• Creators who are a part of YouTube's Partner Program can make money from their videos with ads.
• YouTubers can make thousands of dollars each month from the program.

Getting 1 million YouTube subscribers is a huge milestone, and, in practical terms, it often means a creator can earn a full-time living from the platform.

YouTube creators earn money a number of ways, but money from the ads that play in their videos usually constitutes a big chunk of their income. How much does YouTube pay for 1 million subscribers? Finance creator Nate O'Brien said that as a YouTuber with 1 million subscribers he earned $440,000 in a year from the platform. He shared that he was earning between $14,600 and $54,600 per month.

Read a full breakdown of how much money O'Brien makes per month and his strategies

Another YouTuber, lifestyle creator Tiffany Ma, was earning up to $11,500 a month from ads on her videos, she previously told Insider.

Read about how much money Ma earns per month and how she grew her channel

To start earning money directly from YouTube for long-form videos, creators must have at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours in the past year. Once they reach that threshold, they can apply for YouTube's Partner Program, which allows them to start monetizing their channels through ads, subscriptions, and channel memberships. For every 1,000 ad views, advertisers pay a certain rate to YouTube. YouTube takes 45% of the revenue, and the creator gets the rest.

YouTubers can also make money from shorts, the platform's short-form videos. Creators need to reach 10 million views in 90 days and have 1,000 subscribers in order to qualify.

Two key metrics for earning money on YouTube are the CPM rate, or how much money advertisers pay YouTube per 1,000 ad views, and RPM rate, which is how much revenue a creator earns per every 1,000 video views after YouTube's cut.

Some subjects, like personal finance and business, can boost a creator's ad rate by attracting lucrative advertisers. But while Ma's lifestyle content makes less money, she's perfected a strategy to maximize payout.

"To really optimize your audience, I think YouTubers should definitely put three to four ads within a video," Ma said.

The money made directly from YouTube is a key pillar of many creators' incomes.

Here are eight exclusive earnings breakdowns in which YouTubers with 1 million followers or more share exactly how much they earn from the platform: