You need a minimum of 1000 subscribers and over 4000 watched hours in the last year in order to apply for monetization. After that, you can apply and they review your channel, that could take anywhere from a couple days to a month. After approval you need to connect your Google AsSense account, then setup a payment method. After everything is working, they pay you once a month, and delayed by a month. For instance, if I were to make any money this month, I wouldn't be paid until the end of December.
How much exactly you get paid depends of a lot of factors, and it appears that the biggest one is how valuable you average viewer is. For instance, it turns out home repairs is one of the most valuable set of viewers because they actually spend money. Kaleb told me how much he makes and I won't repeat it here, but I will tell you that you'd see my pace of work increase quit a bit if I made the same.
Thanks for sharing this. While back, I think I read something about like less than 1% of YouTube channels are actually ‘financially successful’. (Which obviously is a very subjectively loose statement). Even if you made some financial gains, [on top of your daily job], then maybe that could help further your project financially. You never know. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
And Hey, maybe ‘Dirt Pickle’ will turn into ‘Makin dat money’. 😁