How much do YouTubers earn? The highest-paid YouTube stars

At the very beginning, let’s mention an important YouTube feature. The company pays each influencer differently, depending on the country watching the video. The audience from the USA and Western Europe brings the greatest payouts. Unfortunately, the Russian-speaking YouTubers are in the worst situation. Due to the war in Ukraine, the company generally disabled monetization for the Russian audience.

This is how Google explains the income distribution of YouTubers. “Revenue Per Mille (RPM) represents how much money you’ve earned per 1,000 video views. Several revenue sources, including ads, channel memberships, YouTube premium revenue, Super Chat and Super Sticker, make up the RPM metric”.

How much do YouTubers make?

It’s important to understand that YouTube doesn’t just pay influencers. The company charges a certain amount (which varies from country to country) for the viewed videos. For convenience, it is customary to consider Revenue Per Mile (1,000 views). However, YouTube takes its share of this income and only then does the influencer receive payments. This last amount will be based on the RPM.

The average cost per 1,000 views for a YouTuber in the US is six to eight USD. Bloggers from the USA, Canada, Australia or the UK get five to 30 USD for 1,000 views. The cost of views also depends on the subject matter and the depth of the audience involvement. This is the amount without considering Google’s share. For every 1,000 ad views, advertisers pay a certain rate to YouTube. YouTube then takes 45%, and the creator gets the rest.

How much does YouTube pay for 1 million views?

In the most favorable scenario, you can earn about 15K USD for one million views. To get closer to a symbolic million dollars, you need to release no less than 67 videos, which should gain at least one million views. So, the business plan for an influencer will be as follows: to become a millionaire, you need to post a video per week, which will gain millions of views in just over a year. YouTube will pay a cherished million dollars for the content. This scheme, of course, does not consider the cost of content production, taxes and salary for the influencer’s team. It obviously will take time to get a million dollars unless the first video does not gain dozens of millions of views from the start.

Let’s look at those who managed to get to the top of YouTube, those on the list of the richest YouTubers of recent times, and considered the most successful YouTubers in 2021.

YouTubers who made a real fortune

This is not a ranking by income but the top 6 iconic YouTubers we choose. In our opinion, these are the people who, as they say, should be known by sight.

Ryan's World

No matter how it sounds, Ryan Kaji spent most of his life with YouTube. He writes game reviews and entertainment content for kids. His channel has more than 32 million subscribers. Ryan Kaji is currently a ten-year-old boy. He celebrated his last birthday on October 19 2021, and his channel Ryan’s World and his toy reviews have just completed six years on the YouTube platform.

According to Forbes, the boy earned 27 million USD last year. By the way, this is not a record for a child; he has a competitor Nastya, who is eight years old, and in 2021, she earned $28 million.

DanTDM

Daniel Robert Middleton, better known online as DanTDM, is a British YouTuber and gamer known for his video game commentaries. His online video channels have covered many games, including Minecraft, Roblox and Pokemon. His channel is listed among the top YouTube channels in the United Kingdom.

With 26 million subscribers and 18.5 billion views on his videos, DanTDM’s net worth is estimated at $35 million.

Not a single video was released on his channel in April 2022, and there were only three in March. Perhaps DanTDM decided that he had already earned enough for a quiet life without social media.

Mark Fischbach (Markiplier)

Mark introduces himself on his channel, “From quality content to meme-able garbage, from scary games to full-on interactive movies, you’ll find it all. You will, actually. I have over 5,000 videos, so I’m sure there’s something you’d like.

”He has more than 32 million subscribers, and in terms of income for 2021, he is in the TOP three of the coolest YouTubers.

Felix Kjellberg (PewDiePie)

He is a cult blogger with an audience of 111 million. As of 2022, PewDiePie’s net worth is $40 million.

One of his first publications to become a hit was his play-by-play video of the beloved game “Minecraft” in 2010. After dropping out of college, Kjellberg decided to pursue a career with his YouTube channel when being a YouTuber wasn’t seen as much of a viable career path.

Evan Fong (VanossGaming)

Evan Fong, otherwise known as VanossGaming, is a Canadian gamer and internet personality with a net worth of $25 million. Evan plays games like Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty.

Lest you think that only guys make money on YouTube, we also want to introduce you to Huda Kattan. Her Beauty Blog has four million followers. However, her videos do not gain a lot of views. This is exactly when social networks do not provide a staggering income but help develop their brand. Huda is the Founder and CEO of Huda Beauty, selling cosmetics under her brand that has brought her more than $560 million.

Well, now is the most interesting thing. Which of the YouTubers earned the most at the end of 2021?

Here are the top 10 highest-paid YouTube stars of 2021, according to Forbes estimates:

• MrBeast – 54 million USD

• Jake Paul – 45 million USD

• Markiplier – 38 million USD

• Rhett & Link – 30 million USD

• Unspeakable – 28.5 million USD

• Like Nastya – 28 million USD

• Ryan Kaji (Ryan’s World) – 27 million USD

• Dude Perfect – 20 million USD

• Logan Paul – 18 million USD

• Preston – 16 million USD

In general, everyone on this list deserves attention. First, however, we want to talk about Jimmy Donaldson, aka, MrBeast, in more detail.

The highest-paid YouTuber celebrated his 24th birthday on May 7. His main YouTube channel has 94 million subscribers, and the MrBeast Gaming channel has 27 million.

For the March cover of Rolling Stone magazine, MrBeast was photographed lying on a huge pile of dollars. If he wanted to, he could repeat the famous frame from the Breaking Bad series, where the show’s characters lie down on a mountain of money. He loves shocking, crazy tricks, surprises and giving away money, and, of course, loves to be the first. In 2021, his videos totaled 10 billion views, double the previous year’s number.

“If you ask anybody that knew Jimmy before, they’d be like, ‘Really? Jimmy got famous?’ He was always real quiet”, writes Rolling Stone magazine.

Ten years ago, Jimmy Donaldson started as a PewDiePie-style game reviewer. Yes, this is the case when a student is about to bypass his master. So, today, MrBeast YouTube LLC is building three sprawling content and production hubs in his hometown of Greenville, North Carolina.

Steve Jobs and Elon Musk inspired him. In the Rolling Stone interview, he admits that he began to study how virality helps promote YouTube videos. And to be fair, he understands the way it works. With such a huge subscriber base, he manages to make viral content with more people watching videos than there are subscribers on the main channel.

Like the Squid Game series, he spent nearly four million USD to create this video and awarded the winner a 456K USD prize.

So far, his channel has taken fifth place in the YouTube rating of subscribers. In fourth place is his “teacher” PewDiePie. But, of course, MrBeast wants to be on the top of the YouTube rankings. To do this, he still needs no less than 117 million subscribers. So, we will soon see if he manages to become the main YouTuber on the planet.

If you are interested in the Youtubers’ earnings and the data that directly affects the monetization mechanisms: the geography of channels’ audience, the level of bloggers’ audience engagement and the predicted price of advertising integrations – all of this can be obtained from Hypetrain specialists. We would be glad to get your feedback.