One way young adults and teens have been using the Internet for, is making videos on the single video sharing website, YouTube. These videos range from hair and makeup tutorials, to video game commentary and even cooking. YouTube has been around for ten years and has recently flourished as millions of people have free access to it. YouTube’s slogan is “Broadcast yourself” yet many hadn’t realized when it began that it could become a steady career choice.

Being on YouTube as a career is more than just being on YouTube, it links content creators to so many more opportunities in the entertainment industry. Which is why you might see YouTubers like Bethany Mota, Tyler Oakley and Smosh at various awards shows and movie premiers.

Forbes magazine has published a recent article, listing “The World’s Top-Earning YouTube Stars 2015.” The article lists 13, all having various subject matter in their videos, yet one thing is the same; they all started out at home on their own.

Combined these YouTubers make a total of $54.4 million, and they are only the highest YouTubers paid that make videos from their homes.

Today there are even a few pop culture stars that came from YouTube, Justin Bieber being one of the biggest. The highest paid YouTuber on Forbes’ list is know by the username PewDiePie, who makes videos of him and friends playing video games and has nearly 40 million people subscribed to his channel, earning him $12 million dollars a year — it’s truly incredible.

Where do they get all this money? You might ask this question often while watching various YouTubers’ videos. YouTubers mainly get their money from a combination of the amount of subscribers they have, number of views per video, advertisers and sponsors.

A professional YouTuber going by the username Mah-Dry-Bread, even goes into depth explaining it in one of his videos “How YouTubers Get Paid!”

Being a YouTuber takes time, growing a following and getting views doesn’t come as easily as the popular YouTubers make it look. Most popular YouTubers have a brand, a way their videos look and the topics they touch on. In order to get a stable following videos must be constant, a video per week or every few days keeps viewers hooked, and it gets them to subscribe, share and like the content with every video they watch.

Most YouTubers promote themselves in other forms of social media as well. They put links to their Twitter and Instagram accounts in every video they post, making a connection with subscribers and viewers, giving them a way to contact or become involved in that YouTuber’s life and recent events they are involved in, giving hints to future videos on their social media accounts.

Millions of people use YouTube daily they get news from it, movie trailers, music videos and even learn different skills from videos on it. Viewers can find pretty much anything they are interested in on YouTube and for free.

YouTube gets the majority of its income from advertisers and shares that income with content creators — YouTubers — that get viewers to watch advertisements by creating videos to be viewed. In a way it is a cycle, a circle of life, but instead of human life, it is the long lasting, flourishing life of YouTube.