- YouTube money is something everybody
is always interested in.
And last year I made a video telling you
how much money YouTube paid me for the entire year of 2019.
And since a lot of these videos don't talk
about things like brand deals or even affiliate marketing,
it's something I wanna break down
for you guys in today's video,
'cause there's a ton of misinformation
about how much money YouTubers make.
And again, this is just dealing with my YouTube earnings
for the year of 2020,
this isn't necessarily the same thing
that every content creator is earning,
so we'll talk a little bit about that,
how YouTube, AdSense and CPMs and monetization really works,
'cause if you looked at Social Blade,
if you just kind of looked at Social Blade
and you went and you typed in my channel,
you would think that my monthly earnings on YouTube
are somewhere between $123 and $2,000 a month,
well, $2,000 a month would it really be that bad
in terms of making money from doing content
and things that you like.
It says that here, it thinks I'm earning $23,000 a year.
It's not the worst kind of income
you could get as a content creator.
But if you actually look at my YouTube dashboard
and even just what I earned in the month of January of 2021,
you can see that it's not even close
when you look at Social Blade.
For the month of January,
my YouTube earnings were $6,812.89
in ad revenue from Super Chats,
the YouTube monetization from the ads
and just basically all the YouTube sources.
That's not even counting any affiliate links
or any brand deals that I did in the month of January.
So, if you're looking at Social Blade
to figure out how much my YouTubers make,
that ain't it chief,
different YouTube videos earn different amounts of money,
not all views are equal,
so you can't just go off with the number of views
that somebody has and that's why things like Social Blade
they do these calculations based on the idea
that maybe you tubers are earning between 25 cents
and up to $4 in terms of CPM rates.
And while that's not the worst estimate,
it just doesn't take into account
that every YouTube content creator
and every channel is different
and that some niches earn more money
than others like the finance niche
or anything in business or marketing.
I actually did a video about the five highest paying niches
in YouTube, if that's something you're interested in.
So you can watch that in the info card
or in the description down below.
In fact to give you an idea,
let's look at the five highest paying videos
that I did in 2020, I think that that'll be interesting.
So my highest paid video in 2020,
was a video on 10 best passive income ideas.
This is actually a really good video
for anybody who's trying to make money online.
Obviously the make money online niche does extremely well,
that had a CPM of $54.16
and RPM of $31.75.
And what that means is advertisers
were willing to pay very high for that,
but for every 1,000 views,
I was making about $30 for every 1,000 views.
Most YouTube channels of course earn
between one and $5 per 1,000 views
in terms of just a CPM rate.
So since YouTube does a 55/45 split,
well, you're getting like half of that.
And so that's why even if people go viral
on entertaining content, they may not make a lot of money.
I talked about this in other videos about monetization,
but yeah, these are the highest earning videos.
And this one earned me $2,895.1.
And that was from 91,000 views.
So when you look at it, that's like really good,
that's like spectacular.
I know people who do over a million views
and don't make that kind of money on it.
The second highest earning video for me in 2020,
as far as YouTube AdSense was a video
on getting your first 1,000 subscribers on YouTube.
This is something you have to do
in order to get YouTube AdSense in the first place,
you have to get 1,000 views and 4,000 hours of watch time,
which is a little challenging when you're in new YouTuber,
but I gave you some great advice on how you can do that.
And because you all responded really well to it,
that video had 3,000, sorry, 347,000 views,
or 347,000 views, so like almost 400,000 on it so far,
and it's done $2,350.3.
So even though my video that was about,
best ways to make passive income
had like less than it's a third of the views,
it made more money.
And that's kind of why I wanted to make
this video for you guys, what you assume about YouTube
is probably not true,
you have to look at the evidence and it might surprise you.
YouTube can surprise you sometimes.
Now, the CPM on this was $13 and the RPM was $6.83.
So that kind of like helps you understand
what's happening here.
A video that might get me more views,
that might be about YouTube,
or it might be about something else in social media,
TikTok, any of those things,
it won't make me nearly as much money
as a business video would make me,
even if that business video gets half the views,
it could even earn me twice the money.
The next highest page video on my channel
did 200,000 views and earned me $1,336.
And that was my video on does uploading
to YouTube more grow your channel faster.
If you guys are YouTube content creators,
and if you're watching this, you probably are.
That's actually a really good video watch
to help you understand a lot more
about YouTube and the YouTube algorithm.
But yeah, that video did twice as many views
as my highest paying video
and yet it earned me half the money.
So this is literally the kind of thing
that I'm talking about.
The next highest earning video
was my video about passive income.
I believe this one was specifically leaning
into how to do it as a beginner.
And so this video did about 55,000 views
and it earned me $1,148.11.
So you see what I'm talking about
where you can have these like astronomical view numbers
and it won't pay as well as a video
in a specific niche like real estate, personal finance,
credit cards, business videos, marketing videos,
e-commerce, these are some of the things that pay well.
There's also other niches out there
that you would not believe how well they pay.
And so it's not always about the views.
And then that doesn't even account
for things like affiliate commissions.
Like that's actually a way that I make
a large majority of my money on YouTube
is from the affiliate marketing side
and makes it a lot easier than having to like hustle
and make videos all the time
if the videos I've already made keep making me
not only add money, but affiliate money.
Some people do very well with merchandise,
we'll talk about that later.
You don't always wanna have to be in this mode
of hustling on YouTube to get views
so that you can get better brand deals
and so you can make AdSense revenue.
That's why I talked to you so much
about diversifying your income on YouTube
and really treating it like a business,
because you don't wanna have to sit there
and grind yourself into the ground,
that's how creators burn out.
So the next video that did really well
was another one that's about 50,000 views
and this one was the fastest ways to make money online,
where I kind of broke down how long it actually takes
to make a certain amount of money
in different types of things,
whether it's YouTube, affiliate marketing, print-on-demand,
there were like a lot of things freelancing.
There's a lot of ways to make money online.
Everyone thinks that YouTube is gonna be
this get rich quick scheme for them
and it doesn't work that way.
You learn that you're going to make money
and get comfortable very slow,
you're not gonna get rich quick.
There's just a lot of opportunity,
but people misunderstand it.
But this video did $1,103.46.
So that's actually really good for those 50,000 views.
I've known people to get like a million views
and earn like $1,500 on it.
So to be able to get 50,000 views
and make the same amount of money is really strong,
but it just shows you how powerful different niches are.
This has a $39.76 CPM
and it also then had an RPM of $21.
So for every 1,000 views on this video,
I was making like 20 bucks, like that's really, really good.
So a lot of people that is literally sometimes
10 times people's actual CPM let alone their RPM.
So the business needs just crushes it
when it comes to YouTube.
So those were my five highest paying videos.
And now you have a better sense of the concept
of high CPM videos versus high view videos.
There's not always a correlation between
just getting more views and making more money.
It's about how profitable the niche you're in is,
and that's not limited to YouTube AdSense
because something we break down in this content
is also things like affiliate marketing.
So before I reveal how much money YouTube paid me
in YouTube AdSense, the thing I know you guys
are waiting for, I want to talk really quickly
about my affiliate income by using
my YouTube channel to grow that.
There are a lot of affiliate programs I participate in
where I show you guys the software, the tools,
the camera gear that I use to do my content
and to run my other business ventures.
So when I talk about those things,
if people buy from those affiliate links
or they sign up for free trials,
whether it's stuff like Epidemic Sound
for the background music,
or if it's anything like storyblocks for the B-roll
or TubeBuddy for people who wanna grow their channel,
I get an affiliate commission from those companies
whenever somebody uses my link
either to buy or to get a free trial.
And you guys as viewers don't pay anything extra for that.
But what happens is if you do something
like that long enough, it can make you
a lot of passive income.
It can make you a lot of money in your sleep
if you have evergreen content.
And so the value of my channel is really
the content library that I've built.
Last year I added 90 videos to the channel in 2020.
And those videos not only brought me an ad revenue,
but a lot of affiliate marketing revenue
and new opportunities, they also helped me
in terms of brand deals,
which we'll talk about here in a minute,
but from the affiliate revenue,
from my different various affiliate programs,
I made over $100,000 when I checked my spreadsheet,
when I checked my PayPal, I added everything up
and it was over a hundred thousand dollars
in affiliate revenue alone.
Now, spoiler, that's gonna dwarf my YouTube AdSense
by quite a bit.
According to my notes,
the affiliate revenue from this YouTube channel
was 101 Dalmatians.
No, $101,751.50 approximately.
So affiliate marketing using YouTube
and different programs helped me do a $100,000 year income
before we even get into AdSense or brand deals.
That's a lot, that's more than
I could have ever thought it would be.
Now that's something you would like to accomplish
for yourself, it's not easy.
It took me many, many years,
I've been at this for like over eight years now.
So I have videos here on affiliate marketing
if you want to check that out,
playlist is linked down below for you.
So let's talk about YouTube brand deals.
The reason when you watch videos like this,
you don't see a lot of information about YouTube brand deals
is because we as content creators sign NDAs.
Now what I've done is in previous videos,
I've actually shown you my media kit
and the pricing of what I was charging for the brand deals
and that is in my media kit and that is out there publicly,
that is out there and available.
So, it's surprising to me that
with everything I put transparently in those videos,
that they didn't really perform that well,
they got maybe 10,000 views.
And yet everyone wants to know about YouTube brand deals
and what the charge and all that and I put it all out there.
And while I can't tell you what individual brands pay me,
I will tell you that the brand deals I prefer to do,
and I do have leverage that other people don't in my niche,
I prefer to try to negotiate contracts
where I'm doing larger campaigns,
where I'm doing some multiple YouTube videos
and maybe some Instagram posts.
So I like to do things that are in that $10,000 range.
And then with individual videos,
I like to do things that are maybe 3,000 to $5,000
for certain types of content,
where I have a lot more creative control.
I negotiate my brand deals more around creative control
than around pricing,
unlike most YouTube content creators at my level,
I don't want to even make the majority of my income
from brand deals and I don't need to.
Now, that's no shade to anybody.
I'm just saying that it means I have a lot more freedom
and control over my brand, the content that I'm making
and my relationship with my audience.
And so the more brand deals you take,
you can start to feel like you're more of a vehicle
for other people's brand and content than your own.
So just kind of keep that in mind.
And like I said, I have some other videos
around brand deals if that's something
that you wanna learn more about.
Also, I will make like a very detailed video here
in the future around what to charge for brand deals.
So finally, the moment you've all been waiting for,
how much money did YouTube pay me
in YouTube AdSense revenue in 2020?
YouTube paid me $40,897.36
through the YouTube partner program in 2020,
that is the full dollar amount
with a average CPM of $21.23,
and an RPM of $10.17.
And that was from approximately 4 million views,
4 million views, 90 uploads for the year,
67,000 plus new subscribers gained
and 40,000 plus dollars in YouTube AdSense revenue.
And while you definitely could as long as
you don't live in New York or California,
live off of that and that's great,
look at all the other opportunities in terms of revenue.
Look at all the things with affiliate marketing,
look at what you could do with e-commerce,
look at what you can do with sponsorships and brand deals.
YouTube AdSense should never become a crutch.
It should never in my opinion,
be your sole source of income
because it can be affected by things
like what happened with the virus.
Some ad revenue rates went down for awhile
because of the virus.
And then even with brand deals,
there were brand deals that were canceled
for a lot of people because of what happened with the virus.
So, if you have some more controllable
and independent sources of income
by branching out into things like e-commerce, freelancing,
especially if you're a smaller channel,
if you look at all the different ways you can money online
and all the different ways to monetize an audience
while you're building one
if that's something you want to do,
then you don't have to be beholden to YouTube
or any social media platform.
You could have real ownership of your brand,
as long as you're willing to treat it like a business
instead of like a hobby and instead of like a day job.
Question of the day,
what niche are you in in YouTube and what's your CPM?
If you feel like sharing,
contributing to some data for a future video,
leave that in the comment section.
For a video about the updated YouTube monetization policy,
go ahead and click the video over here.
Or if you want to grow a YouTube channel,
click the playlist over here on the screen
or in the description down below.
Thanks so much for watching.
Go out there and create something awesome today, take care.