Audiences come to YouTube for its engaging and inventive content creators. Content creators come to YouTube because it offers so many avenues for them to earn money – and potentially a lot of it. Learning how to make money on YouTube mostly revolves around deciding which income streams best suit your channel’s current viewership and content.
With that in mind, here’s a detailed overview of the most popular YouTube monetisation options and how you can expect to benefit from them.
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The YouTube Partner Programme paid out over $70 billion (£51 billion) between 2021 and 2023 through a range of monetisation features.
YouTube Ads
Creators can link their YouTube channel with Google AdSense to play ads before, after, or during (for videos longer than eight minutes) your content. You can activate ads any time after a video is published.
Ads earn an estimated $0.2 (£0.15) to $2.50 (£1.88) per 1,000 views, depending on factors such as the location of your users and your content niche. Hootsuite lists “making money online” and “comedy” as the most and least lucrative niches, respectively.
Check out Canadian YouTuber According to Nicole’s video breaking down her monthly ad income throughout 2024. She went from about C$2,600 (£1,400) in January with 44,000 subscribers and about 256,000 monthly views to about C$8,000 (£4,300) in December with 91,000 subscribers and 663,000 monthly views.
YouTube Premium
As of March 2025, 125 million YouTube users pay a monthly fee to get rid of ads altogether with YouTube Premium. Channels can earn a portion whenever Premium subscribers watch their content.
“Now you can see more than 5% of your income from YouTube Premium,” writes Iryna Avramenko for Air Media-Tech. “Many creators who have Premium make up 15%, even 30% of their total revenue.”
Super Chat and Super Stickers
Available for viewers to buy during livestreams and premieres as a token of appreciation and support, Super Chats highlight a comment and Super Stickers add a fun animated sticker to the chat box. Prices are decided by viewers, who must stick to spending limits of $500 (£376) per day or $2,000 (£1,505) per week.
Both features can help going live bring in the bucks. In July, Nigerian pastor Jerry Eze earned over $201,000 (£150,600) from Superchat Live.
YouTube Shopping
Tag products in your videos, including your own merch, so fans can shop the recommendations and earn commissions for you when they buy. Research shows videos with product tags gained 43% more clicks than videos that linked them only in the description.
JaidenAnimations does a great job implementing this feature, with a Store tab on her main page and products displayed beneath each video.
Channel memberships
Viewers can both join and subscribe to your channel. They get exclusive members-only perks when they join, and you take a monthly payment between £0.99 and £439.99.
Rachana Ranade earned over $100,000 (£74,900) after enabling channel memberships that gave viewers additional advice and course discounts.
YouTube BrandConnect
Companies looking to partner with creators for branded content campaigns can reach out to relevant channels, giving you scope to earn from content that aligns with your values.
“As a content creator, sometimes it can be really hard to find reliable brands to partner with, especially if you’re a smaller channel,” says YouTuber Side Hustle Seattle, who praises YouTube BrandConnect for its built-in media kit that collects info brands typically want. “It’ll talk through your engagement, your reach, your views. It’ll talk about your demographics and what people who watch your videos are most interested in, so that way you can just kind of reaffirm alignment [with brands].”
Super Thanks
Fans watching your videos may purchase a Super Thanks at various prices between $2 (£1.50) and $50 (£37), up to the same spending limits as Super Chats and Super Stickers. A one-time animation is shown over the video, and a colourful and customisable comment gets posted to the comments section.
Affiliate marketing
Promote a product, add an affiliate link to shop for that product, and then take a small slice of the pie when someone makes a purchase through your link. Unlike YouTube Shopping affiliate links, these don’t require you to be a partner and can come from a wider range of companies. For example, personal-finance influencer Kelly Anne Smith used affiliate programmes from financial institutions such as CitiBank and Lemonade, since finance products weren’t available through YouTube Shopping.
Since affiliates typically get paid only when a viewer clicks and then buys the product, you don’t need to have a lot of subscribers to be accepted for an affiliate programme. Shopify estimates that Amazon affiliates require a relatively low 500 subscriptions on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch.
Commissions vary according to online retailers and product categories. Amazon commissions range between 1% and 10%.
YouTubers such as Charlie DIYte link products directly featured in their content. His video “How and Why I Removed a Chimney” includes several links for tools used during that project. Others interrupt videos to briefly mention products, as Saffron Barker does with Lenor’s laundry products in her “Come to Ibiza on a spontaneous girls trip!!” video.
Brand partnerships and sponsorships
Brands may pay to partner with you on an ongoing basis or sponsor a smaller number of videos. Creators put a segment in their videos varying from quick shout-outs to longer brand introductions.
Just ensure that the brands align with your content. Jenn Im films a lot of fitness content, for example, so she did a sponsored video for the Trainwell training app and was able to talk convincingly about its benefits.
Crowdfunding platforms
Platforms such as Patreon, Ko-fi, and Buy Me a Coffee allow fans who love your content to contribute either a one-time tip or a certain amount each month (in which case they’ll tend to receive perks in return).
YouTuber Jenny Nicholson has said that Patreon subscriptions allow her to make fewer long-form videos rather than more frequent shorter ones. She currently has nearly 69,000 members paying between £1 and £19.50 per month in exchange for various benefits.
UGC
Genuine user-generated content (UGC) mentions a product or brand without the creator receiving payment or other incentives in exchange, and the real deal is so good at impacting buying decisions that many brands pay creators to produce what appears to be authentic, unpaid UGC. (You can find plenty of UGC jobs here.)
Followers aren’t necessary, since UGC is posted on a brand’s own marketing channels, but YouTubers who have an established audience may attract UGC deals by posting samples on their own channel. “You can start today from the comfort of your own home with no followers,” says YouTuber Glowithgia.
Licensing
Some videos have mass appeal – especially those that go viral. Creators can license that video for use by news organisations, TV shows, and media companies looking to include it in their own content. You’ll be both compensated and credited.
Increase your chances by uploading high-resolution videos with detailed descriptions, adding watermarks, and reaching out to media outlets if you believe your video may add to their coverage.
YouTube monetisation requirements
If you’re wondering how many views you need to make money on YouTube, you’re probably thinking about the YouTube Partner Program.
You can apply to become a partner and unlock the features that come with the programme after reaching all of the following requirements: 500 subscribers, three valid uploads, and 3,000 valid public watch hours in the past 12 months or 3 million valid public Shorts views in the past 90 days.
YouTube ad revenue is unlocked after reaching 1,000 subscriptions and 4,000 public watch hours in the past 12 months or 10 million valid public Shorts views in the past 90 days.
But ads aren’t only about views and subscriptions. Videos may be demonetised if you break YouTube’s Community Guidelines, and advertisers can choose not to run ads on any content they feel is misaligned with their brand. Keep that in mind during your quest to make money from YouTube.