With TikTok and Instagram Reels dominating user attention spans, more and more content creators are producing video content.
Doing the thing you love professionally, like photography, while creating content around it can be immensely fulfilling and, if you get lucky, financially rewarding — thanks to YouTube. It’s then easy to see why many in the photography and filmmaking space start their own channels on the platform.
While it’s not fair to say that making it big on YouTube is everyone’s north star, creating content for the community to enjoy while potentially earning more on the side is an appealing prospect. So today, we’re going to take a peek at just how much creatives/YouTube personalities make on the platform, and what can you learn from them should you decide to try your hand in the content creation game.
Since this blog focuses on photography and filmmaking, naturally we’re going to focus on creatives within that space. If you’re in another niche, keep in mind that YouTube Ad Revenue CPM (Cost Per Mille, or Cost Per Thousand Views) does skew to the higher spectrum for creatives because it’s a popular niche for advertisers. For reference, Investopedia reports that the average CPM for YouTube is $7.60, whereas the CPM in this niche is around $10-12.
While many of the accounts we’ll feature are bigger accounts… Forget the outliers – You can be a and make a decent chunk of change! Yes, of course we all want to go viral, as a single can make thousands of dollars (sure beats a day at the office!) But first we’ll need a plan on how to get into the YouTube Partner Program…
The Prerequisites – How To Become a
Google lays it all out, and it essentially comes down to two things:
- 4000 watch hours in the last 12 months
- 1,000 Subscribers
It’s certainly no easy feat, but your path to becoming a starts there. You’ll also need a (where you’ll earn your ).
Eric Floberg Reveals How Much He Made on YouTube in 2020
This goes without saying, but somebody else’s finances is always a touchy subject. Wedding photographer and YouTuber Eric Floberg, however, doesn’t shy away from the topic. He’s one of my personal favorite YouTubers for his transparency and personality.
In his video above, Eric breaks down all of his income for 2020 and gives the average viewer some insight as to how much someone who treats YouTube as a side hustle can make. Let’s look at the numbers:
At the time of writing, Eric had produced 99 videos, garnered 95,000 subscribers, and has a total of 3,485,423 YouTube views throughout his YouTube Career. These numbers brought $8,773.88 in ad revenue from December of 2019 to November of 2020, averaging $280-640 per month.
One stand-out video was about making passive income as a YouTuber/Photographer that raked $3,020.93 in ad revenue. This highlights one important factor that determines how much you can make off of YouTube: your chosen niche. There are a lot of variables that go into this, including your audiences’ location, average watch time, competition and so on. But one factor that decides your videos’ CPM is the topic where your video falls in. For example, a money-making niche will have a greater potential to earn more in ad revenue versus categories with intense competition like gaming.
Affiliate marketing is another avenue where YouTubers have the opportunity to earn more from their content. Basically, affiliate links are links to products that personalities use and or recommend. If their followers do use that link to purchase a product, the content creator gets a small percentage of that sale.
Now, small percentages out of, say, 1,000 purchases can add up to a nice sum over time. In Eric’s case, his affiliate commissions added up to $15,443.54, coming close to doubling his ad revenue. These included Amazon affiliate links to his camera gear, music licensing, go-to presets and more.
Next are sponsored videos. These are videos where the personality “integrates” a brand (such as Skillshare and Brilliant) or endorse products in their videos that are aligned with the type of content they are producing. Sponsorships brought in $38,504.89 for Eric’s YouTube channel.
Finally, Eric’s YouTube community has the option to support him directly via Patreon. Patreon is a membership platform where followers can opt-in the monthly subscription to get access to a personality’s exclusive content, behind the scenes videos, Q&A sessions, and other community engagement activities. Eric’s patrons brought in a total of $13,349.09 since he started his Patreon account last March of 2020.
If we total Eric’s YouTube ad revenue, affiliate commissions, sponsored videos, and Patreon earnings, his revenue streams all add up to $76,071.4. It should be noted how his ad revenue is just roughly 11.5% of his total income tied with his YouTube presence. This tells us that making money off of YouTube is less about creating videos about topics that generate good ad revenue, not that it’ll hurt of course, but more about delivering content that builds and benefits a community around your channel.
Let’s now move over to Eric’s income as a professional wedding photographer and filmmaker. For 2020, Eric made $90,342.72 between wedding photography/filmmaking, commercial work, portraiture and mentor sessions. Combine this figure with his YouTube income and subtract his expenses, Eric says his net income from last year was $113,441.57.
We’re all about making money as a creative and Eric does a great job of that. For more, checkout our posts on How to Make Money as a Videographer, and if you want a more passive income, see our posts on Selling Stock Footage for Passive Income and How to Make Money Renting Out Your Gear.
Evan Raft, Making Money on YouTube and using it as a Credibility Builder
https://youtu.be/lXV4lgACAfo
Professional photographer Evan Raft, primarily known for his cityscapes and landscapes, talks about how much he made from YouTube last December of 2019. In his video above, Evan shares his metrics which showcases an estimated revenue of $1,789.44. In the same month, he had a total of 364,300 views and 27,900 hours watched.
What’s immediately interesting is that Evan’s ad revenue (for December at least) almost triples Eric’s average ad revenue in the latter’s best months, but that is to be expected if you factor in Evan’s number of subscribers compared to Eric’s. Currently, Evan Raft had produced 283 videos, garnered 214,000 subs, with a total of 14,690,789 views since he started his channel.
However, building off of what we’ve established in Eric’s video, Evan says the toughest business model that you can work in your YouTube channel is one that is solely relying on ad revenue because that’d be a very views-dependent strategy. He also cites variables that you, as the content creator, have very little control over such as seasonality, the kind of audience you’re getting, and the ever-unpredictable YouTube algorithm
Evan also references the difference in CPM rates across different niches. He claims that for a channel centered around creative niches like his, the cost per 1000 views averages at $12. Finance channels, on the other hand, can go up to the $22-25 range as advertisers are willing to pay more to place their ads on these videos. Simply put, you need a lot of views to make money. For creatives just starting on the platform, getting enough attention and building hundreds of thousands of subscribers is next to impossible to do in a short amount of time.
What he recommends instead is that those starting out should create a business around the creative skills they showcase on YouTube. For Evan, he treats his YouTube channel as more of a promotional platform to market his services as a photographer, sell more prints and photo books, promote his clothing line and affiliate links, or get referrals for projects. The idea is that newcomers to the platform have the opportunity to boost their business with their newfound reach, instead of waiting to get a million more subs to make decent ad revenue.
John Branch Pivots His Business and Focuses on YouTube to Make Money
John used to shoot 25 to 40 weddings a year, with his gross annual income averaging in the $100,000 to $150,000 range. That is until COVID hit. Last 2020, John reports a 74% decrease in his wedding photography income, grossing just $30,066.38 from his business.
It was 2019 when John started to take YouTube seriously, finally hitting 50,000 subs last year. To adapt to the whole COVID situation, John pivoted from being a wedding photographer to taking YouTube full time to save his business. At the time of writing, John has now produced 175 videos, amassed 67,500 subs with a total of 3,410,229 views.
John reports that his CPM averages at $22 which is in the higher end of the spectrum. Combine this with the 2.4 million views he got in just 2020 alone, his ad revenue comes at around $22,680.90 which is easily one of the highest ad revenues we’ve seen so far. This figure contrasts heavily with the ad revenue he made in 2019 only grossing $2,000.
Next, John talks about how much he made with affiliate marketing on YouTube, where he links to his gear and sponsored products. In 2020, John’s affiliate marketing income ballooned to a whopping $81,715.56.
Moving on to merch. According to John, selling merch is an opportunity for YouTubers to sell something of their own. It can be anything from clothing, camera accessories, to digital products. In John’s case, he’s selling his very own preset pack that he personally uses for his wedding projects. With his presets, John grossed an impressive $41,506 in sales.
Put together his YouTube ad revenue, preset sales, affiliate marketing income and the $30k he made through photography, John’s gross income in 2020 totals to $175,968.84 which is a 48% bump from 2019. This figure is simply astounding and very commendable, especially when you factor in a global pandemic hanging over everyone’s heads, and John still managing to adapt and pivot his business to come out on top in such stressful times.
John advises creatives who are just starting on the platform to be genuine and be true to who they are. He continues: “Make sure to ride waves and not bandwagons. The difference between a bandwagon and a wave is basically, if it’s something you love and you’re passionate about, or if it’s something you’re just doing because everyone else is. With a bandwagon, you’re gonna look extra fake.”
How Much Money Has Jared Polin Made?… 10 Years of YouTube Ad Revenue
Next up is one of the OG YouTube photographers. You might know him from his wacky camera “sniff tests,” the “I Shoot RAW” t-shirts and of course, his beef with JPEG files. If you’re into photography, chances are you know the ‘fro. Jared Polin has been at it for ten years, starting in the early 2010s, back when YouTube didn’t even have its partnership program yet.
As of writing, Jared has grown his channel to a 1.29-million strong community, had produced a mind boggling 3,064 videos and garnered a total of 212,537,766 views. He admits that his ad revenue only accounts for just a fraction of his YouTube income, and therefore needs to rely on multiple income streams. Jared also makes money off of his merch (I Shoot Raw shirts etc.), preset packs, photography video guides, mentorship and critique services, sponsorships, Amazon affiliates and speaking engagements.
In more than a decade of producing content on YouTube, Jared reports having made $613,005.56 in ad revenue. This figure translates to roughly $55,000 annually in his 11-year career. To give more context to this figure, Jared made just shy of $3,000 in 2010, the first year he monetized his channel.
Just a year after that, his ad revenue spiked to $16,283.38. Between 2012 to 2017, this number increased to $39,371 to reaching the $50,000 mark in 2017. The ‘fro man’s channel started to pick up more speed by 2018, where his ad revenue skyrocketed to $83,519. Jared broke the six-figure mark in 2019, with his best year yet being 2020 where he made $144,293.64 in ad revenue.
Jared Polin credits the spike in ad revenue starting in 2018 to better thumbnails and titles, and prioritizing better content instead of favoring more frequent uploads. He also addresses some of the factors that affect ad revenue. First is seasonality. Through September to December of 2020, Jared’s CPM rose from $11 to $14.87, with the holiday season giving advertisers more incentive to compete for ad placements.
Second are external factors relating to the photography industry. Jared’s channel saw a boost in ad revenue in July and August, when camera manufacturers announced and released new photography gear, giving him more material for his content.
In an amazing display of transparency that even the saltiest hater has to respect, Jared also disclosed which videos performed the best in 2020. These included the EOS R5 announcement, the Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 review and the EOS R5 review. Jared acknowledges that the level of response he gets from gear-centered videos is one driving factor that influences the type of content they make.
Frederik Trovatten Shares How Much He Made as a (Relatively New) YouTube Photographer
You don’t need to be a “YouTube Star.” You can make money on YouTube in the growth phase of your account! At the time of the video’s release, Frederik’s channel had 33,900 subscribers, gets 100,000 views a month and rakes in $200 in ad revenue which means his CPM averages at $2. He is however part of the Amazon Affiliate program where he links to his photography/video gear, presets etc. netting him $867 per month. These numbers add up to around $1,000 in total.
But as of writing, Frederik has now grown his channel to a community of 56,600 subscribers, had produced 57 videos in total, and had accumulated a total of 2,761,981 views since he joined the platform in 2017. In the same Q&A video, he also announced that he has started to take on sponsorships, which he used to reject, as he felt the offers then were not aligned with what he was doing.
Frederik, who produces some of the best street photography content on the platform, brings a very interesting perspective into the whole “YouTube photographer” vs. “real photographers on YouTube” discussion. The former is often a label used in derision by insecure, anonymous commenters within photography forums, but Frederik shares some insights as to why he currently doesn’t want to “go pro.”
In his wonderful Q&A, he reveals that he is currently working full time as a digital marketer. He produces his street photography videos out of his love for the craft — and really, that’s as good a reason as any — so whatever financial gains he gets from YouTube is just a nice incentive. What stops him from going pro is that he just doesn’t want to take on projects (like weddings) that he doesn’t want to do. Having a full-time job, and not relying on photography as his only source of income, allows him to keep doing what he loves with his camera without any pressure or obligations.
This is a popular sentiment within the photography community, even for some professionals. As photography begins to feel and ultimately becomes your work, some of the magic and love you’ve had for the craft may diminish over time, and may end with you ceasing to enjoy photography at all.
YouTube, as we have discovered from creatives who have seen success on the platform, can be both employed as a tool that can complement your photography/videography business in terms of reach and exposure, or as a profitable business in and of itself. How profitable your YouTube channel can potentially become depends on how well you can build a community around your content, and how much time you can commit to producing quality videos.
That’s not to say YouTube has no space for non-professionals wanting to share their voice on the platform, not at all. So if you’re an enthusiast, or someone curious about photography and looking to start your own channel to document your journey as a hobbyist, let Frederik Trovatten inspire you to not bother with irrelevant noise in the community and just publish the type of content that you want to create.
Who are your favorite Youtubers and have they revealed how much they make on YouTube? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll update this post!