How Much Do YouTubers Make? The Top 25 Earning Creators’ Adsense Salaries Revealed [Infographic]

In recent years, hundreds of YouTubers have earned fame and fortune — million dollar fortunes — solely through their work on their YouTube channels. For those on the outside, it seems so simple: create and upload YouTube videos ranting about life or of pranks being pulled on innocent bystanders, have people tune in to watch the videos, and bam, next thing you know you’re buying a house next to Reese Witherspoon in Beverly Hills.

But in reality, becoming one of the top creators on YouTube takes consistency, a nonstop work schedule and a growing audience that have chosen to spend their valuable time watching your videos instead of the millions of others found on YouTube. But the rise to million-dollar salaries has taken all of these creators years to generate through their video-making hard work.

From data exclusively supplied by YouTube analytics platform Social Blade, the infographic depicts the average low and high salaries of the top 25 earning creators solely based on the Adsense of their YouTube channels, or cost per thousand impressions (CPM). Each creator earning was calculated by taking the number of video views on the channel between January 1, 2012 to December 20, 2012 and multiplying it by the average low CPM of 70 cents and average high CPM of $7 to find the estimated total low earnings and total high earnings. The estimated earnings numbers do not include additional revenue earned from the creators’ outside brand deals, sponsorships, affiliate campaigns or any other income-earning ventures. The infographic also includes the estimated Adsense revenue of the top three YouTube networks/studios, the top three Vevo channels and the no. 1 earning YouTube channel overall.

Anyone else feel like they got into the wrong profession? Yeah, me too.