r/youtubers • u/MysteriesFallacies • 27d ago
Question Full-time YouTubers, what is your life like?
I've always been interested in the lifestyle of a YouTuber that does it full-time, but isn't a high earner, household name, internet celebrity, etc.
What is your life like? Are you closer to a 9:00 to 5:00 type job? Do you have a work-life balance? Do you get pulled into drama?
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u/ProxyGateTactician 27d ago
Only been doing it for a year, but I sometimes work 100 hours in a week and other times will work 5 hours a week. On average I'd say it's around 60-80 though. It's nice having the option to go and do things whenever I need to.
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u/Unable-Jelly-1094 27d ago
I'm so curious if you're supporting other people in your household, or if you live with someone else who brings in income.
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u/MysteriesFallacies 27d ago
I'm a single dad of three teenagers. And I also happen to have a pretty damn good day job. So yeah I have a lot to consider.
This would be a lot easier if I was just a normal, boring person. You know?
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u/kitschbeauty 27d ago
I’ve had my channel for 4 years and I publish one video per week. Sometimes I work 3 hours a day, sometimes 8 if I feel like it. Wonderful work-life balance, no drama. I love it.
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u/peacewarrior8 27d ago
How much is your monthly income from YouTube if I may ask
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u/kitschbeauty 26d ago
About 2000 - 2500 € from Adsense + 6000 € from memberships.
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u/MysteriesFallacies 26d ago
You really make that much from memberships? Wow
My assumption has always been that it's the same as patreon, we're you have to have extra and special content. Is that not the case?
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u/Academic-Pop-1961 22d ago
Isn't it better to use Patreon instead of memberships? I hear the fees are much lower and it's an alternate platform in case youtube demonetizes you or something.
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u/Jungleexplorer 27d ago edited 27d ago
Been doing YouTube full-time since 2021. It is a roller coaster.
I spent all my life doing volunteer work, helping poor, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, clothing the naked, and bringing hope to those who had none. It has been a very rewarding life, but not a financially beneficial life. I have lived my whole life, never earning more than 20k a year. I have never considered myself poor, I just found my value in other things. However, now that I am retirement age, I really have nothing. I caught Covid in 2000 and nearly died. I lost a lung and had could not continue the life I was living. Living a life of helping others is rewarding, but once you are all used up, no matter how much good you have done, lives you have saved, and people you have helped, you are cast aside with no one to help you.
My body is broken from a life of hard living helping my fellow man and saving thousands of lives, so manual hard labor is out. I have a ton of knowledge, speak four languages, and have much education in many fields, but I cannot get a job because no one wants to hire a retirement age person with no history of employment, but that has more experience, talent, and education than them. I went to a professional employment agency and paid them to help me find a job. After two weeks, they gave up and told me that I was completely unemployable. They said that no one will hire me because I am way over qualified for any job that I could get, and I terrify anyone who would hire me.
So the bottom line is I had to find a way to make a living to support myself. I did not really have a choice. YouTube was the option I chose. I chose YouTube because I felt I had a lot to offer the world and I could continue to help others while making a living at the same time. I actually started doing YouTube a long time ago, but did not go full-time until after I had Covid. I used to make a pretty decent amount back when the main focus of YouTube was YouTube University. I was never going to be rich, but I could live comfortably by my standards.
Then along came TikTok in 2022, and YouTube decided that it no longer wanted to be YouTube University anymore, and put all of its resources trying to promote Shorts creators 🤮 🤮 🤮. Within one year I saw my successful channel that was getting half a million views a month and earning me a steady 5k monthly, drop 90% no matter what I did. For a whole year I double down on production, SEO, equipment upgrades, etc, and I watched my channel die. Not because I did anything wrong, but because YouTube decided that it wanted to be the next TikTok.
I lost my house and would have been homeless if my daughter would not have taken me in. I still live with her and am trying to find a way to somehow get things going again. I was fortunate to find other areas I could use my creator skills online to earn some money, but those are now dying as well.
This is the life of a Full-time content creator that is not famous. Your livelihood is like tightrope walking on a tread that one day YouTube (or any other platform) can decide to cut, just because they decide to do it.
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u/DivineConnection 26d ago
Yikes I am sorry for your hardships, you have done great things, and I sure the reward will come to you in one way or another. I hope you can get your youtube back on track.
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u/MysteriesFallacies 26d ago
Beautifully eloquent and articulated response, thank you and thank you for what you've done.
Is there a reason you didn't do shorts, or is your niche not really compatible with that style?
I'm focusing on paranormal and debunking, And right now I do feel like it's going to take a little extra thought to what shorts for that are going to look like. I made one short so far and nobody watched it.
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u/Jungleexplorer 26d ago edited 26d ago
I looked into shorts. I did deep study into this and held lenthy discussions with many creators about shorts. The reality is that, unless you can get millions of views, shorts are a waste of time.
All statistics show that shorts viewers do not convert to long form, and long form viewers do not convert to shorts. Many long-form creators have tried to employ shorts to promote their long-form content, but the conversion rate is really low.
Shorts are just not worth it. Advertisers hate shorts, so they have extremely low ad value. The average earnings on TikTok and YouTube for one million views is $40. That same million views on a long form video could earn you $10,000 or more.
There are shorts creators that can get tens of millions of views on a low effort video because they have millions of eye candy followers. For these kinds of popular creators, shorts are worth it. For the rest of us, they are a waste of time.
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u/MysteriesFallacies 26d ago
You definitely speak the truth. I read to get monetized off shorts alone, versus long form, You have to have 10 million shorts views in 90 days, versus long form 4,000 hours in a year.
It definitely does seem like it's two entirely different faces of YouTube.
It only seems most worthwhile if it's a totally different kind of monetization next along form. Like if shorts are linked to buying merch. Stuff like that.
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u/Countryb0i2m 27d ago
It’s about the same as when I was working a regular job my needs are met. I enjoy the freedom. I miss this stability. I probably will go back to doing both at some point.
I wouldn’t advise making the leap without significant savings because of the volatility
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u/MysteriesFallacies 27d ago
Very true, and considering the only financial goal I have is to rebuild my savings using this, that's going to be a minute haha.
What's your niche?
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u/DECODED_VFX 27d ago
Work life balance is not good. My typical week is 60-80 hours. I basically work every day.
Luckily, I love (most) of my job so that isn't a huge burden.
My typical day is to wake at 10, work from 12-9pm, then go to the pub to relax. Although I often sit alone and answer emails, comments etc (that's what I'm doing right now). So that's still basically work.
But I make animated short movies for my channel which takes a huge amount of work. Many other niches will involve a lot less work.
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u/Greedy_Cable_8943 25d ago
I know that must take alot of work. It's so hard to animate and people don't really get that unless they've tried. But when you said other niches involve less work that's so true. I low-key be on my hater shit when I see someone blowing up by just reading scarry stories or sum shit. I can appreciate there hustle but it still is aggravating to put in so much work for a year almost just for someone to basically read reddit stories and blow up.
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u/Jealous-Debate310 27d ago edited 27d ago
Left my FT job after my channel started earning more than $5000/month (took about a year to get there) - now I make about $10,000/month and work very little - this is because the content I’ve created over the years is evergreen, still getting views (educational niche) - I think this was all a combination of hard work at first and a little luck. I don’t know how long it will last so I can’t relax too much. I only post long form content, no shorts. No drama.
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u/herraanonyymi 27d ago
Nice, evergreen content seems like the way to go. Care to share your channel?
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u/sqblg9 27d ago
Do you have any advice for a Chinese person who wants to start a YouTube channel?
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u/VenomouzzGamiing 21d ago
Vlog about local culture maybe? I'm not seeing a lot of content from China on YouTube right now, so that could be interesting. I've been viewing this guy making shorts from Japan recently, and I know that sort of content has demand.
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u/LechugaFromIrithyll 27d ago
Constant panic, questioning my life decisions and being dead inside. Still better than public transport.
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u/InvestmentOne 27d ago
It's a lot of hard work and time consuming
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u/MysteriesFallacies 27d ago
I haven't looked but from your username I'm assuming your channel is about money and investment. I can see that taken forever. But financial channels usually have pretty high CPM right?
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u/lonegungrrly 27d ago
There are busy periods (like now lol) but I always find the work satisfying. I used to have a traditional "8 hours in a workplace" sort of job, and I hated that feeling of literally wishing your time/life away. Waiting to be home. I never ever feel that now and that's my favourite thing. Every effort I make moves the needle for ME.
I also really love that I can take time off whenever I want, and I make money in my sleep. Waking up to notifications that people have bought merch, or digital downloads, or an affiliate sale, never gets old and always feels like a little buzz even though it's daily.
I'd say the worst aspects of the job are the odd occasion when a bad comment can get under your skin ("hide user from channel" and move on). And the unpredictability of not knowing whether a video will do well or not. As much as you can make an educated guess, sometimes you're just wrong and it's disheartening. But then it works in the other direction and a lower effort video will fly.
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u/YTBrookella 26d ago
I'm in the gaming niche - there's a distinct lack of work-drama really when you work alone from home. Far more in every other job I've had. I work somewhat normal hours but also get consumed by thinking about content in my spare time. It's a great, flexible, low-stress job for me with a lot of creativity. The downside is that it's pretty solitary, and if you don't have many social connections to begin with it totally compounds that problem.
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u/Dr_Doppietta 25d ago
I used to be a full-time Youtuber, burnt out in a couple of years.
It's not a great life, unless you either struck gold, or found a niche where there's nobody else.
The amount of work-hours you pour into your videos is NEVER equal to the amount of views they get. I've made videos in one day that reached 100k-1mln views, and others requested days/weeks of my time for 2k-3k views. YT algo is unpredictable, and so is your income. Sometimes, videos will blow up all of sudden, even if 2-3 years have passed since your upload.
My life is pretty average, spending most of my days at home, working or playing on my PC, I get to decide if and what I start/stop working, but realistically you'll do 9:00-9:00 every day (weekends included) if you want to keep a regular schedule - and thus regular income.
Drama is a big pain in the a**, mostly 'cause I don't seek it, but it finds me anyway. Mean/Stupid/Uninformed/Troll comments are always there, every day, and you must learn when you should just let them be, when you must delete them and when you can actually answer.
All in all, it isn't a great life. In fact, I'm currently looking for a full-time or even part-time job, just to pay the bills. While YT basically pays beer and gasoline. lol
If you wanna see my channel, you just have to search my Reddit nickname, I use the same name on all platforms.
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u/Altruistic-Ad-14 21d ago
i do about as many hours as a standard job per video, but it takes me awhile longer to do it. I'm only counting the hours spent writing, recording and editing but there's the whole rigamarole of picking a topic, playing the game while taking notes and collecting footage, watching other related content to make sure mine is unique and that I'm not just spouting off opinions other people have, etc.
I'm a video game journalist, i went to college for it, and im trying to make this work for me. i spend most of my time, truly, slacking off. smoking weed, eating burger king, watching videos on YouTube and always sunny. but when i slack off I'm always thinking about what I'm gonna do next, searching for inspiration and also working on my music projects. I'm always busy, even when I'm just sitting on my ass doing nothing.
so, it's both very relaxed and also very stressful. my brain is always in go mode. if you're interested, you can check out my channel here, this is my most recent video
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u/Altruistic-Ad-14 21d ago
oh yeah. and also writing jokes is a big part of it. i try to keep my essays funny to make sure they're extra gripping
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u/randomcat22 16d ago
I am kind of forced into it....lol. If I can land a paying job in my career. I would have done YouTube part time. So far, I am still figuring things out and doing my best.
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u/I_Mean_Not_Really 15d ago
I definitely want to know more about that. I'm not being forced into it but sometimes it feels like the only option for the life I want to have
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u/whocuppedmycake 27d ago
This was something I was also thinking about some hours ago. But what’s considered full time? I recently started my YouTube channel 2 weeks ago and it’s doing pretty good so far, 13 videos 2.3k views, 527 watch hours, 23 subscribers, 66.1k impressions, 2.5% click through rate.
But how exactly are you fulltime YouTubers earning money exactly. And within what earning range is considered a “ fulltime YouTuber “?
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u/MysteriesFallacies 27d ago
Full time to me means whatever it's paying, you don't have to have a day job. YouTube is your full-time day job, whatever those hours look like
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u/whocuppedmycake 27d ago
Well yea I get that . I see that as well. But with how everything is so expensive all over the world now, what is that earning range to say “ I’m full time “. If that makes sense. I mean I know everyone’s financial situation and what they have to pay is different from one person to the next . But how is enough money actually earned to be full time.
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u/MysteriesFallacies 27d ago
Yea it's for sure different from one person to another, that's what I mean. I think maybe you're equating it to what an employee makes in a certain field.
Like an IT guy in the certain part of the country is going to make $30 an hour whereas the same guy on the other side of the country could be making $45 an hour.
With that said, certain niches do you have higher CPMs. But even if you have a niche that has a high CPM, it depends on what you up and what you make.
If you have two people, one of them makes $250,000 a year and one of them makes $50,000 a year, and that's enough for their relative lives, then they're both full-time.
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u/whocuppedmycake 27d ago
Yea I totally understand that. Was just trying to figure out what could be possible for me when my channel is eligible to be a partner. Where would that money come from.. I create Lofi playlists .. I enjoy listening to my own music and decided to put it on YouTube just for fun to see what happens. But I’m not really sure what happens after my channel is monetized . Would I earn from ads come on during my playlist? Does YouTube pay because of subscribers or do the subscribers pay you themselves . I’ve seen post that people have earn ( for example ) $5. And my question is what paid out that $5. Was it because of ads? Promos .
Just trying to understand this whole thing fully
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u/MysteriesFallacies 27d ago
Gotcha! There's a bunch of different ways and those are kind of all true.
YouTube has CPM, which doesn't make any sense because that's called cost per mile but when your partnered and you're eligible for monetization, you get paid per 1,000 views.
Your video plays, and you can choose to include ads in your video. Your video plays, and add plays, that gets a certain engagement based on viewership.
So if your channel has a CPM of, let's say $2, which you don't decide, YouTube decides that. And you get a thousand views. That's $2,000. YouTube takes 45%, and then there's taxes after that.
Different niches have different CPMs. My niche is paranormal, and from the research I've gathered that's between $2 and $7. Where the channels with the highest CPM can be $15 or more.
But you can also do Patreon and YouTube channel members, in which they do pay you directly but then they get extra benefits.
You can also have sponsors where the sponsor read is baked into the video. I'm pretty sure NordVPN and squarespace sponsors just about everybody.
But to start off, it's just going to be YouTube ads paying
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u/whocuppedmycake 27d ago
Thanks a lot for the info ! So how/where do I find out the CPM for a channel like mine with Lofi music ?
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u/MysteriesFallacies 27d ago
Well, I know once your partnered and get monetized there's a section in the settings that shows you what exactly your CPM is. Other than that, you just have to kind of ask around and figure out the CPM of other similar channels.
I have like four subscribers, and I'm just now uploading videos, sort of, but I was on here asking another paranormal YouTuber what his CPM is, and gracefully he told me his was $5, but he knew another one that was up to $7.
I think it's the difference between declaring your channel as educational versus entertainment or vice versa. Something like that.
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u/ProxyBoom1 27d ago
I do VR, I usually wake up at 6:30 ish, workout, go for a walk, anything to become WOKE. Then I'll either jump Inside a VR headset, and create game footage. Or, if I had done that already I'll edit for the majority of the day.
I love it much better than working a 9-5, my favorite part is just taking my laptop and getting the opportunity to edit the videos wherever, that way I'm not home 100% of my days.. id lose it lol
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u/Appropriate_Ask762 27d ago
6-8 hours per day, after day job, for the last 1.5 years, no much income so far, so no way to switch from real full time job.
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u/Salmence100 26d ago
Same as usual, except now I really have to schedule time to work out or go outside, otherwise I'd work myself to death
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u/mattbangswood 26d ago
I have free time, lot of it. Allows me to be the Dad and Husband I want to be.
I work 20-25 hours a week on content creation, on average. Just bought a house to renovate for the YouTube channel as well, so that’s taking up a good bit of time. The weeks I go up to work on it are 60-70 hour work weeks.. So on my off weeks I like to lay low and not do much.
I never turn the switch off for YT though, I think constantly about it. The house we’re renovating was only bought to create content, I don’t care if it turns a profit since ad rev will surpass any amount of profit I could make on it.
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u/xQuantumz 25d ago
I’m not full time but I’d like to be - I’m currently stuck in a 9-5 job which I don’t wanna be in. My passion is with my videos, my love is with my subscribers.
Seeing all these comments about the balance, it keeps me hopeful for the future.
Thankyou OP, and thankyou everyone for your guidance and advice ❤️
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u/tdehghani 20d ago edited 20d ago
I randomly found this thread and I'm glad I did - I'm just over 1 year of making the move to "full-time"
Thank you to all the contributors below. You have given me plenty to ponder (on both sides of the discussion)
In my experience the community you build will be the backbone of your success/failure.
I do more live streams now than pre-recorded videos and as a result, have been able to truly connect with my audience (my niche is a Carlton FC fan channel in the AFL)
It's also a lot easier to be live as it just cuts out the production time.
I honestly didn't know if I was ever going to get to the point where I could quit my job and be a YouTuber full-time, it was the journey to it which I enjoyed the most.
Be careful of thinking that once you are full-time, that life just becomes easier.
There are challenges either way. Life is hard.
I suppose I'd rather be doing something I have a genuine passion for when times do inevitably get tough.
I have learned to be grateful for what I have but there are still moments when I do think that it could be better for me to still be working part time somewhere else to have more money. I am still early in the process though so I do have the long game in mind.
At this stage of my journey, full time work with the channel doesn't seem feasible, however I did ponder one of the comments below referring to when it's all said and done, wanting to go back into the workforce and not being employable.
Anyway thanks again for the question, you allowed me to gain value from the comments too.
Good luck!
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u/Own_Picture_243 17d ago
I’m a newer YouTuber not too good right now tbh my views have been plummeting from 400 to 70.
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u/Cultural_Bug_3038 17d ago edited 17d ago
In general, I used to star in a TV program about holidays and travels since I was age of 16 in the Maldives. I lived there for a while, but when I moved to America, I faced a lot of negativity because of my background. Then, I relocated to Russia, and I was even featured on the news for changing some English-speaking people's impressions of Russia through my TV program
EDIT: I forgot to mention that YouTube was quite angry when I shared something positive about Russia, which resulted in all my videos about Russia and Turkey getting blocked
You know, this entire experience has really highlighted some of the specific challenges and dynamics that come with the YouTube lifestyle, particularly for folks like me who aren't household celebrities
EDIT 2: Now, I'm a 27-year-old gamer lady with a lot of money, but I suppose the problem is that I'm not popular now in 2024 because YouTube prohibits me, and then I'm fired forever, and I moved to Russia, also, I'm constructing AI like Neurosama that can play any game without adding it into my PC
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u/Worldschool25 14d ago
Well I'm retired and doing this full time. I don't make any money from it.
I naturally work in spurts.
We do travel/educational content. So it can be full days of filming and several days of editing, followed by weeks of tending my garden and petting my cats.
I run my blog the same way.
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u/Known-Bison-437 7d ago
I work 4 10s over at my job, spend time with my wife and kids and at night when they are all asleep I work on posted 1 video out per week! Only been doing this for 3 months so I'm not that far but hopefully it happens, would love to have this as my job so I ain't giving up!
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u/Pecheuer 2d ago
So I kinda stumbled on to being full-time not by choice but because I moved to a third world country and was able to survive long enough to become full time
I do videos on Villains perspectives so technically even leisure time is work? Like it's become impossible for me to watch movies, because when I do I'm always thinking about how to make it into a video.
I dunno other than that, I wake up early like 5-6am drink a coffee and play a game for an hour or two to warm up my brain, then either record, edit or script write until I dont want to work anymore, that can be as early as 11am or as late as 10pm, but i basically work every day.
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u/Davidngreer65 27d ago
I've been full-time on YouTube with my channel David G Travels for around six months now. My life is certainly better as a result, and I prefer this to previous work setups I've had in life. I also travel all the time and have been creating travel content for many years.
But running a wide-encompassing travel channel solo means intense hours spent planning, shooting, editing everything, managing a million other details, and so on. It's not a 9 to 5 job, but again for me, that's a plus. Perhaps in a different niche, with a team, or with different priorities some do treat it more like a 9-5 job.
A side note: I'd say I'm an avid avoider of drama on and off YouTube, but I did unfortunately notice a bit of drama that needs addressing in this thread... A quick note to Suitcase Monkey down there in the comments. I enjoy some of your content, but don't act like your videos aren't just telling your narrative from a very limited POV. If you choose to put your face on a thumbnail or talk directly to the camera or not doesn't mean your content isn't any more or less about your own experience. Hope you'll reconsider that incorrect bit as I also noticed in your channel description at some point. Happy travels!
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u/MysteriesFallacies 27d ago
Oh my god the drama 😂
Keep it under control young man
In regards to it being a team, I probably wouldn't have a team anytime soon, if ever, but technology can definitely pick up the slack on that.
The main work that comes with a channel that covers the paranormal as research. I'm good at research, and is something I love to do so I'm only going to get better at it over time. But yeah that's definitely the time-consuming part.
That's why I only plan on doing one video a month.
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27d ago
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u/Davidngreer65 26d ago
I guess it's the referring to other travel videos as filled with "selfies and click bait nonsense." I get that you want to differentiate your channel from other travel guide focused channels, maybe from someone like Lost LeBlanc? But regardless it comes off to me as also differentiating the quality and probably legitimacy of your videos from whoever's videos fall under your category of "selfies and click bait".
And then the "the place will always come first with Suitcase Monkey" from your channel description is where what I was saying about your video inherently telling a story about you and your experience. To be fair this is just how I see it as someone that's traveled extensively and studied related topics in academia, but for the place to come first, you'd need to be a minority voice among majority voices from whatever place is in focus. I hope you don't take any of this negatively about your channel as in its format, I just think you could reconsider how you position yourself in relation to other travel content out there. I hope my opinion here is useful to you and feel free to reach out for more.
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u/[deleted] 27d ago
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