10 Big YouTube Earners in 2011
Lately I’ve been very interested in reviewing some of the blogs that I used to read few years ago. The list is pretty large and contains mostly blogs focusing on online activities and marketing.
Among these there’s one that I always appreciated because the writer and he’s way of making a point. This blog is called IncomeDiary and it’s the one which inspired me to write this article.
Back in 2009 Michael Dunlop, the author of the blog posted a very comprehensive list containing some of the top earning blogs. The list is pretty impressive considering the fact that some of the bloggers are making 5 figures every month and their number of views is huge.
Anyway, as a respond to that article I thought it would be a good idea to show that YouTubers are making some “decent” earnings too. In fact you will see that some of these power YouTube users are making fortunes every month just from publishing videos thanks to YouTube’s partnership program which allows channel owners to add relevant PPC ads.
Google doesn’t allow partners to share details about how much money they make so we can’t give exact numbers here, but we can get a pretty good idea of the income they make based on their channel views and subscribers. All of the YouTubers bellow are making over $100.000 in annual income.
1. Ray William Johnson
Subscribers – 5,158,295
Total Video Views – 1,485,615,029
He is the host of the most popular YouTube show called Equals Three – “=3″, a show promoting funniest YouTube videos in a pleasant way with Ray’s special ability to comment on videos. The show is undoubtedly the fastest growing in YouTube’s history and recently this year, Ray become the most subscribed person on YouTube making NigaHiga’s channel go on 2nd place.
Ray’s also the founder of another great YouTube channel called YourFavoriteMartian
2. Niga Higa
Subscribers – 4,800,562
Total Video Views – 1,037,440,013
He’s an extremely funny Hawaiian guy who has managed to stay for quite some time in the top favorites YouTube list. NigaHiga or Ryan Higa on he’s real name works on providing weekly video updates which are made by him alone or in partnership with some other youtubers. He’s videos gather over 1 billion views in 2011.
3. Shane Dawson
Subscribers – 2,899,410
Total Video Views – 627,961,658
Is a sketch comedy and parody YouTube channel which is directed by no other than Shane Dawson, a young video maker who’s very dedicated to what he does and he is great at being an actor too.
4. Annoying Orange
Subscribers – 2,242,704
Total Video Views – 938,126,451
This is my personal favorite show on YouTube because it really manages to be extremely creative and always comes with unexpected situations. Like the name says, the show is based on Annoying Orange, the fruit that terrorizes the entire kitchen.
5. Fred
Subscribers – 2,356,695
Total Video Views – 861,766,657
Is a channel created by Lucas Cruikshank who created the character Fred Figglehorn, a 6 year crazy child getting into trouble in every video. The Fred channel was no1 for a while, but it was toppled by NigaHiga’s channel. It seems like now, Fred channel is adopting the animation series in which characters make even more amazing things.
6. sxePhil
Subscribers – 1,957,662
Total Video Views – 755,506,630
Is a show hosted by Philip DeFranco is reviewing latest tech news, funny news and he loves to criticize people and people actions making a great funny show. He has millions of fans worldwide and it seems like recently he hosted a show with QA in front of over 15k people in Dublin all about he’s YouTube success.
7. Machinima
Subscribers - 3,863,483
Total Video Views -2,866,569,336
Is the most popular YouTube channel dedicated to gameplay and game reviews. The total video views count is at over 2 billion and is growing very fast. When it comes to subscribers, Machinima has over 3 million and the content is updated very often.
8. Smosh
Subscribers - 3,867,446
Total Video Views – 1,068,594,830
Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox are the ones running this channel, a channel where you can find funny videos and comedy reviews. They are pretty old in the industry, especially Anthony who has started posting flash videos in 2003 on NewGrounds.
9. CollegeHumor
Subscribers - 2,491,957
Total Video Views - 1,117,020,276
Another of my favorite YouTube comedy channels. CollegeHumor makes funny videos having professional actors pose as students, kids or just simple characters in awkward situations.
10. ShayTards
Subscribers - 996,737
Total Video Views - 418,866,964
A channel hosted by Shay Butler where he posts daily video updates. He also has another channel called ShayCarl, but the first one is the main channel where he gets over 200,000 views on average.
Keep in mind that these are just money made using the YouTube channels and we do not take into account any other ways of monetizing such as: T-shirts, other channels and websites or just fan material which can be bought.
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[...] would ever pay back the investment. But Google had a long-term vision, which has clearly paid off. There are many YouTube publishers making more than $100,000 per year, based on estimates (Google doesn’t allow actual numbers to be released). And that’s after the money is [...]