YouTube Pays 70% on Memberships and 55% on Ads — Why Fan Funding Beats Advertising

Almost every discussion of YouTube income is about ads. YouTube's own documentation shows that ads are the worse deal for creators, by a wide margin.

The Two Splits

Revenue source	Creator receives
Channel memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers, Super Thanks	70% of net revenues
Ads on public videos (watch page)	55% of net revenues

YouTube's wording: it "will pay them 70% of net revenues from channel memberships, Super Chat, Super Stickers, and Super Thanks," and "55% of net revenues from ads displayed or streamed on their public videos."

That's a 15 percentage point difference. For every $100 of net revenue, fan funding puts $70 in your pocket where advertising puts $55.

Why That Doesn't Automatically Mean Fan Funding Earns More

The split is only half the equation. The other half is how many people pay.

Ads earn on every view. A viewer who watches passively, never comments and never subscribes still generates ad revenue. The rate per view is small, but the base is everyone.

Fan funding earns from a tiny minority. Only viewers who choose to join a membership or send a Super Thanks contribute anything. Most channels convert a very small percentage of their audience.

So the honest framing is: fan funding has a better rate on a much smaller base. Which wins depends entirely on your audience's willingness to pay — and that varies enormously by niche.

Taxes Are Handled Separately

A useful clarification, because people assume the percentage is taken after everything.

YouTube states that transaction taxes such as sales tax, VAT and GST "are not revenue to Google and are not included in the partner revenue share calculation."

So sales tax isn't quietly reducing your 70%. It's handled outside the split entirely. Your own income tax, of course, still applies to what you receive.

Eligibility

Fan funding features sit inside the YouTube Partner Program, so you need to be accepted into YPP first — which means meeting the subscriber and watch-hour or Shorts-views thresholds, and complying with the channel monetization policies.

Beyond that, YouTube requires that you live in an available location and that you (and your MCN, if you have one) have accepted and are complying with the relevant terms, including the Commerce Product Module.

What This Changes in Practice

Turn fan funding on as soon as you're eligible. Memberships and Super Thanks cost nothing to enable and pay a better rate than the ads you already run. There is no downside to having them available.

Don't expect them to replace ads at small scale. With a modest audience, a handful of members will not outweigh ad revenue from all your views. Treat fan funding as an additional layer, not a substitute.

Recognise which business you're in. If your channel is search-driven and impersonal, ads are your engine and you should optimise watch time. If your audience follows you, the 70% split rewards building that relationship directly.

Remember Shorts are different again. Shorts revenue goes through a pooled model with its own fixed 45% creator share, which is lower than both figures here.

Where to Verify Any of This

Both percentages come from YouTube's own partner earnings documentation, linked below. Revenue shares and eligibility rules change, so check the source rather than relying on any summary, including this one.