Today, let's talk about seven of the elements that
go into determining how much money you make from ads
on your YouTube channel so that you can kind of maybe
better understand how to make a little bit more money
from your videos going forward.
That's coming up.
Hey guys.
My name is Tim Schmoyer, and it's
Thursday, which means it's time to do some YouTube Q&A with you
guys as I give you every Thursday here at a Video
Creators.
Supreme Fishing wrote and asked this question.
What determines your pay rate on YouTube.
This is actually probably a more complicated question
than you think it is.
There's a lot of variables, a lot of things
that go into determining this.
I'm going to give you some of them.
But first of all, let's be clear because there's
a lot of terminology thrown around about CPM and RPM.
Now RPM is the actual amount of revenue that you earned.
And to see what that number is, just go to google.com/AdSense
and log in your AdSense account there.
And you'll see right there in the front
of it, an overview page.
It will give you your RPM, and that is the actual amount
of money that you were getting paid per 1,000 views
during the date range that you have selected there
in your overview.
Typically, it's floating somewhere between like $1.80
and $2.50-- is kind average here in the US,
but there's lot of factors that go into that,
and let me tell you what some of them are.
Number one, your pay rate is determined
by what advertisers are paying to display ads on YouTube.
That is called the CPM.
And then that CPM gets split up between you,
between your copyright holders, between YouTube,
and everything.
What you actually get is then considered the RPM.
And different industries have-- you know,
they're paying different prices for ads.
For example, if you're attracting insurance ads,
insurance ads, generally speaking,
are paying a lot more than, you know,
like the bottom of the barrel like toothpaste type ads would.
So if you have a YouTube video that gives different insurance
advice, that video most likely attract higher paying
ads than say a personal hygiene video that's teaching people
how to brush their teeth, I don't know.
Number two, your pay rate is also
determined by the frequency that ads are
displayed against your content.
Now, not every viewer sees an ad every single time
they come to one of your videos.
There are a lot of variables that go into this.
For example, how long has it been since the last time
that person saw an ad.
If it's been less than seven minutes,
they won't see another TrueView or non-skippable video
in that frame.
But if it's been more than seven minutes,
then they most likely will see one.
There's also other things to consider.
For example, YouTube will determine how
tolerant is this video for ads?
Like if we showed an ad on this video,
do most people end up just clicking away and not
investing into it?
And it also determines well, how tolerant
is each individual viewer?
You know?
Because YouTube gets to know how different people
interact with ads.
And if there's someone who has a low tolerance for ads,
that will have different display rate frequency than someone
who has like a high tolerance for ads.
Number three, it also depends on what country your viewer is in.
Because here in the US, there's a lot more spending
going on for an ad dollars here than they
are in maybe some other countries
or overseas, where a viewer there
is most likely going to get a less expensive ad,
like from an, advertiser that's paying less.
So if you have a lot of US and Canada type of viewers,
you'll probably make more than if you have a lot of viewers
from like the middle of Africa.
Number four, your pay rate can also
be determined by if there's copyrighted
music in your content or not.
Let's say you use music or something
that you don't own the rights to,
and that copyright holder decided that they we're
just going to take a cut of the advertising
revenue from your video, either completely all of it,
or just a portion of it.
That will make a difference.
Even if you get millions and millions
of views on your video, but all the revenue
is being split between all these multiple parties,
and you're just getting a sliver or none of it at all.
Number five, your pay rate can also
be determined by how much demand there
is amongst advertisers to display their ads specifically
against your channel.
Now, let's say you have a highly targeted channel,
and you have a highly engaged audience,
and these advertisers know I want my stuff exactly
in front of the people who are watching Tim Schmoyer's Video
Creators channel, then if there's
a lot of them just bidding specifically on Video Creators,
then that drives it up and then I make more money,
and they spend more money.
Number six, kind of going along with that,
it also depends on who is selling the ad.
So there's a couple different ways this can happen.
If you're with an MCN, then your YouTube network
could be selling-- like their ad sales teams could
be going out and getting the ads,
and bringing them, and displaying those
against your channel, and that could influence
how much money you're making.
It could be that YouTube's own sales team is going out there,
and they say hey, here's Tim's channel.
Or maybe they pooled like your channel
into a bucket of a collection of other channels
and they're selling all those channels together.
There's a couple different ways it works,
but YouTube's own sales team could sell directly,
or there's the AdWords, which is kind
of like the leftover inventory.
Remnant views get sold through that,
and that's just an auction bidding war, basically.
And that is where you get kind of the cheapest,
most inexpensive ads coming here to YouTube.
Now, that is not to say that if you are with an MCN,
that you will get a higher RPM on your videos
than you would just through AdSense,
or through what people are paying through AdWords alone,
because that's not necessarily true.
Because remember, if you are with an MCN,
then it goes back to the other principle I was talking about.
It depends on how many parties your revenue's
being split between.
So they might bring a higher CPM,
but it doesn't really matter if it's
being split now between YouTube, your YouTube network,
and between you.
Like, it's just kind of depends.
So MCN does not straight up mean more money.
Number seven, your pay rate is also
determined by the types of ads that your viewers
are interacting with.
For example, ' a non-skippable pre-roll ad generally
doesn't pay as much as an engaged view would,
which is from like a TrueView view where people can skip it
after five seconds, and then they only pay if the viewer
watches up to 30 seconds of that ad.
Or consider that around your videos,
there are ads also on the actual page,
or even on top of the video itself from the bottom.
So there's a lot of different ad like units and different ad
types, and each one of those pays differently as well.
So you can start to see how your pay rate, RPM that you're
earning actually gets really complicated,
and this is just like a fraction of an overview of some
of the things that go into determining what your pay
rate is.
So all that said, at the end of the day,
how do you use that information to make more money
on your YouTube channel?
Well, what it really comes down to is this.
You just need to get a lot more views.
Which I know sounds like I just totally
insulted your intelligence, but it really does.
The reason I say that is because a lot of you guys,
you can get really entrenched in well,
I'm going to make more insurance videos
or let me make more kid content because kids
are less likely to skip ads, they're
more likely to engage in ads.
You can do all that type of thing,
but at the end of the day, it just really
comes down to making really good content that a lot of people
want to watch and finding ways to monetize that even outside
of AdSense, if necessary.
Like here on Video Creators, like
this will most likely always be a very small channel,
relatively speaking compared to the rest of YouTube,
because my niche is so small.
And so I'm not going to be getting
millions and millions of views.
So I have other things going on, a business model
wrapped around this also.
But for some of you guys, like you are-- you're
making content that you can just get really massive views on.
And if you can just do that, focus on making that,
then the money just comes, and you don't really have the play
the whole game of like just trying to game the system
in order to get an extra like $2.50.
My encouragement to you is don't try to game the system.
Just make great content, and work on promoting it.
Work on building your audience, and work
on especially getting more traffic
from search and related videos.
That's really where you're going to get the bulk of your ad
revenue from, not as much, from my experience,
from your actual subscriber view.
So hopefully that helps you out a little bit.
If you have any tips and ideas about that, yourself.
I'd love to hear from that in the comments below.
If you want to learn more about this,
definitely read the comments below.
There are always really helpful people here in this community
that'll give you really great advice down there,
and you'll learn a lot from them like I do every single video.
So thank you guys for hanging out.
If this is your first here, I would
love to have you subscribe.
Every Thursday, we do a YouTube Q&A just like this.
We also do YouTube tips on Wednesdays.
I give you guys an update on happenings in the YouTube
space and industry.
Every Tuesday is when I do that.
So subscribe to get those.
Guys, I do all this because I really
want to help you grow your channels and your audience
so that your message spreads and changes
as many lives as possible.
Thank you for letting me be a part of that,
and I'll see you guys again next week.