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8.23.2010

who are the youtube stars making $100,000 plus per year?

People, it pays to be a YouTube star. According to a study done by analytics and advertising company TubeMogul, there are ten independent YouTube personalities who made over $100,000 in the past year: Meet The YouTube Stars Making $100,000 Plus Per Year.

Mind you, these folks have hundreds of thousands of people watching every video they upload. TubeMogul based their estimates on each person's viewership data, along with the banner ad pay structure YouTube has set up with partners:
* Revenue only comes from banner ads served near content (we ignored pre-roll or overlay since we can't easily isolate by publisher).
* Since YouTube banner ads have a two-second load delay, we estimate 2.59% of viewers click away before an ad loads based on separate research.
* Ads were served near all videos that loaded (since there are partners, this is generally true).
* CPM for the banner ads was $1.50 (Google auctions a lot of this inventory off; we rounded this 2009 estimate down to be conservative).
* YouTube is splitting ad revenue with partners 50-50.
And no surprise, a couple of these high-paid YouTube stars are Asian, including Ryan Higa, who has the most subscribed channel on YouTube, and Natalie Tran, your favorite video blogger from the land down under:
4. Ryan Higa - $151,000

Ryan Higa makes comedy skits and is a video blogger who turned into a viral star with his "How to be Gangster" and "How to be Ninja" videos. Even though he doesn't upload as many videos as his fellow YouTube celebrities, Higa is still the top dog at YouTube with over 2.6 million subscribers.

July 2009 - 2010 Views: 206,979,909

10. Natalie Tran - $101,000

Under the user name of communitychannel, Natalie Tran is the most subscribed to YouTube user in Australia. Like most others on this list, she is a video blogger and occasionally uploads comedy skits.

July 2009 - 2010 Views: 138,871,829
Yo, and those are just conservative estimates, and just the people making over the $100,000 range. I'm guessing there are lots of other YouTubers making some decent coin. My question is, how do I get in on some of that money? Clearly, I'm in the wrong game.