Ever since its creation in 2005, becoming a content creator in YouTube's community has increased steadily- even turning into a stable job for some. The end of 2017 saw some of the most high ranking Youtubers earning tens of millions: The top being Dan Middleton (otherwise known as DanTDM, a variety content creator based off video games such as Minecraft and Roblox), earning nearly $16.5 million. He is quickly followed up by Evan Fong (VanossGaming), Dude Perfect, and other well known creators such as Mark Fischbach (Markiplier), all of whom have easily generated a revenue of over $10 million dollars.

With such significant figures coming out of a rather small section of the entertainment industry, it's easy to fall into the trap of dropping everything and creating a channel. But before you start frantically purchasing equipment and leaving your education in the dust, it might be useful to understand how Youtube's revenue works: after all, the amount of hours and work you put into a video should generate at least a sustainable amount of money.

AdSense is the prime source of how money is delivered from your videos. By turning on account monetization, a prospective content creator accepts YouTube’s advertising guidelines and connects to an AdSense account for payment. Enabling this means enabling ads: split 55/45 between you and google, with google 45 percent, leaving you with a leftover of 55 percent. With the price of an ad ranging from $0.18 to $.25, that leaves your cut at around $.13 or less.

There are two different ad options that content creators can choose from: TrueView ads and Pre-Roll ads. TrueView ads have no time limit, and can be skipped after 5 seconds. Payment for TrueView is based off of the number of views per ad, A Pre-Roll advertisement is a non-skippable video lasting around 15-20 seconds long. Pre-Roll advertisements are pay per click, which means the content creator will only be paid if the advertisement is clicked on. Note that ads are not hand-picked by a creator, but are automatically generated by YouTube to fit the viewer's likes and wants.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand) is used to represent revenue for every thousand views on a video. In 2014, the average CPM was $7.60, and hasn't moved much since. Therefore, receiving 250 views per video means earning $1.90 per video. If we take DanTDM's revenue of $16.5 million, which simplifies to around $46 thousand per day. This translate to around 6030 CPM, meaning a total view of a whopping 6 million views per day, spread around the total amount of videos that he has.

Realistically, the odds of becoming a famous YouTuber are slim, not to mention the extremely tiny pay that should be expected during the first few years of your channel. However, YouTube is the second most used search engine next to google, and its community will always be changing and open to new ideas- after all, it only took one major hit music video by PSY ( Gangnam Style) to produce over $10 million.