YouTubeAMA

In the millions. First off, they are in a different adsense program than normal partners because they have such a large audience and their content quality is much better than the average youtuber. Google more info about "adsense premium publisher program" That is extremely hard to get accepted into though.

You can monetize your videos instantly now but you won't make much money unless you have lots of viewers. There are many categories such as education and technology as well as gaming which are really popular and quite easy to get noticed in. Gaming is a harder of the three since there's thousands of videos about Call of Duty but not so many videos of linear algebra. Also, there's no shortcut but comment on other videos and leave video responses. That's how I got noticed. My channel gets about 15K-20K views a day now! I hope to see it grow more in the future. Also, if you do get accepted make sure to try and improve your content quality. 100k views of garbage quality is going to receive a low CPC leading to lower revenue which could be the same as 10K views on a high quality video.

LOL! Its pretty funny. Yeah there is some truth but YouTube doesn't make you follow those rules. It was more of a comedy than informational. The stuff he talked about was correct although he did make YouTube seem like it was all about profits which I dont think is 100% true because they do pay a fair amount (over 60% is yours). You have to keep in mind that YouTube (which is owned by Google) has to pay for servers, storage, and developers to help keep the site running.

The number one most important guideline is to make a schedule and follow it. This is harder for some categories such as education but if you're in entertainment (comedy etc) then it's easier. You don't want your audience guessing when your next show is. Also, don't worry about subscribers too much, they will increase with good content and you don't get paid per subscriber anyways. Just cater to your current audience and your channel will grow. For example, when you make a good video, your current subscriber will like the video and probably comment. His like and comment will show up on his channel and his subscribers can see that. Also if he comments and someone clicks on his channel then they will see the activity he had with your channel and the person checking his channel may become interested with your channel.

Try to produce content on a regular basis. Don't let your channel die out. And by regular basis I mean set a schedule. Don't let your audience guess what days you upload videos...make a schedule such as every Friday etc. Also, comment on other videos and make sure to title your video nicely because that's what is gonna get the first impression when someone is looking at "related videos". And for gaming its a another story because you need gaming licenses to monetize gaming videos so your best bet is to join a third-party network such as machinima. Machinima already pays for the licenses and they give you a rate at which you can make money off your videos and they keep the rest. It's kind of fair since they did buy the licenses and they help your channel grow.