I had a video of a newsworthy event a while back that went viral, and I made over 5 grand on it over the course of about 2-3 years when YouTube changed its monetization policy to require like 10k subscribers or something before the creator could monetize.

The video didn’t stop getting views. It had a spike in views just a few weeks ago when something similar happened in the same area. But I haven’t made any money from it in like 8 years.