patreon likely does get him some good money. that's why so many youtubers have it, even when they got a decent amount of subs.
with ad revenue tho, it's a bit trickier. lgbt youtubers have always gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to that. queer focused content is more likely to get demonetized(meaning even if an ad plays, it's youtube that gets the money, the youtuber gets nothing), the cpm is also possibly lower because advertisers might not want their ads playing on lgbt content. there was a "scandal" a few years back(well, like a decade ago) and mark(and ethan) were part of it as lgbt content creators, because people found out youtube's restricted mode(sorta like a sfw mode) hides lgbt content. so with channels like mark's, their channel would have almost no videos displayed, and they'd not show on recommended nor searches. that type of shit really impacts lgbt content creator's ad revenue.
so it's hard to really know if he makes any decent money from youtube. there's been gay youtubers, like jack merridew and tyson asmr, who have mentioned making 0 money from their youtube because they constantly get demonetized, all because they might make something a bit more gay aimed and slightly sexual, whilst the straight content creators will make content that's just as if not more sexual in nature and have nothing happen to them.
youtube sponsors pay you based on your popularity. so it's hard to know how much he makes from those. he could be making 5k from just one ad read, and that's possibly enough to cover his expenses for the whole month.
and we also don't really know how much freelance work he might do as a photographer or even how much he charges for it.
l.a is expensive and i think he does live in a more expensive area. but with patreon and sponsors, he probably makes enough to live comfortable, considering he doesn't really seem to have that much excessive spending
