[David]

What is the distribution like among the top 1000 channels? Presumably the top of the top 1000 channels far outproduce the bottom, just like the top 1000 far outproduce the rest of youtube. Given such a distribution, what are the top few channels earning? 100,000 a month? 1,000,000 a month? Even more?

Other interesting questions: How much of that is profit? Relatedly, does it cost a prohibitive amount to have a highly successful youtube channel? Does amount spent on production each month correlate with amount earned, or do consumers care much more about the content than the production quality?

What is the median income of the top 1000 channels? What's the overall median income of active youtube partners? What's the median income of channels produced (primarily) by a single person?

Some of these questions should be answerable by looking at available stats, like views for the top couple of channels versus the lower end of the top 1000. (Are the actual channels in the top 1000, preferable ranked, available somewhere?) I'll see if I can answer any more of them in the morning...

[citricsquid]

There are literal kids (teenagers) making 6 figures a month from their Youtube channels with absolute 0 production costs. The best example would be a guy called Pewdiepie[1], he makes gaming videos and does something like 5 million views per day (which is probably around $10k revenue assuming he has a good deal...). He isn't alone, there's quite a few others approaching his level of success.

Something a lot of people seem to forget too is for every video they put out their old videos still get views. It's like investments, the money they make compounds over time because for every new video that's more and more views. So as their viewership grows, so does their previous video views and so do their potential views for the future. Even if someone "only" does 10,000,000 views from new videos in a month they can still be doing substantial revenue from old videos. This is how some of the bigger channels work, they produce incredibly popular videos every couple of months and fill the time with smaller videos.

A good example of that would be Captain Sparklez [2], a guy that makes video game music and commentaries, his music videos can do anywhere from 10 million to 70 million views and he then produces game play commentaries between his bigger hits.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/pewdiepie [2] http://www.youtube.com/user/CaptainSparklez/videos?sort=p&#3...

[napoleoncomplex]

There is also the fact that this is only ad revenue. I would wager that people with good marketing skills make much more from side gigs than from direct ad revenue.

[JonLim]

From what I've noticed on many of the top YouTube channels I subscribe to, many have merch to sell and other side projects that earn them a little more money.

Not to mention that several producers have multiple channels, where they use the success of a single channel to make their subsequent channels just as successful.

[1wheel]

rorrr posted a list of everyone making 100k+ per month; I don't think there are any kids on it.

[citricsquid]

His list is based on top subscribers over all time, these people are fast rising to the top but are relatively new. Pewdiepie has been making videos for about a year (as someone popular) and is currently #18 on the most subscribed, the channels in the list compiled by rorrr are accounts that are ~5 years old.

Pewdiepie currently averages around 4,000,000 views per day, that's 120,000,000 per month which even at a really poor $1 CPM is still over $100k; at $2 CPM (or more) he'd be making well into 200k+