Fast Company looked into the financial viability of being a YouTube star by interviewing actual YouTube stars to see how they make their living. 

Hopefully, you won’t be surprised that it isn’t an overnight sensation and that getting a million hits on a video is far from getting a million dollars.

If anything, you should be prepared to do it for free for awhile and engage in a lot of partnering with sponsors/product placement/that thing John Oliver just talked about on Last Week Tonight, “native advertising”.