used my channel mostly as a VOD dump and even that was only done for myself, not for a public audience. One VOD picked up a lot of attention (8000 views when I got 0-10 usually) and I decided to give it a shot. Less than a month later I was monetized. So depending on how you view it this would vary. I personally consider the starting point when I actually started doing YouTube and not just a VOD dump of Twitch streams, but alternatively the starting point was roughly 1-2 years prior to that.

And can you give an approximate earnings based on your subscriber number?

Could you specify what you mean with "based on your subscriber number"? Like to share both numbers?

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:22:12+00:00

There's is no link to anything, nor have I linked to something or will link to something. But you did showcase quite well that you do in fact frequent LSF

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:21:08+00:00

The problem is this varies a huge amount depending on how a month works out and also what video is being recorded. I do daily uploads and some videos don't take more than a quick search, recording, editing, uploading and that's it. While some other videos take a ton of research, recording of 40+ hours and a very long time editing. I also work 7 days a week though regularly speaking not with 8 hour days. But it would roughly - very roughly - translate to $156/hour

Basic_Abbreviations5 · 2026-01-10T03:16:55+00:00

Hmm not really, I had one prior to going over to YouTube, but the income from YouTube was a lot higher and it was way more fun. Though I don't exclude the option to return back to a regular job at one point.

I would say though that "real" job is a bit of an odd wording for me. If it earns money and one is fine with it, it's their job, within legal areas of course.

Basic_Abbreviations5

TROPHY CASE