How do you make money with AI videos?

Four routes, and ad revenue is the slowest of them despite being the one everyone starts with.

Ad revenue needs 1,000 subscribers plus either 4,000 watch hours or 10 million Shorts views, so it typically pays nothing for the first several months. Affiliate income starts immediately and scales with audience trust rather than size. Sponsorship generally becomes available around 10,000 engaged subscribers in a commercially interesting niche. Client work — producing videos for businesses — pays first and does not need an audience at all.

The maths that decides whether any of this works: a Standard-tier Leaxor video costs $3.00. A finance-niche video at $20 RPM needs 150 monetised views to break even on production. An entertainment video at $3 RPM needs 1,000.

That gap is why niche choice dominates the economics far more than production cost does.

Worth being straight about the timeline: most channels that reach meaningful income took 6-12 months and 100+ videos to get there. Faster production shortens the calendar, not the number of attempts.