While you might think the life of a YouTuber is all eating challenges, celebrity podcasts, and prank videos, the reality is that making a full-time living from the platform is harder than ever. Even though big names like Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson, Jeffree Star, and Jake Paul make some not-so-small fortunes from their content, not everyone is as lucky.
Making the decision to go full-time on YouTube is risky, and as shown by the surprise return of Evan Eckenrode who left that life behind for a 9 to 5, it's not for everyone.
YouTuber Ali Abdaal has shared a video explaining how much money he makes from 10 million views and his journey to crossing the $1 million mark in revenue.
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According to Abdaal, it took 85 videos and nine months until he started making money, leading to a poetic message about what would've happened if he'd quit at video #84.
Pointing to his most-viewed video, Abdaal explains how it earned just over $191,000 in revenue.
The video is a few years old, but in 2025, you can expect an average YouTube CPM of $3.53. Various factors including time of the year and niche will affect your revenue, although America (unsurprisingly) sits at the top of the table regarding countries with the best revenue.
Abdaal reminds viewers that he started making videos in 2017 and received just a handful of views back at the start. It wasn't until the middle of July 2019 that he started to make any real money, with about $80 to $120 a day helping things tick along nicely.
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Abdaal notes that this was about what he was making as a junior doctor in the UK's National Health Service when putting in between 40 and 60 hours a week. In June 2020, he says his channel revenue started to go 'insane' - pointing to one day where he made $338.97.
He reiterates that YouTube is the gift that keeps on giving, because the more content you have on your channel, the more views you'll accumulate. It all goes back to that all-important 85th video that he says changed his entire trajectory, referring to videos as 'digital assets'. Unlike investing in property or cryptocurrency, he says the return on his videos has been much more lucrative.
Like with physical investments, he adds: "The thing with an investment is that you wouldn't expect it to have a return immediately, you'd expect it to have a return over the long term."
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If he's ever feeling a little burned out, he simply thinks back to that 85th video and gets the motivation to put a little more effort into his latest release.
As for how many views you need to get to go full-time, Abdaal concludes it took him just over two years to reach the level where he could 'quit' his job, having made over 100 videos and getting between 1.6 million and 2 million views a month. This equated to around $4,000 a month, but notes that his channel has a lower RPM than a channel that was just tech or finance.
He counted himself as 'rich' when he was earning around $100,000 a month - clocking in with between three and five million views a month.
Having left his medical days behind and now being a familiar face on YouTube, Abdaal is a New York Times bestselling author thanks to his book, Feel-Good Productivity. He has multiple revenue streams to supplement his main YouTube channel, and in 2025, he still posts regular content. Even if not everyone will be as lucky as Ali Abdaal in terms of growing their YouTube channel into a money-making machine, his advice is to trust the process.