Youtube live streaming has become a lot more popular over the past year. We are seeing a lot of improvements in the streaming platform and lots of big streamers moving over from Twitch. You may have seen this and wondered how much Youtube pays for live streaming.
You are potentially thinking about starting a stream yourself or are just wondering about how much money your favorite streamers are making. Let’s jump in and take a look at how much money you can make streaming on Youtube.
How Much Does Youtube Pay For Live Streaming
Youtube pays streamers in multiple ways for live streaming. Creators have the ability to earn money through Ad Revenue, Superchats (Donations) and members on their channel. Some streamers will also get third party sponsorships from companies to make more money.
Ways To Monetize A Youtube Live Stream
There are multiple ways Youtube live streamers can make money on their stream. The main source of revenue for Youtube videos is ads but creators have a few different ways to make money while live streaming. Let’s take a look at them.
Ad Revenue
Ad Revenue has always been the main source of revenue on Youtube videos. Streamers can also earn money from ads on their live streams. Ads will play at the beginning, during and after the live stream.
Streamers get paid on a CPM basis (Per 1000 Views) for ads. There are lots of factors that influence how much a channel gets paid per 1000 views. Below is some of the main factors.
Age – The age of your audience will affect how much you get paid. For example, advertisers are more likely to spend money on a 30-year-old audience with disposable income rather than a 14 year old kid.
Country – Where your audience is from will determine how much you get paid. A United States audience pays much more than an audience from India for example.
Niche – The niche or category that you stream in will determine your CPM. For example, gaming videos have much lower CPMs than Finance videos. This is because finance companies are willing to pay a lot of money to reach their audience whereas gaming companies may not have as large of a budget for advertising.
These are just some of the main factors which influence what sort of CPM you will get from Youtube.
To calculate your revenue from ads you can use the formula:
Revenue = CPM x (Views/1000)
The CPM number includes Youtube cut of the revenue. When you look in your Youtube dashboard you will see another number called RPM. This is how much the Streamer actually takes home after Youtubes cut.
To give you some context you can see two of my channels below. One is in the finance Niche and the other is the Streaming niche. There is a massive difference in RPMs.
As you can see, my RPMs on the Finance channel are 8x higher than on my streaming channel. Both get the same amount of views but one makes significantly more. This is why your niche is so important when it comes to streaming or creating content on Youtube.
Super Chats
If you have been watching Youtube streams you will likely have noticed the colored bubbles appearing above the chat with money beside it. These are donations to the streamer. A viewer can send a highlighted message with money to the streamer to get their message seen.
Youtube takes a 30% cut from these donations but the rest goes to the streamer. Some popular streamers get a lot of superchats as their audience wants to be noticed by the streamer.
Members
Members are another popular way to make money on Youtube Live streams. Streamers can offer a membership on their channel which gives them added benefits such as extra videos, loyalty badges and emotes to use in the chat.
Memberships can range all the way from $1 to $100 depending on what the creator decides. A creator can also have multiple different membership tiers offering different benefits to viewers. Most streamers will set their memberships to $4.99 similar to Twitch Subscriptions.
Youtube also takes a 30% cut of Memberships. This means a creator will receive approximately $3.50 for every subscription they get on their channel. Each subscription recurs monthly until the viewer cancels it.
Sponsors
Another way lots of streamers will make money streaming is through sponsorships. Streamers can take on sponsored streams where they maybe play a certain game for that stream and get paid for it. These specific streams can pay thousands of dollars for a couple of hours on stream.
Other streamers will have sponsorships with other brands such as G Fuel where they will exclusively drink it on stream and share their promo code with their audience to promote the product.
Exclusive Youtube Partner Deals
Some streamers have exclusive deals with Youtube which can be in the Millions of dollars. These deals are the main reason you see a lot of streamers such as Courage, Tim TheTatMan and Sykkuno moving over to Youtube.
These streamers are paid a lump sum amount up front to move platforms. If the streamer is big enough this can be a life-changing amount of money setting the streamer up for the rest of their life.
These deals are very selective and only apply to fast-growing or already established creators. Small streamers are unlikely to get any of these exclusive partner deals.
When a streamer signs these contracts they are usually locked in for a minimum number of years and have a requirement to stream for a certain amount of hours each month on the Youtube platform.
Youtube Monetization Requirements
Before you can monetize your Youtube channel there are some requirements that you need to meet. These are outlined below:
- 1000 Subscribers on your channel
- 4000 Hours Of Watch Time
- 0 Community Guideline Strikes
Once you have met these requirements you will be able to apply to the Youtube Partner program. As long as you’re accepted you will be able to start monetizing your live streams and videos.
Wrapping Up
Now you know how your favorite Youtube streamer is getting paid. Depending on the streamer, they will be making vastly different amounts of money. The biggest streamers are running their chat on members-only mode and raking in super chat donations. If you think your good enough to become a professional streamer, there is plenty of money to be made.
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