August 10, 2016

The top YouTube earners

top youtube earners
Here at Grin, we discuss various topics concerning YouTubers and YouTube itself. In this article, we’ll be discussing more of the money side of things, namely the top YouTube earners. Before we dive into our list, we’ll discuss how they make this money through their platform on YouTube, and what you can learn from them.

How do they make money on YouTube?

YouTubers have two main ways of making money: ad revenue and sponsorship deals. A YouTuber’s ad revenue comes from the advertisements placed on their videos. This ad revenue, unfortunately, isn’t gained if a user has enabled an adblocker, though YouTube RED subscriptions still cover what a YouTuber would make. Ad revenue and RED subscriptions are how most YouTubers make their money, but once you start moving into a larger scale, sponsorship deals start making up a bulk of the money made by the top YouTube earners. Sponsorships comes in three different forms: affiliate sponsorships, product sponsorships, and paid sponsorships. Affiliate sponsorships deal with affiliate links and codes that are used to provide a YouTuber’s audience with a discount, while the YouTube themselves gets a kickback. Product sponsorships are a step up, and are most frequent with technology, review and tutorial channels. Many of the top YouTube earners fit into this category, and it works by having a business give you a product to cover. Sometimes the reward is just keeping the product for free, but other times keeping it is a temporary deal and you’re instead working for payment based on how they feel about your sponsorship. Finally, there’s outright paid sponsorships. This is when sites, products and services forgo all else in favor of just paying you to talk about them in your videos. This can often be seen in paid ad spots integrated into the videos, seperate from YouTube’s ad revenue. This is one of the most profitable forms of sponsorships, but it’s also the hardest to get, and by far requires the most growth. Using ad revenue and sponsorship deals, the people on the list below became the top YouTube earners. It’s our hope here at Grin that you can learn enough to one day take advantage of deals like this, too.

The Top YouTube Earners

And now for the list! This list was made using SocialBlade– specifically, top subscribers and estimated earnings. Subscribers don’t necessarily line up directly with views, so the earnings vs. subscriber numbers are a little bit off. Additionally, the earnings are estimated with ranges- the low range is extremely low for these, so it’s very safe to assume that things are closer to the middle or high-end of these. SocialBlade also doesn’t take into account things like the sponsorships we went over above, so the earnings estimations might be lower than even the theoretical maximum offered by these estimations.

#15. Bethany Mota [$1.9K-29.7K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EskhEQWMpX4&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] Bethany Mota is a vlogger known for “haul videos”, which showed off purchases she made online. Through this, she also brushes with fashion, and her growing popularity eventually led her to making multiple appearances in Dancing With The Stars. Unlike many people on this list, Bethany is unaffiliated with an MCN- this means all the income her channel makes comes to her alone. You can take inspiration from this- you don’t need an MCN to succeed.

#14. Syndicate Project [$3.2K-51.2K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfFg7bcWmLc&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] The Syndicate Project is a gaming/commentary channel, known widely for his live commentaries on titles like DayZ and CS:GO. While this is a top YouTube earners article, it’s also important to note that this YouTuber is in the middle of a scandal because of their part in a virtual gambling operation that they advertised to impressionable youth and didn’t disclose. Ouch. The Syndicate’s cash might be disappearing soon. Take note of this and proper disclosure practices so you don’t end up the same way if you get big.

#13. VSauce [$4.5K-72.7K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWcdBOYy_bU&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] VSauce has been a big part of YouTube, thanks to their long-form informative videos on various topics. It’s notable that this entry only counts their primary VSauce channel- they also have VSauce2 and VSauce3, which specialize in different topics. Combined, the channels are quite a lot larger than this, can could probably place a bit higher in the list. Keep that in mind!

#12. Jenna Marbles [$5.4K-86K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h23oPnh1WJM&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] Jenna Marbles is one of the most prominent fashion YouTubers, and she’s easily the most popular. In addition to fashion and style, she also does many vlogging and opinion videos, which endear her to many of her followers. Jenna got where she is by basically just being herself- in the older days of YouTube, she operated a niche that wasn’t being satisfied elsewhere. Try and find something unique for yourself that people would want, but don’t have yet.

#11. HolaSoyGerman [$11.4K-182.5K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz0hdMkQ_9w&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] Germán isn’t German, that’s just his name. He’s actually a comedy/music YouTuber based in Chile, and despite the fact he doesn’t speak English at all, his YouTube channel is the second most-subscribed to in the entire world. He’s Spanish, in fact, which allows him to appeal to the large audiences present in Spain, Mexico and other Latin American countries that are usually surrounded by English speakers on all fronts of media. This might be a reason for his popularity.

#10. Yuya [$11.9K-190.6K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vXSJCGL8NM&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] Yuya is another independent, fashion-centric YouTuber/vlogger. Like Germán, she’s Hispanic, which allows her to appeal to a wide non-English speaking audience. She’s nowhere near subscriber rankings to Germán or English-speaking contemporaries like Jenna Marbles, but since her joining in 2009 she’s made quite a name for herself.

#9. nigahiga [$12K-191.9K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df_QflYT96Y&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] Ryan Higa, or nigahiga, is a prominent comedy YouTuber. One way they approach comedy is with their sarcastic “How To” tutorial videos, which includes such videos as How To Be Edgy. Of the YouTubers on this list, Higa is truly a member of the old guard, having joined way back in July of 2006, only a year after the launch of the platform.

#8. Epic Rap Battles Of History [$13.6K-217.4K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVbH1BVXywY&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] Of course, where would we be without ERB in the top YouTube Earners? Epic Rap Battles of History is a series that takes advantage of fictional/historical characters, comedical songwriting and collaborations with YouTubers/other celebrities to create something beautiful. ERB also serves as a prime example of the power of collaboration- what started as two YouTubers working together on a comedy series (Nice Peter and Epic Lloyd) turned into one of the most massively-popular series and channels on YouTube.

#7. Skrillex [$15.2K-243.8K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkqyIoYAXV8&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] Along with Deadmau5, Skrillex is known as one of the founding fathers of modern dubstep. Love him or hate him, you’ve heard of him- and for that reason, he’s one of the top YouTube earners, getting big by making independent music. He’s gotten prolific enough that he’s able to collaborate with other big musicians, such as Chance The Rapper or Rick Ross.

#6. The Fine Brothers [$19.2K-$307.1K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtJ8RUCHccM&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] The Fine Brothers are known for taking the Reaction video and making it big. With multiple channel they take groups of people from certain demographics and see how they react to things like videos, video games, movie trailers, and more. Whether you like their content or not, it’s proven to be quite a recipe for success.

#5. Smosh [$24.3K-$389.3K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzY5o9l3AGc&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] Smosh is a duo of two friends doing comedy and gaming on YouTube. They produce a large amount of content on a regular basis, content that appeals to pretty wide audience. What started as two dudes making skits together turned into one of the biggest channels on YouTube- keep this in mind.

#4. KSI [$26.2K-418.9K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzpg8qbSJIE&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] KSI is a curious mix of gaming and music. He got his start on YouTube by doing gaming-centric comedy videos, but eventually he chose to branch into music, which has turned out to be quite lucrative for him. It goes to show that even once you’ve established yourself on YouTube, you can still branch out and do new things.

#3. Vegetta777 [$48.3K-772.9K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM9fUlGET-w&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] Vegetta is a prominent Spanish gaming YouTuber. He produces multiple series based around Minecraft, one of the biggest video games of all time. Like the other non-English speakers on this list, he provides enjoyment to an audience that English-centric channels may not be able to reach.

#2. Markiplier [$52.8K/844.2K/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKqX-P2gX7U&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] While Markiplier is primarily known for his gaming commentary videos (like his contempary, who is one rank higher in this list), he also does a lot of comedy videos. He’s also known for regularly making long videos speaking directly to his audience about his life or what he thinks of them, which results in a higher level of viewer engagement.

#1. PewDiePie [$84.6K-1.4M/mo]

[embedyt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATYXYBLD5uI&width=400&height=250[/embedyt] Here we are: the man, the myth, the legend. PewDiePie is the most popular YouTuber in terms of subscribers, views, and revenue. He is the top earner of top YouTube earners. He accomplished this primarily through his long, multi-part gaming commentary videos, which gave his viewers a lot to watch and essentially kickstarted the YouTube genre of watching other people play video games. This is in addition to his branches into comedy, vlogging and opinion videos.

What can I learn from this?

That the top YouTube earners started quite a lot like you. What they did is give people something they wanted and blazed a trail for creators to get big with new media. If you’d like to learn how you can start doing that, too, one of the best ways is through collaborating with other YouTubers. The Grin Platform provides a way to do that, and our blog can give you more informative posts like these.