It is … by far more than most of us make – I would guess. The gamer / streamer / youtuber Montanablack shows his december earnings – live on stream.
Recently (in December 2018) the gaming streamer Montanablack88 showed his audience his Youtube earnings live on stream. Previously in March 2018 he had commented on his twitch earnings while streaming. Monte – a nickname by which he is well-known within the German gaming scence – is doing this in an effort to be transparent to his fan- and subscriber-base while not subscribing to the attitude of secrecy which the content creator environment is trying to oppose upon him.
This is how much money one gamer makes on Youtube
This first section will focus on insights while the stream clippings (duration: 15:26min and 12:34min) will be linked in a section below.
Montanablack made 73.000€ (72.919,76 €) on his channel Spontanablack in youtube advertising revenue in December 2018! This might not make for the exact december period since the applied filter on his report was set to “last 30 days”. The video was propably recorded on the 30th or 31st of december. At this state of the report the revenue value is listed as preliminary since youtube / Google have a habit of adjusting their figures before payout due to click-fraud or other irregular activities.
People who might attribute this due to one viral video or hit migtht be forced to overthink: In order to reach 20 Mio. views in December 2018 Montanablack had to upload and produce 15 videos in a 30-day period. Additionally he made 11k € in ad-revenue on his main-channel MontanaBlack which was not the main source of content for this period.
These earnings are based on a CPM of 5,97€ on average. The overall ad revenues of his videos was 131k €. As an advertising platform operator Youtube gets a share of 45% of the ad revenues.
This is a lot of money! However Monte points out that these are gross earnings! Meaning that as a creator he still needs to deduct taxes and fees amounting to approximately 60% before reaching the amount for his final net income. According to my calculations these net earnings land somewhere between 29k € and 333k € (per month).
This is how much money a streamer makes on twitch
In the second video Monte sheds a light on how much revenue a streamer is able to make based on the twitch-subscription model. This time there are no report-interfaces and he only makes verbal remarks concerning the issue while playing a casual round of Fortnite. Since this is something like a monologue, here are the bulletpoints:
- He gets a 70% of the subscription revenues (in US Dollar), while twitch keeps the other 30%.
- Apparently there is no difference between a normal twitch subscription and an amazon prime sub (in terms of value and share)
- In Decemeber 2018 he had around 9.000 subscribers (not fans – real, paying subscribers)
- Level 1 Subscriptions are 4,99€ on twitch
- The gross to net ration of 40%-60% can also be applied here
My Big Data knowledge comes into play and I can draw up the following equation:
9.000 subs x 4,99€ per month x 70% creator-share = 31.437€ gross earnings per month.
This would result in 12.575€ net earnings.
Montanablack mentions 9.000€ he made on twitch in this particular month. The gap of 2.500€ could be based on the fact that this was mid-month pay-out or he had a smaller subscriber base at the time the video was recorded.
Additional sources of income for content creators
For now these were the two sources of revenue of content creator I was able to analyze on a solid foundation, but most creators have additional sources of income which evolve around the areas of:
- Merchanidise and personal online shops – a lot of creators habe their own merchandise fashion lines and sometimes even partner with well-known fashion labels to produce clothing that is sold via online shops
- Donations – money which is gifted via real or virtual currency that is gifted by subscribers live on stream
- Affiliate (Marketing) fees – creators recommend and link shops in videos and description using personalized hyperlinks or voucher codes which in turn lead to revenues when transactions via these codes are recorded. Frequently recommended shops are MMOGA, Hardware- or Gaming-Setup stores and fashion shops e.g.
- Sponsoring Deals – more and more established brands tend to make youtube stars their testimonial to reach a younger audience. One recent example is Audi who contracted FIFA youtubers for special web-based video promos.
Summary: Revenue-Potential of youtubers and streamers
Disclaimer: The illustrated case shows one of the, if not THE most successful German streamers. There is somewhat of a longtail of creators to be considered who make a lot less money when publishing gaming content. Furthermore Montanablack himself consistently stresses that these revenues did not come over night and are the result of years of hard work.
And keep in mind that December revenues tend to be inflated due to Christmas advertising campaigns and prolonged media consumption.
Monthly Revenues
Youtube-Earnings: 73k € – 84k € gross (29k € – 33k € net)
Twitch-Earnings: 23k €- 31k € gross (9k € – 13k € net)
Additional Revenues: X *no data to be analyzed
Total: 96.000 € – 115.000 € gross per month + X (38k € – 46k € net)
If you are interested how much money Montanablack made the following year in December on his channel Spontanablack, check out the article: Follow Up: This is how much a gamer makes on Youtube.
Videos: Montanablack Earning on Youtube and Twitch
In the following section you will find the videos containing the information that provided the basis for this little analysis. They are stream-clippings. I highly recommend watching the videos in full to get a better understanding of the video game culture and circumstances sourrounding these massive earnings. Maybe you will even get a glimpse at what kind of content and protagonists Millenials are looking for when consuming video content.
I could also understand if you were to close the tab after two minutes because you will hear the word “Digga” a lot and the topics are somewhat specific.
Video: Youtube Earnings Montanablack Decemeber 2018
Video: Twitch Earnings Montanablack March 2018
The interesting part starts at 1:50min.
About: MontanaBlack88
Montanablack is a german youtuber, gamer and streamer. In mid-2019 he is well-known for mainly streaming Fortnite Battle Royal, amongst other shooter-games and the occasional round of Mario Kart 8. Before that he used to play various installments of the EA Sports FIFA title. His real name ist Marcel Eris, he is 31 years old and was born in Buxtehude (Germany).
Weblinks:
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/montanablack88
