How Much Money Does YouTube Pay for 11,000 Subscribers?

9 June 2022 Mike Lewis

Is it really worth it?

I love experimenting with side hustles, and as part of those experiments, I’ve often wondered if I should start a YouTube channel. I see stories of kids earning millions there, so it can’t be too difficult, can it?

As I’m an avid traveler, I love to watch travel vloggers. I get ideas on where to travel, tips on saving money, and in some cases get an insight into how much they earn from YouTube.

What puts me off starting a channel is that you need to get 1,000 subscribers and over 4,000 hours of viewing time before you can get your channel monetized. Even though I’m a fairly patient guy, I don’t think I have that much patience.

If I knew the money would be worthwhile, I could wait. But waiting for so long to get monetized before you even find out if it’s worth it puts me off.

I know a few people that have channels with between 30,000 and 50,000 followers. They tend to make around $300-$500 a month. That’s not enough to get me to give it a go.

2GoRoam Travel Channel

Lately, I’ve been following a travel couple from the UK. They sold everything and plan to travel for the next 10 years. Their videos are very well put together and contain a ton of interesting information, especially about the financial side of traveling. The videos also contain a lot of humor, which is also something that I enjoy.

A few days ago they released a Q&A video that covered a breakdown of their YouTube earnings and expenses. It’s well worth watching. Here it is:

At the time of writing this, the couple (2GoRoam) have 11.1K subscribers. They’ve been running the channel for 18 months. So how much have they made?

Planning & editing the videos

Before I get into that, it’s worth knowing that they script all their videos beforehand. That is time-consuming, but it’s what helps make their videos so entertaining.

They mentioned that each video takes around 24 hours to produce. That’s 8 hours of planning, 8 hours of shooting, and 8 hours of editing. The above video took 14 hours to edit.

I’m put off starting a channel even before I get to the earnings.

Expenses

As well as income, there are always expenses to consider. To date, they’ve spent $6,115 on the equipment needed to run the channel. They bought a laptop, 3 cameras, mics, tripods, software & subscriptions, and SSD drives for editing.

That’s quite a large expense. If you already have some of this equipment, you could get away with spending much less.

Income

This is the figure you’ve all been waiting for. In 16 months they’ve earned $2,701. That’s equivalent to $168.81 a month between them, or $84.40 each.

They estimate that they’ve earned $1.76 per hour.

Note that they’ve made a loss overall, as their expenses are higher than their income.

That doesn’t sound great, does it? They are at the beginning of their journey though. Over the years, their expenses are likely to remain low, while their income will almost certainly rise.

If they could 10X their subscribers, maybe they could 10X their income and make closer to $2,000 a month.

They both enjoy making the videos though, so it’s not all about the money for them.