How Much Did My Small Gaming Channel Make in 6 Months?

[00:02] YouTube? In this video, we're going to talk about getting monetized, strategies to earn outside of YouTube, and what my actual revenue was for my first 6 months. To give you a quick introduction, my name is Hannah Bart. I

[00:15] started my creator journey streaming on Twitch starting in January of 2015. I been streaming on Twitch for over 10 years. In February of 2024, I really so I made a commitment to start posting consistently. I've always had a passion

[00:30] for gaming and I especially love Nintendo games. So, I decided to turn my passion into content. So, I would say my niche falls into Nintendo, but more challenging Mario games like Super Mario Maker 2 and Kaiso Mario, but I also

[00:44] here and there. My target audience is for other people like me, people who are Nintendo games, and like a good challenge. My content style is usually just getting through a game or a level or something and adding a little bit of

[00:58] entertainment flare to it. As you may or may not know, in order to get monetized on YouTube, you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours. My path to monetization was through long form videos and those 4,000 watch hours. You

[01:10] can get monetization through shorts as well, but I focused more on long form videos. I hit the 1,000 subscriber mark pretty quickly because I had subscribers kind of built up from sharing shorts and doing some content earlier in 2020. But

[01:23] I didn't hit the 4,000 watch hours until probably like 6 months after I started posting consistently. So, there's a few different ways to bring in revenue from chats, and there's memberships. Keep in mind, this can be a little bit different

[01:36] different on how much you can make. It's important to pay attention to your CPMs and RPMs to know how much you're going to make. Gaming content has its own little bit harder to have a higher RPM in the gaming space, but we can take a

[01:49] look at what I'm making just to give you an idea. Okay, let's take a look at my channel analytics here. So, you can see right now that I'm at about 4,800 subscribers as of September 2025, just to give you some context on where I'm

[02:04] at. I got monetized on October 5th. So, I just did my time period from October I just did my time period from October 5th, 2024 to April 5th, 2025. All right, so taking a closer look at views here. So my total views during that time frame

[02:17] was 279,000. Um, just to break it down by video Um, just to break it down by video types, um, my shorts brought in 200,000 of those views. My videos, my long form videos, 51,000 views, and my live

[02:32] streams brought in 24,000 views. So you can just kind of take a look at that um, to get an idea of where my views are coming from. Okay, now we're going to take a little bit closer look at watch time. So, my total watch time in this

[02:46] time. So, my total watch time in this time frame was 8,821 hours. So, just to give you guys some context on how often I post. Um, in terms of long- form videos, during this time frame, I was posting at least one

[02:59] long form video per week. I usually post like one to three shorts per week as long form videos and that's where I'm So, as you can see on the chart here, you know, I had a few videos that had

[03:13] performed really well for me. You know, sometimes I post a video and it gets like 500 views and then I'll have a video every once in a while that'll kind watch time and a lot of ad revenue in. Next, we can take a quick look at

[03:26] subscribers here. So, in that time frame, I got about well, I got about 1,400 subscribers in that time frame if you round up. It looks like I got a lot of subscribers from the last video I did like this. So, this is your reminder to

[03:40] content. And then next up, you can see kind of just as we go down a bunch of videos that are just Super Mario Maker 2 related. Um, it looks like I had one the first time that got quite a few subscribers. One other interesting stat

[03:56] that I like to look at is impressions. So, I had 1,300,000 impressions on my channel in that time period. That is a lot of impressions. small channel, like YouTube will definitely still push out to your

[04:09] content to a lot of people. So, there is a ton of opportunity out there for you small channels. Okay. And finally, let's get into the revenue. Okay. So, my total revenue during this time frame from YouTube was $549.84.

[04:27] some money off of YouTube. And it's a little bit of extra fun spending money I can use on gaming stuff. Okay, so let's break this down. So from watch page ads, I made $224.30. That was 40% of my income. Super chats

[04:42] was $12.55, 18.7% of my income. Memberships was $7044, 12.8% 8% of my income. From YouTube

[04:54] 12.8% 8% of my income. From YouTube Premium, I made $50.12, 9% of my income. Shorts feed ads, which is a little bit higher nowadays, is $34.69, so 6.3% of my revenue. Gifted memberships was $27.94,

[05:10] 5% of my revenue. Super stickers was $27.90, 5.1% of my revenue. And then Super Thanks was $11.90, about 2.2% 2% of my revenue. A couple other things I want to add is yes,

[05:25] money, but I also make money from Twitch. I make money from Patreon, and then I've also done a couple sponsorships on YouTube. It is possible to get sponsorships as a small channel. I made about $800 in sponsorships in

[05:39] this time frame. So, even though I'm not a super huge channel, I just want to let channel like me to get sponsorships. I don't have my exact numbers of what I time frame, but if that's something you'd be interested in learning about,

[05:53] always make a separate video on that. So, the final thing I want to look at is RPMs. For those of you that may not know, RPMs are basically how much they'll pay you per 1,000 views. So, we'll take a look at my videos, shorts,

[06:06] and lives, and just see the difference there. So, for my long form videos, my RPM is $4.68. For shorts, my RPM is a walloping 20. And then for live streams, my RPM is $114.

[06:21] opinion. So, like I said, for RPM, it's going to be a little bit different for everybody. The gaming niche is a little bit harder to get a higher RPM just audience, which doesn't have as much buying power. But, you'll have to let me

[06:34] know how my RPM compares to maybe yours or another channel that you know of. Overall, I'm super grateful for how much money I've made on YouTube. It's not a so it's nice to just get a little bit for what I'm putting in. I think over

[06:47] time it will compound and I'll be able to make more, but I'm still learning as I go and I'm not going to be perfect every video that I make. I'm just trying to learn where I fit best and where my community is. So, every step I take is a

[06:59] step towards growth in my opinion. If you're a newer creator, here's a couple tips I would give you. Everybody says it, but consistency is super important. and stick to that. Whether it's once a week, once every other week, once a

[07:12] month, every day. One piece of advice I heard is if you think you can do that should do. If you won't be able to stick to it for at least a year, then don't pick that consistency and lower it down until you get there. Another suggestion

[07:26] creating content that is going to attract an audience. Sometimes when you're in a small gaming niche, the community isn't very big. So, just be what content you want to create. My final tip is as you become monetized on

[07:40] YouTube, make sure you diversify your income streams. As I was showing you, I made more money in sponsorships than I did from ads on YouTube. So, just making sure you're keeping those options open as your channel grows. So, what do you

[07:53] what you expected? Let me know in the comments below what your thoughts are. channel? You'll definitely want to check out this video here next. Thank you guys so much for watching. We'll see you guys in the next