You started out as a V-Liver, the income has not followed, and somewhere along the way the thought crept in: maybe V-Livers just do not make money.

Plenty of figures get thrown around about V-Liver income, average monthly earnings included, but how those numbers look depends on how long someone has been active, how they stream, and what is counted as income in the first place. An average on its own will never tell you why you are not earning.

What matters is checking your monetization status, your viewers, your returning listeners and your supporters, and working out exactly where you are stuck.

This article walks beginners through how V-Liver income actually works, how to track down the reason you are not earning, and what to look at when it is time to rethink how you stream.

V-Livers Don’t Make Money? The Income Reality to Know First

Judging whether V-Livers can or cannot earn from average monthly income alone is close to impossible. Circumstances vary with how long you have been active and how you stream, so let us start with what to keep in mind when you look at income figures.

Treat Average Monthly Income as a Rough Reference Only

Search for V-Liver income and you will find sources quoting an average monthly figure as a benchmark. When you look at one, though, it is important to also check the conditions the number was calculated under.

There are three main reasons for this.

The first is that who was surveyed, how many people, and how the totals were compiled differ from study to study. Someone who just started and someone who has been at it for years, an independent streamer and an agency-affiliated one — their situations are not the same, so the same average is not something you can compare yourself against directly.

The second is that the figure changes depending on what is being counted as income. What viewers pay and what the liver actually receives are not necessarily the same amount. We cover how that works in the next section.

The third is that averages are easily pulled upward by a handful of high figures. A few high earners lift the average, and the average alone tells you nothing about where any individual streamer stands.

One data point worth referencing is the VTuber Occupational Awareness Survey published by MoguLive in June 2022. Of the 67 respondents, 50.7% said they earn no revenue from their VTuber activity, and 13.5% earned 100,000 yen or more per month.

That said, this was a survey of 67 VTubers, not a statistic covering V-Liver income as a whole. Rather than treating it as a verdict on average V-Liver earnings, take it as one example of a survey conducted among VTubers.

Break “Not Earning” Down into Three Situations

“Not earning” covers very different situations depending on the person. In this article we split it into three.

• Not monetized yet: the mechanism for receiving payouts is not switched on
• Earning, but only a little: revenue exists but has stayed small and is not growing
• Earning, but inconsistently: the amount swings widely from month to month

Start by working out which one describes you.

If you are not monetized yet, checking the monetization requirements and how many people are showing up to your streams comes first. If revenue is already coming in, looking at returning listeners, the people actually supporting you, and how concentrated that support is will help you narrow down the cause.

Instead of measuring yourself against an average, get clear on where you actually are. That is the first step to rethinking your income as a V-Liver.

How Is V-Liver Income Decided? Understanding How Payouts Work

V-Liver income comes from payouts earned inside streaming apps, and — as your activity grows — from monthly subscription support, digital products, merchandise and more.

The place to start is in-app payouts. The gift amount does not automatically become what the liver receives, and how it translates into a payout differs by service. Here we will use IRIAM as an example to see how it works.

Inside Streaming Apps, Gifts and Activity Records Become Payouts

On streaming apps, the gifts and tips listeners send can turn into a payout for the liver. What that payout is calculated from, however, is not the same everywhere.

Some services distribute a fixed percentage of the revenue generated by gifts. Others factor in activity records beyond gifts, along with streaming hours, when deciding the payout.

So the first thing to confirm is what feeds into your payout and how the amount is determined on the service you use.

The Gift Amount and What You Actually Receive Are Not the Same

What a listener spends on a gift or tip and what the liver actually receives are not necessarily the same figure.

On YouTube, for example, Super Chat and Super Stickers pay creators 70% of the revenue remaining after deductions such as local consumption tax and the iOS App Store fee.

On other services you cannot work out your payout by applying a percentage to the gift total at all. Rather than assuming 10,000 yen in gifts means 10,000 yen of income, check how payouts are calculated on the service you use.

On IRIAM, Support Diamonds and Hourly Diamonds Are Your Payout

On IRIAM, the V-Liver communication app, you are awarded “diamonds” based on your activity record. Once monetization is approved, 1 diamond equals 1 yen and can be exchanged for points or cashed out.

There are two kinds of diamonds: support diamonds and hourly diamonds.

Support diamonds are not decided by listener gifts alone. The amount you earn is based on your activity record — gifts, stars and comments — together with IRIAM’s own evaluation criteria.

Hourly diamonds work differently: how many you earn depends on your Community Rank and how long you stream in a day.

Community Rank is the indicator used for streaming activity on IRIAM. It starts at D and runs through C1 to C5, B1 to B3, A1 to A3 and S1 to S3 — 15 levels in all — moving up and down according to the Daily Rank Score totalled every day.

This article explains how Community Rank works and how to climb it in detail, so take a look if you want the full picture.
>>How to Raise Your IRIAM Rank: The Daily Rank Score System Explained

According to the official FAQ, streaming time that counts toward hourly diamonds is capped at 2 hours per day and 40 hours per month. Community Ranks of C5 and below are not eligible for hourly diamonds at all.

In other words, IRIAM payouts are not a matter of gift amount multiplied by a fixed rate — and streaming longer does not keep increasing your hourly diamonds indefinitely.

Payout systems and conditions are subject to change, so check IRIAM’s official FAQ for the latest information before you rely on any of it.

Look at What Your Activity Costs, Not Just What You Receive

When you think about income as a V-Liver, check not only what came in but also how much you are spending to keep going.

Standing illustrations and model production, equipment, stream assets — these all cost money. Receiving 10,000 yen a month looks very different once you account for what you spent to get there.

That is why it helps to record how much you received and how much you spent on your activity as two separate figures.

Note that activity costs in this sense are not the same as deductible business expenses for tax purposes. Which costs qualify depends on their purpose and the nature of your activity. If you are unsure — including whether you need to file a tax return at all — checking with a tax office or an accountant is the safe route.

Once you have a clear picture of how payouts are decided and what you are actually receiving, the next step is pinning down why that income is not growing.

Five Checkpoints to Pin Down Why You’re Not Earning

When earnings stall, the first instinct is often to stream more hours. But the reason income is not growing differs from person to person. Before you add hours, it is worth mapping out where there is actually room to improve.

As a framework for that, this article walks through the following five checkpoints in order.

Are You Actually Set Up to Receive Payouts?

The first thing to confirm is whether you are in a position to receive payouts on the streaming service you use.

Depending on the service, you may need to meet certain requirements, apply for monetization and then be approved.

On IRIAM, applying for monetization requires meeting all three of the following:

• 15 or more hours streamed
• 10 or more days streamed
• 5,000 or more cumulative points earned

What counts toward cumulative points is the points from gifts listeners send during your streams. Points from login bonuses, tutorial missions and the like are not included.

Once you meet the requirements you apply, and when monetization is approved you can start receiving diamonds. Until approval comes through, your diamond count will not appear in the Liver Report.

This article covers IRIAM’s monetization requirements and the application process in detail, so take a look if you need it.
>>IRIAM Monetization: Requirements, How to Apply, and Why Reviews Fail

YouTube and other services have their own entry requirements for each monetization feature, and what you need differs from platform to platform. Start by checking the official information for whichever service you use.

Being able to monetize and earning a stable income are also two different things. If you are already set up to receive payouts, move on to the next checkpoint.

Is the Number of People Watching Your Streams Growing?

If you are monetized but income is not climbing, look at how the number of people actually watching your streams is changing.

Watching follower count alone is not the way to do it. Followers can grow without the number of people who actually turn up to your streams growing alongside them.

On IRIAM, the Liver Report shows total viewers, comment counts and streaming hours by day and by month. It goes back a full year, which makes it useful for comparing against earlier numbers.

Be careful not to judge by total viewers alone, though. If your streaming hours jumped compared with last month, viewer numbers may well have risen simply because of that. Check days streamed and hours streamed alongside it.

Individual stream numbers also shift with the day of the week and the time slot. So rather than chasing daily ups and downs, this article recommends taking four weeks to a month as one block and judging whether the trend is growing, flat or declining.

For concrete ways to get more people watching, this article breaks it down step by step.
>>How to Become a V-Liver: A 5-Step Beginner’s Guide to Getting Started

Are More Listeners Coming Back?

Once viewer numbers start rising, check whether any of those people are coming back repeatedly.

Alongside being discovered by new people, watching whether returning viewers are increasing gives you a much clearer read on how your relationship with listeners is developing.

Not every streaming app lets you see a returning-viewer count directly, however.

When it does not, one option is to simply jot down the listeners you keep seeing in your comment section. IRIAM also has fan badges, a system that lets livers and listeners see how close their connection is each month, which works as a supplementary indicator.

This article explains how fan badges are earned and how the system works, so take a look if you are curious.
>>IRIAM Fan Badges Explained: Requirements for Each Level and How to Earn Them

Fan badge counts and returning-viewer counts are not the same thing, though. Use it as material for judging whether the number of people engaging with you consistently is growing — not as a precise return rate.

Is the Number of People Supporting You Growing?

Next, look at how far support through gifts and similar has spread.

Here, check not just the amount but — as far as you can see it — how many people that support came from.

Say you received 10,000 yen in support last month and again this month. Whether that came from one person or several changes the picture entirely.

Looking at amount and headcount together makes it easier to separate “the total went up because of a few large gifts” from “the number of people supporting me is actually growing.”

Adding streaming hours does not automatically add supporters either. Rather than looking only at hours streamed, check how your viewers, your returning listeners and your supporters are each changing.

Is Your Support Too Concentrated on a Few People?

The last thing to check is how concentrated that support is.

If one or two people account for a large share of your support, your payout may be high but liable to swing month to month. If their circumstances or the way they show support changes, the amount changes with it.

That said, because IRIAM’s support diamonds are not determined by gifts alone, you cannot reverse-engineer an exact “without this listener my payout would be X yen.”

Within what you can see, take a look back at whether gifts and other support are concentrated in a small number of people.

If it feels heavily weighted toward a few supporters, you can work on gradually widening the group of people supporting you — or broaden your income sources themselves through monthly support and digital products, both covered later in this article.

These five items are a framework for organizing your income situation as a V-Liver. They are not official diagnostic criteria, so there is no need to decide whether you are doing well or badly based on any particular headcount or figure.

What to check	What to look at	How to read it
Whether you can receive payouts	Monetization requirements, application, approval status	Checking requirements / ready to apply / applied / approved
People watching your streams	Viewer counts, days streamed, hours streamed	Growing / flat / declining
People coming back	Listeners you see repeatedly, fan badges, etc.	Growing / flat / declining
People supporting you	Number of supporters, as far as you can see it	Growing / flat / declining
Concentration of support	The situation of each supporter	Spread out / concentrated in a few people

Work down the list from the top.

If you are not monetized yet, start by checking the requirements for applying and getting approved. If you already are, look through the remaining items for the one where movement has stopped.

Even if several items concern you, there is no need to change everything at once. Pick one thing to improve, test it for a set period and watch what changes — that makes it far easier to work out what actually had an effect.

How to Broaden Your V-Liver Income Beyond Gifts

This section is for those already earning from gifts and the like but seeing the amount swing widely month to month. If you are not monetized yet, go back and check “Are you actually set up to receive payouts?” and “Is the number of people watching your streams growing?” from the previous section first.

Gifts are not a mechanism that pays the same amount every month. Having income sources beyond gifts makes it easier to build a setup where you are not relying on a single channel.

That said, adding income sources does not guarantee stability either. Weigh the time production and upkeep take, along with the fees involved, and start with whichever method fits your activity.

Add Monthly Subscription Support

Compared with one-off gifts, monthly subscription support can make your income easier to forecast.

What is available differs by service. On YouTube, for instance, joining the expanded YouTube Partner Program and meeting the channel membership requirements lets you offer monthly memberships.

If your streaming app has no built-in monthly support system, using an external fan club service is another route.

On pixivFANBOX, for example, you can set support plans anywhere from 100 to 10,000 yen per month. There is a service fee involved, so check the latest pricing and conditions before you commit.

One thing to watch when you start: do not over-engineer the perks.

Producing exclusive content frequently or preparing multiple tiers of perks adds exactly that much operational work. Balance it against the time you have for streaming and everything else, and start with something you can sustain.

Sell Digital Products Like Voice Packs and Wallpapers

Digital products — voice packs, wallpapers, audio works — can be sold without holding inventory, unlike physical goods. Once produced, they are also easy to keep selling.

On BOOTH, for example, the service fee for download products is listed as “product price × 5.6% + 45 yen” (as of August 2026).

When you sell, look past gross sales: think about what you receive after fees, and the time production took, when working out whether it pays.

There is one more thing to confirm before selling digital products — the permitted usage scope of your illustrations and character.

• Whether commercial use is permitted
• Whether use on products and merchandise is permitted
• Whether avatars and assets provided inside the app can be used outside it

Having permission to use a commissioned standing illustration in your streams does not necessarily extend to using it on products and merchandise. Check the terms of your commission and the service’s terms of use, and confirm with the rights holder where needed.

Consider Merch and Brand Deals Based on Where You Are

Beyond digital products, there is income from merchandise sales and brand deals. Neither automatically translates into income once you start, so weigh them against your current activity and workload.

Producing merch means planning the products, making them and working out how to sell them. If holding inventory worries you, made-to-order production or pre-orders are worth considering.

And as with digital products, check the permitted usage scope before putting your standing illustration or character on merchandise.

Brand deals are not decided by follower count alone either. What companies look at varies by company and by deal, so avoid thinking in terms of a flat threshold like “offers start coming at X followers.”

When broadening your income sources, you do not need to start several at once. Every new venture adds production, upkeep and sales work on top of what you already do.

Try one first, and check not only how much income it brought in but how much time and effort it took. If it looks sustainable, then consider the next one.

How to Rethink Things When You Still Aren’t Earning

So far we have looked at why income stalls and how to broaden your sources beyond gifts. From here, we will go through what to weigh when deciding whether to carry on as you are or change how you do things.

Continue, change your approach, or take a break — that decision cannot be made on payout figures alone.

Check the Time You Spend and Your Income Against Costs

The first material for rethinking is the time you put in and your income against costs.

Counting streaming hours alone can make the time you actually spend look smaller than it is. Include planning, social media posts, video editing, image creation, product work and admin, and look back at how many hours a month it all adds up to.

Alongside that, lay out what you actually received and what you spent on your activity.

What matters here is not judging good or bad by the size of the figure. You can work out something like an hourly rate from your activity hours, but there is no shared standard saying “drop below X yen an hour and you should quit.”

The balance of time and income you can be happy with also depends on whether you are doing this as a hobby, for side income, or with an eye on scaling up later.

If the way you are currently spending your time feels like a burden, one option is to think about cutting the work itself down rather than only about increasing income.

Separate What You’ve Already Spent From What You’re About to Spend

Next, think about what you have already spent and what you are about to spend as two separate things.

Add up what you have spent since starting — standing illustrations and model production, equipment, asset purchases and so on.

Even if you have spent more than you have received, that alone does not make it a failure. What you want to establish here is not only whether you have recouped past spending, but whether further spending is actually necessary from here.

If you are thinking about moving from a standing illustration to a Live2D model, for instance, start by getting clear on why you want the change.

Is it to widen your range of expressions and movement? To try a different streaming style? Because there is a feature your future activity needs? Once the purpose is clear, deciding whether the extra spending is worth it gets much easier.

Having spent money in the past does not obligate you to invest more. Base the decision on what you want to improve from here.

Pick One Problem and One Fix, Then Test It for a Set Period

When rethinking your activity, choose one problem that concerns you from the five checkpoints in the previous section. Then narrow what you try down to one thing as well.

If it feels like returning listeners are not growing, for example, decide on a fix that matches — running a recurring segment, or announcing your next stream schedule.

This article covers recurring segment ideas organized by purpose, so use it as a starting point.
>>V-Liver Stream Content Ideas: A Beginner-Friendly Guide by Purpose to Try Tonight

Change your streaming hours, days, content and promotion all at once and you will not be able to tell which change did anything. To keep the effects traceable, this article recommends not piling too many experiments on at the same time.

Deciding what you will look at and when you will review it before you start also makes comparison easier.

There is no universal rule about how many weeks it takes to see results. Rather than treating the period itself as the measure of success, run it for a set stretch and then check how the numbers that match your goal — viewers, returning listeners, supporters — have shifted.

If Testing Changes Little, Rethink How You Stream

If your fix does not produce the change you hoped for, trying a different approach — or rethinking the shape of your activity altogether — is a legitimate option.

You might change your streaming time slot, your content, or how you run your segments. It is also worth reconsidering whether the streaming app you use suits your style.

Switching apps does not guarantee more income, though.

Before you move, work out whether the problem you are feeling comes from the service’s features and user base, or whether it also involves your content, your returning listeners and how far your support has spread.

This article covers what each service is like and how to choose between them in detail.
>>Top 9 Vtuber Apps and Streaming Services: A Guide by Purpose and Tips

And you do not have to judge the results of your rethink on income alone. Even if earnings barely move, spending less time on your activity or finding a pace you can sustain is a result in its own right.

If It’s Too Much, Cutting Back or Taking a Break Is an Option

Your options are not limited to carrying on or quitting.

When the numbers are not moving, it is natural to think about streaming more and doing more. But if that makes the load heavier, keeping the activity going at all gets harder.

Streaming less often, taking a break for a while, shortening each stream — adjusting your volume is a valid approach.

Deciding your days off in advance also makes it easier to actually take them, rather than being swayed by that day’s numbers or your mood.

These are all ways of rethinking your relationship with V-Liver activity.

Income as a V-Liver does not necessarily grow in proportion to the time you put in. Look past the payout figure to the time, money and effort your activity takes, and find the shape that you can keep going with.

Summary

Whether V-Livers can make money is not something average monthly income can settle. Gift amounts do not become your payout as-is, and how payouts are determined differs from service to service.

When income is not growing the way you hoped, start by checking whether you are set up to receive payouts, and how the people watching, the people coming back and the people supporting you are each changing. Whether support is concentrated in a few people matters too.

Once you find the problem, do not change everything at once — pick one improvement and test it for a set period. And if you already have income from gifts, broadening your sources through monthly support or digital products is another option.

Look at the time, money and effort your activity takes alongside what you receive, and keep searching for the shape of V-Liver activity you can sustain.