A Harvard student with 302,000 YouTube subscribers breaks down how much money she earned in ad revenue in 2019 as a college influencer
- Sienna Santer is a second-year Harvard student and a YouTube influencer with 302,000 subscribers.
- Her channel took off after she uploaded a video moving into her dorm room, which now has 4.8 million views.
- A year later, Santer said she supports herself financially with the money she earns online.
- She shared how she makes money as a college influencer and how much she made from YouTube ads in 2019.
- In 2019, she earned just over $44,000 from ads in her YouTube videos, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.
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Sienna Santer is a second-year Harvard student and popular YouTube influencer with 302,000 subscribers.
She shares videos on topics like how she got into the prestigious university and what a day in her life is like.
Santer's influencer career all started with friends and family members asking her how she got accepted into Harvard. After a video of her Harvard dorm-room tour got 4.8 million views, Santer treats her YouTube channel and Instagram page like a part-time job.
"I had so many people asking how I got in and if I could give them advice," she told Business Insider. "Instead of writing back and forth, I decided to put everything into a video and send that to them."
Now she earns money from ads in her videos placed by Google and by promoting brands like Audible and the vitamin company Care/of on her channel.
In 2019, she earned just over $44,000 through Google's AdSense program that places ads in her YouTube videos, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider. (She said she'll have to pay about 25% of that in taxes.)
How YouTube creators like Santer earn money online
Creators with 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours are eligible for YouTube's Partner Program where they can earn money off their channels by placing ads in videos.
Santer said she averages about $3,000 a month from AdSense.
"My channel has helped me deal with things a lot earlier than some of my friends and helped me a lot with money-management skills," she said. "I have checks for AdSense coming in the mail that I have put aside for taxes, retirement, savings."
How much an influencer earns from Google's AdSense program on a YouTube video depends on a number of factors, from the place in the video where viewers normally drop off to the type of advertisers the video gets. Some top creators have ad-placement strategies for earning the most money possible, and generally how much money is earned varies based on a video's watch time, length, and viewer demographic.
Some videos that contain swearing or copyrighted music can be flagged by YouTube and demonetized, earning hardly any money for the creator (or none at all).
Santer previously told Business Insider that usually she adds two to three ads to a video that is over 10 minutes long and follows certain techniques to optimize her video's performance.
Santer is part of a rising trend of YouTubers that gaining audiences by sharing their college experiences - especially their move-in videos, which can rack up millions of views (and in Santer's case, thousands of dollars). Margot Lee, a Syracuse student with 425,000 YouTube subscribers, teaches an informal pop-up class on becoming a professional influencer to her classmates (and shared her slides with Business Insider).