How YouTube pays creators
Once a channel is in the YouTube Partner Program, it earns a share of ad revenue: 55% for long videos and 45% for Shorts, where the money comes from a shared Creator Pool after music licensing costs. What lands in your account per 1,000 views is the RPM (revenue per mille). The calculator multiplies your views by typical RPMs for your topic:
- Education and how-to: median about $10 per 1,000 views
- Lifestyle: about $3 · Entertainment: about $2.40 · Tech: about $2.30 · Gaming: about $2
- Kids: about $0.33, because personalised ads are not allowed on content made for kids
- Shorts: usually $0.05 to $0.20, with a full range of about $0.02 to $1.50
These medians come from AIR Media-Tech's analysis of 300 monetised channels (May 2025 to May 2026). Many channels in finance and tech earn far more than the median, which is why the range goes higher. Audience location matters too: advertisers pay much more for viewers in the US, UK, Canada and Australia than in India or Southeast Asia. The country factor in the calculator is a rough estimate, because no reliable public data exists for it.
Requirements for earning money
- Ad revenue today: 1,000 subscribers plus 4,000 public watch hours in 12 months, or 10 million Shorts views in 90 days.
- Fan funding tier: 500 subscribers, 3 uploads in 90 days and 3,000 watch hours or 3 million Shorts views unlock memberships, Super Chat and Super Thanks, but not ads.
- From 1 February 2027 YouTube plans stricter rules for new applicants: 8,000 watch hours or 20 million Shorts views, and Shorts ad revenue will need 10 million Shorts views in the last 90 days.
Example
A gaming channel with 100,000 long-form views and 500,000 Shorts views a month and a mixed audience earns about 100 × $2.05 + 500 × $0.10 = about $255 a month from ads, roughly $3,000 a year. The same views on an education channel would bring over $1,000 a month.
Beyond ad revenue
For most mid-sized creators, ads are not the biggest income. Sponsorships often pay more per video; see the influencer rate calculator. Memberships, affiliate links and your own products add up too.
Sources: YouTube Partner Program overview, AIR Media-Tech RPM study 2026.
Platform rules and payouts change often. The numbers on this page were checked in October 2026; always confirm the current rules in the platform's own help pages.