How much I get paid by Google

After being monetized on YouTube for the past year, here’s how much I make each month for uploading YouTube videos. If you’re thinking of starting your very own channel, this may be the right video for you.

Alright then, let’s talk about how much Google pays me. Now I say Google instead of YouTube cos the earnings I’m going to be talking about are not just from YouTube. In case you haven’t noticed, I typically write a blog on each youtube video I make and publish that on my website, theyolarbi.com. and on that website, I have Google Ads running there to, hopefully earn a little more from there as well. If you’re curious to find out or just about thinking to start your very own YouTube channel this year, well, let’s get started.

Lemme put this out there, YouTube doesn’t pay you for the number of subscribers you have. No. And now, to even get monetised on YouTube, you’ll need at least 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of public watch time in the last 12 months. What this means is you’ll need at least 1000 people clicking on the subscribe button to join your audience or community. For the public hours, it means from today, the day you’re watching this, the accumulated number of minutes or hours in this case, that the people have watched your videos online, on YouTube in the last 365 days. Almost forgot about these, you’ll need to have no Community strikes (ie your videos are environmentally friendly) and you would also have to go through the 2 Step verification process. So, in all, there are 4 things you’ll need to satisfy to join the YouTube Partner Program and be able to monetise or make money from your videos.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get intense. If you don’t have a target audience, people who would want to watch your videos, then don’t start YouTube at all. Cos just to meet these first 2 requirements is a lot of hard work. Let’s take the Phenomenal Concepts channel for an example. It took me about 3 and half years of constantly uploading videos to get monetise. I have been uploading videos here on this Theyo Larbi channel for 2 years now and I still haven’t reached that point. Yes, you may see ads on videos on this channel, once or twice, but that’s just YouTube advertising there. I don’t earn anything from it. Sorry, if I discouraged you there for a second. My apologies, but I’ll have to be sincere with you. On that note, if you have a strong following on say, Instagram or Tiktok or something and you’re very certain that if you should start a YouTube channel, you would get the views and subscribers, then definitely start a channel now, right after watching this video of course.

Please note, there are several ways YouTubers make money, and I’ll be making dedicated videos on each of them soon. So, be sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell to be among the first to see those videos when they’re live.

Now back to the ways of making money on YouTube, well, there’s YouTube sponsorships and brand deals, affiliate marketing, merch sales, crowdfunding service such as Patreon, YouTube Premium contents and the most common one, Google Adsense. Adsense is more or less the base line so that’s what we’ll talk about in this video.

Once, you are part of the YouTube Partner Program a.k.a once you’re monetised, you get paid for having ads running on your videos. You’re usually paid per 1000 views but the pricing is different for everyone. Depending on the length of the video, the geographical area of people watching the video and generally how long people watch such video, all contributes to how much a YouTuber will make.

Once you’ve satisfied all 4 previously mentioned requirements, you’ll need to create an adsense account. Typically easy, you just sign in to Google Adsense with your gmail account. Adsense is how you’ll get paid for having ads on your videos. You’ll need to add your bank details and sign some Tax documents as well, then you’re good to go.

Lemme put this out there, if you’re not in US, the bank account you provide will have to be in the US dollars currency. In my case, I had to create a dollar account from my own account. Same account number but they change the last 4 digits from 1590 (Cedi currency) to 220 (dollar currency). If you don’t do this, the money will arrive with the bank but you can’t do anything with it. So, create a dollar account.



Also, to get paid by Google, your monthly earning should be at least $100 or that equivalent in the currency you spend. My first payment, an amount of $169.77 was made in May, 2021. Even though I got monetised in November, 2020. So, it took me, 6 months to receive my first payment. The 2^nd payment of $145.18 was in October, 2021. An additional 5 months for the next payment.

Now that sounds awesome right? Well no. there’s something else.

Firstly, YouTube pays you 68% of what you actually earn on your videos. So, let’s say you make $100 on your videos within the month, you’ll receive $68. If your videos made $200, you would receive 68% of that, which is $136.

Secondly, Google is a US based company, and if you’re not a citizen of the US, you’ll have to pay some crazy amount of tax on your earnings. About 8-10% of what you made from Adsense.

Thirdly, all transactions are directly to the bank details you provide and whatever amount you make is sent via SWIFT. Just as how we sent mobile money, SWIFT is a way of sending money across countries. Initially, it was through MoneyGram but it wasn’t too secured. Anyone would stumble upon your MoneyGram code could withdraw without you ever knowing about it, so I guess that’s why everything is directly sent to bank accounts now. But, the problem with SWIFT transactions is, there’s a $30 fee on every transaction made. Even if you send $1,000, a million dollars or $50, they’ll still charge $30 out of it. Google isn’t paying for this.

The fourth thing is, to convert the money from dollars to cedis, in my case, the bank will also take their cut. If a dollar is say, GHc 6, your bank will probably buy it for GHc 5.80p. sometimes, even lower.

So, if we take out $200 example. Let’s say a dollar is worth GHc 6. If YouTube pays 68% of our $200 (GHc 1200), we’re left with $136 (GHc 816).

$136 is above the $100 payment threshold so we can get paid. Non-US tax of about 10% and we’re left with $122.4 (GHc 734.4).

Once payment is made, there’s a SWIFT charge of $30, leaving us with $92.4 (GHc 554.4).

And if your bank isn’t kind enough but decide to purchase $1 from you for GHc 5.80p, at the end of the day, we’re making just shy of GHc 535.92.

So, my question to you is, is it worth it? Working your bones off for several months to get monetised and not receiving a huge sum of money at the end of the month.

If you ask me, well, definitely. In my case, I didn’t start YouTube cos of how much I was expecting to earn each month but because I wanted to share content and to show my face, to hopefully make me recognizable on the streets at some point. That’s why even though it takes me more than 3 months to make that $100 threshold, I’ll still keep uploading.



Again, if you have a target audience, then you should get on board. Otherwise, you’ll be making videos that no one is watching.