The True Costs of Being on YouTube
what I spent, what I earned, and why I'm walking away
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I started my YouTube channel in earnest in October, 2021, shortly before That Sounds So Good, my second cookbook, came out. A little over three years later, on January 29, 2025, I uploaded the 177th episode of Carla’s Cooking Show. That video, for a cheddar burger named after my mom, is my last for now, and possibly forever.
In this time, I logged 18 million views, grew my subscriber base to 231,503, and grossed a total of $187,997. Some of those numbers sound big, but the costs—financial, logistical, and personal—didn’t earn out. In this newsletter, I’ll explain the hard and soft costs of doing business on YouTube, why leaving is the right move for me, and what I’m doing (for money) next.
I hope that the data about my earnings will provide useful context for anyone deciding whether to to launch or shutter a channel. Maybe my story will be validating for other professional creative people who are committed to the hustle, but not willing to go broke for their art. I know I’m not the only food video host who’s had (or is having) a similar experience. Let’s talk about it.
If you’re simply curious about what I spent and earned from my videos, this is for you, too. Spoiler alert: your guesses about what I make are probably wrong.
I’m including actual financials because I know they can be hard to find. There’s a ton of secrecy around who makes what—even though sharing that data benefits all creators. I’ve worked through any potential embarrassment about how much/little advertisers and sponsors pay me to encourage conversation about the economics of YouTube. If you have another angle on any of this, want to share what you’ve experienced, or have insights I’ve missed, please leave a comment. I’ll read every single one.
Now, onto my story in four parts: The Goals, The Money, The Metrics, The Grind, and The Here and Now.
The Goals
The original goal was to use my channel to drive sales for my second cookbook, That Sounds So Good, ideally earning the book a spot on the New York Times Bestseller List. I had been making videos for Patreon, where I had about 3000 paying subscribers. For the book, though, I needed to maximize reach.
I uploaded Pasta with Sunday Ragu in October 2021, two weeks before pub day. The rollout was timed to create awareness and demand during the presale period, essential for a successful launch.
There would be traditional press, too—The Today Show, The Drew Barrymore Show, Good Morning America, Harper’s Bazaar, etc—but the thinking in the book publishing world at the time was that nothing moves the needle as much as an author’s own base. That’s still the thinking. I’d built up a small YouTube audience with a few videos (shot on iPhones) here and there, and I had around 350k Instagram followers to leverage.
That Sounds So Good landed on the New York Times Bestseller list at #7, and I burst into tears when I found out. Goal achieved! It fell off the list the following week, which means that demand had already peaked, immediately calling into question whether the videos would or could continue to drive sales.
My longer-term goal was to sell a cooking show, or get cast on an existing production. In 2021 and 2022, I was actively pitching multiple hosted concepts to production companies and streaming company execs. Being back on YouTube (following the epic dissolution of the Bon Appétit Test Kitchen in 2020) was supposedly good for my visibility. Having new content to promote every week kept me current. At least that’s what my then-manager said. I got into a groove with my channel, and I took a lot of meetings.
In 2024—three years, one chest tattoo, a third book deal, a separation, and a rescue puppy later—I signed my first development deal! Buuuuut, after going to market, the concept wasn’t picked up. [SFX: sad trombone.]
I don’t know enough to write intelligently about what’s going on with network “TV,” but things seem pretty dire there, too. The dream of having my own show is in a deep vegetative state now, and shutting down production is a (healthy?) way of letting that vision rest in peace. There are almost 200 videos in my library, and plenty more from when I was at BA. If there’s a producer out there who wants to check out my (massive, unique) talent, the work speaks for itself. (Okay fine, there is one more show idea that I’d still kill to make. EPs/brands/execs, if you’re out there, holler.)
Should I keep the channel going because it’s its own thing now, and I’ve built an audience on consistent, year-over-year weekly releases? I could, but not without thinking hard about my profit and loss statement. When it comes to YouTube, it’s mostly loss.
The Money
I spent $3500 to produce, shoot, and edit each long form video for YouTube. I regularly shot five recipe videos over two shoot days, and I booked a food stylist to prep with me the day before. All of this happened in my house, so there was no studio expense.
I am proud of the 4K production quality of my videos. My crew consisted of a producer, Omega, a DP, Timothy Racca, and an amazing editor, Meg Felling. Two food stylists worked on Carla’s Cooking Show at different times: Cybelle Tondu and Alivia Bloch.
Most epic BTS ever.
Omega is a dream collaborator and incredibly talented producer who encouraged the funnest and most unhinged versions of myself; I’m lucky I got to work with them for as long as I did. Tim has been shooting food videos for many years, and as our DP, he never once dropped a clip, always made the food look beautiful, and even let me know when my contour needed more blending. Tim also handled lighting. I’m not sure when Meg slept, but her edits came through week after week like clockwork.
Our “A” camera was set up on a tripod in my entry hall to capture all the front-facing action. Tim wore a steady rig with the “B” camera to capture a second angle for cutaways, close-ups, and slow motion footage. This is an unusually lean setup and I’m extremely grateful to my video crew1.
To my credit, I killed it as executive producer, studio manager, content strategist, recipe developer, writer, copyeditor, hair and makeup artist, animal wrangler, caterer, social media manager, and, of course, on-screen talent.
I was also the sound guy. That means I stuck the lav mic on myself and Tim monitored my audio and flagged us when there was an issue. In other words, Tim was totally the sound guy.
On set with puppy Margie, September 2022.
Back to the rough stuff. Until recently, I put out a video every week, costing me $14,000 per month, plus groceries. (My time is not included in that figure.) Average monthly earnings from Google Adsense, the program that matches ads to content on YouTube? Brace yourself.
My top grossing months were October 2022, $7544, and May 2024, $7028. My two worst months were December 2023, $1799, and July 2022, $3689.
That means that on my best month, income fell short of expenses by about $6500. My crappiest month put me more than $12,000 in the hole. On average though, I grossed about $4000/month in ad revenue; my sales partner takes 8% of that off the top.
If we roll with the average Adsense income, here’s the bottom line: $14k going out. $4k coming in. Net loss, month over month: TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. That’s a lot to sink into a channel that is barely moving book sales and not getting me a TV deal. Simply put, it’s completely unsustainable from a business perspective.
The Metrics
We could get lost in the sauce trying to nail down how Google Adsense determined how much I’d earn from the ads that were plunked down in my videos. It’s complicated, it’s mysterious, and it’s hard to understand. I’m convinced that’s all by design. Creators are given some tools for deciding what kinds of ads run in their videos and where they’re placed. But we have no control over how that actual Adsense number is arrived at—it’s not a negotiation.
The most significant metric for earnings on YouTube is CPM, or the cost per thousand views that advertisers must pay to run spots against a channel’s content. To advertise on my channel, that number is about $29 per thousand views.
The other metric is RPM, revenue per thousand views, which is what the creator is paid. My RPM is around $10. Easy math: For a video with 30,000 views, I earn $300. People tend to assume that my take is much higher, in particular the viewers who can’t believe I have the audacity to put my recipes behind a paywall.
Again: It costs $29 per thousand to run an ad in my videos, and I get $10 per thousand. Where does the other $19 go? To YouTube, of course. That’s a 2:1 split in favor of the platform. Lord, give me strength.
One of my most popular videos is for a mushroom pasta (excellent, by the way): 312,260 views. I’ve brought in a total of $3665 for that one, or jussssst enough to cover the production expenses. Put it another way: I didn’t earn a penny. Is not losing the same as winning? I’ve spent a lot of time on that question.
It’s not like I sat idly by. If I could reduce production costs, that would increase profits, which Omega and I talked about. They worked to tighten our post-production flow and shaved a full day of editing off each episode. Good! Beyond that, my options were to strip the videos of sound effects and graphics, publish them without color grading, find a new crew with lower day rates, or become a vlogger. I chose not to do any of that. I wanted the channel to grow and views to increase; achieving that while lowering quality didn’t seem like a solid strategy.
Obviously, if I’d had a ton more subscribers and got way more views, I could have spent the same amount of money per video, and earned a lot more. More thousands of views equals more tens of dollars. I’ve fantasized about that math a lot over the past few years2. Thanks to a host of factors, including the introduction of Shorts in 2021, views on long form food videos have steadily decreased.
While some of my videos did pretty well, I never experienced viral growth, and I never had a trending video. My subscriber count ticked upwards like an odometer at two miles per hour. I’m not being defensive when I say I’m not the only creator experiencing this. That’s so weird that you think I sound defensive!
I do not have the personal wealth or resources to backfill a $10k monthly deficit, yet somehow I’m still standing. (I have had to scrape myself off the floor a couple times while rehashing these horrific numbers, but I’m upright now.) I keep on keeping on because of branded deals, period. Yes, I would like to thank my sponsors.
The channel would not be profitable without branded deals. My sales partner negotiates these contracts, liases with the client, and takes 20% of the agreed-upon rate. Rates for promotional videos vary wildly. Some integrations just cover my break-even number, $3500. I’ve accepted this many times over because it beats losing money. The same way doggy paddling forever is better than being sucked into a whirlpool. With the remnants of my stubborn pride, I turned down offers below $3500. I’m going to walk out of here with my head held high and good day to you, fine sir!3
The best partnerships have been years-long engagements with brands I love. In those scenarios, I was creatively challenged, enthusiastically endorsed the product in my videos, made content my audience genuinely liked, and got paid what I deserve.
While I’m fortunate to be in a position to attract sponsors, over time I felt trapped in a loop. I am making videos that lose money so that I can attract a sponsor to pay me the money I lost making videos that lose money so that I can attract a sponsor to pay me the money I lost …
There’s another theory that being on YouTube, even if not lucrative, is valuable to a creator’s digital portfolio—YouTube, Instagram, Substack, TikTok, etc. I wish the analytics supported that theory. Instagram punishes you for linking out to YouTube or Substack from Stories (two different parent companies). You can’t insert a link in an Instagram caption, not from a grid post and not from a Reel. YouTube drives almost zero traffic to Substack, where my recipes live (yes, behind a paywall).
The only thing I can bank on is my open rate on Food Processing, which is around 45%. I’ve grown to 42,000 total subscribers in two years (thank you!), and have great visibility because of the robust referral and discovery tools on this platform. Where you’re reading this is where it’s at.
The Grind
Releasing a video every week for years meant I was always navigating three overlapping schedules: pre-production for the videos we’ve yet to shoot; post-production for the videos going through their edit; and pub week for the video coming out. Honey, we’ve been grinding.
In pre-pro, I came up with the recipe lineup and developed new dishes. Early on, most of the videos featured recipes from my books. But in the last year plus, the majority were original, unpublished dishes. I love working on recipes, but it costs me time, money, and creative energy. Out of four-ish weeks in a month, development eats up one or more.
Simultaneously, Omega, Meg and I reviewed a rough and fine cut for each video, every week. Omega and I gave notes, I wrote all of the graphic elements that appeared on screen, Meg handled the edit, and exported the final on Sundays. We published on Wednesdays, by which time I better have written and formatted the recipe to post it here, on Food Processing, along with a newsletter timed for the release.
Once every four or five weeks, we’d be back in production. One prep day, followed by a two-day shoot. The hardest days for me were the shoot days when, after wrapping, I’d shower, parent, eat and still have to review the video that was in edit. There was a lot of groaning and complaining from bed, and if I was lucky, Cosmo would take pity and bring me one of his epic grilled cheese sandwiches.
Peggy climbs onto Cybelle while Omega preps Cosmo for his scene.
The video churn wasn’t quite a full-time job, but it was close. Mentally and emotionally, though—phew. When we started, shoot days were my favorite part of the process. Over time, the glamour faded. Watching myself on screen month after month, listening to my voice, scrutinizing my face, hair, body, mannerisms, the giant bites I take at the end of each video. Dude. And that’s without reading any comments. I’ve been doing this a long time, and as a high-summer Leo, my ego is robust, but there were plenty of times when I truly could not stand myself or my performance. As my therapist put it one time, “You’re playing Russian roulette with your self-esteem, and you have no control over how you’ll be received.” That was a scary way of describing what I was going through, and even worse, I had to pay him for saying it.
In 2023, when my marriage broke up and I had to stay in (goofy, upbeat) character for the sake of my and my family’s privacy—that was brutal. I was living a lie, projecting an inauthentic version of myself. The conflict between the person in reality and the performer ate away at me.
I didn’t know how much I’d been sitting on my feelings until the dust settled and I could share a bit onscreen about what had been going on. The audience feedback was honestly soul-affirming. By then, though, making YouTube videos had become a terminally tangled Slinky, and as the owner of this sole-proprietor enterprise, I had to to call it. The ups no longer justified the downs. Insert end screen.
The Here and Now
Full-time YouTuber, I was not. The time I devoted to video (about 20 hours per week) can now go into other aspects of my career and my business. My third book is due in [coughs] 61 days, and is slated for release in spring 2026. There are a lot of memoir-ish essays in this one, and I’m pushing myself to reimagine what a Carla recipe looks, sounds, and feels like. It’s hard and exciting and deserves all of my attention.
In the fall, I launched Worst Day of Your Life So Far, the podcast where I interview celebrities about their kitchen disasters, produced by the great
. I love WDOYLSF, and I’m sure someday it will be profitable! We’ll be back with Season Two after I turn in the book. Earning “real” money as a podcast host is a goal so big it veers into fantasy, but it’s a focus for me in 2025.The rest of my time is going into this platform, which is my primary source of income by an overwhelming margin. (Again: thank you!) I will continue releasing new recipes here on a regular schedule, and I’ll be dipping into Substack’s new tech for making and sharing videos. I’m also leaning into short form for current and future brand deals, where the ratio between the expenses and the rate doesn’t leave me feeling insulted.
Now you know why you won’t see new videos from me on YouTube. Sitting here writing this is not where I envisioned I’d be, forty months later. All that work, and I couldn’t make it work. But, there were plenty of wins.
I got very good at cooking and talking on camera, and I had total creative freedom over every episode.
Lots of people have learned tons from watching the show, and it made them better cooks. Others have been amused or soothed. That thrills me.
I gained so much from my collaboration with smart, talented, creative people. Including deep and treasured friendships.
I know my audience feels the same way I do about how food is connected to family, love, creativity, nature, and care. Huge.
Plus, I’m still getting paid 1 cent for every view. Keep those clicks coming before the Treasury stops minting pennies!
It didn’t turn out exactly as planned, but plenty of recipes are like that, too. Most of the time, you can do some research, play around a little, and after another pass or two, it’s right. Once in a while, though, a recipe is so f*cked, everything you do somehow makes it worse, and you just have to walk away. Not for lack of trying. I know in my core that failure is an integral part of growth, and I’m better for the experience.
Forever yours,
CLM
I have a lot of respect for creators who self-tape and edit their content, and I envy their lower production costs.
There’s all sorts of hocus-pocus that goes into whether a channel is successful, whether engagement exists (or is manufactured) for videos, how many folks it reaches, what factors into a trending video, etc. A person could go crazy trying to crack that code, and I almost did. For the most part, though, I focused on making the the content I wanted to and featured the recipes I was excited about.
For context, I know other food creators who don’t entertain deals that pay less than $20,000. Some real Linda Evangelista types, amirite?! Several others draw the line at $10,000. Compare and despair is a brutal game we play.
Ahhhh, Carla. Weird to feel like I want to give you a hug but at the very least, I'm giving you a salute as the band plays. Discovering your YouTube channel unlocked cooking for me. You exposed me to new ingredients, techniques, and made me finally see the pure creativity of food. I don't want to make this comment ~about me~ but truthfully, your channel was the door I walked through to get a culinary certificate from Kendall College in Chicago. You changed lives!
This transparency is essential to other creators. The collective we are witnessing the internet eat itself. Art is dependent on ads which are dependent on tech companies which could care less about art. As you stated, reaching and honing your audience directly is the only true way to make money off of one's creative pursuits. I'm happy to hear you have other irons in the fire and looking forward to what's next. I'll preorder the 3rd book the minute I can.
fascinating and maddening. it seems harder and harder for me to find food shows by experienced, entertaining chefs in an ecosystem that only seems to reward amateurs, gimmicks, and viral whatever. so I sit in bed watching vintage jacques pepin, hungry.