- All right guys.
So today we're gonna answer a question
that I tend to get asked a lot when people find out
that I have a YouTube channel.
And the question is this,
"Sarah, how much does YouTube pay you?"
So I'm gonna show you how much I got paid
for 1,373,000 views by looking at my views
in the past 28 days.
Although I'm not quite sure when I will upload,
this is probably going to be quite a bit later.
Because my videos have a long turnaround time.
And I'm answering this question today
because genuinely when people find out, offline,
that I have a YouTube channel,
this is almost always the first question that they ask me.
And I'm not surprised
because there's genuinely a lot of misinformation
when it comes to YouTube AdSense.
For example, let's take this YouTuber here
who made a YouTube video explaining how YouTube decides
how much to pay you per video.
- [Jimmy] And she's averaging a CPM of roughly $3.80,
which is also pretty nice.
But the other two girls we saw, average more towards six.
So in general, I feel like girls
make a little bit more on YouTube than guys make.
(record scratch sound)
- Yeah, so funnily enough, that's not how it works.
So in this video,
not only am I gonna show you how much I've made
but I'm also gonna show you
how much other YouTubers make.
And I'm gonna explain why this YouTuber here, Graham Stephan
earns the most out of any other YouTuber that I know.
And that way you might be able to implement
some of his tricks,
if you decide to start a YouTube channel yourself.
So while I am paid nowhere near as much as Graham is
for his YouTube videos,
as you can see I do get paid quite a lot by YouTube.
In the past 28 days, YouTube paid me $21,942 dollars
and that's what I personally get paid
straight into my big account.
But of course they actually pay me out
in New Zealand dollars since well, that's where I live.
So that comes to around 33,000 New Zealand dollars.
And while my YouTube subscribers will know
that it's not my biggest income stream,
the truth is, this is actually the one
that I'm probably most grateful to have
because as my long time subscribers know,
I am a massive sucker for passive income.
I would rather earn less passive income
that requires little to no maintenance to upkeep,
than more active income.
And to me, AdSense revenue is very passive
because I don't usually make videos on trendy topics.
If you make videos on trending topics,
then yeah you'll just get a sugar rush of money
and then it will fold off.
So take this video I put out here.
Due to popular demand on COVID-19's impact on e-commerce
during the middle of lockdowns.
Well, that's got a huge spike in traffic,
it was my biggest video of release of all time.
But once most of the world stopped being in lockdown,
interest in it completely died.
And as a result, four months later,
this video earns me just $1 to $3 a day
despite it being my biggest video launch of all time.
And so instead, I usually make videos
on evergreen educational video topics
that people will always want to watch even into the future.
So here's a video that I've made
about my seven biggest mistakes I made
when I first started my business.
And because of the fact
that people are constantly starting new businesses every day
new people are constantly finding this video
and they're watching it.
And as a result, every day,
this video is making me anywhere from $5 to $20.
Even though I uploaded it over a year and a half ago,
this video just keeps making me money
because it isn't based on a trend.
It's based on a topic that people constantly want to watch.
And this video here, it teaches the psychology
behind why customers like to buy products.
And this topic, it's going to be just as relevant
a year into the future as it is today
which is why even though this video
was uploaded over a year ago,
it still makes me $5 to $20 a day.
And you know, $5 might just be a cup of coffee each day,
but combined, these videos, they all add up.
And I just wanna say that the only reason
I have this money at all is because if you viewers out there
supporting this channel.
So there's no gloating here, there's just gratitude.
Thank you so much for watching my videos and your support.
And you know what?
You don't just get one thank you,
you get a second big thank you
if you take a moment out of your very busy day
to give this video a like.
But seriously, your support genuinely helps this channel,
so thank you so much for it.
And you get a big third extra thank you
if you didn't turn your ad blocker on
before watching this video.
But see here's the crazy thing, right?
This here, it's one of my favorite YouTubers,
Videogamedunkey, he makes hilarious videos
which unfortunately contain some very naughty words
which do not align with the family friendly nature
of this channel.
So we shan't to be turning on the sound
for any of those videos.
But his channel, it's way bigger than mine.
Usually he gets tens of millions of views a month.
And you know the crazy thing
is that even though I get just a fraction of that
and unlike Dunky, almost nobody knows who I am,
there's actually a chance that in this past month
I might've made more from YouTube than Dunky.
And it's because of this, CPM.
CPM stands for cost per mile,
in other words, cost per one thousand impressions.
So basically, YouTube is saying,
"Hey Sarah for every 1000 people that watch your video,
"you get paid $28.70."
Except well, that's not completely true
because not everybody sees an ad before they watch a video
which is why my CPM isn't actually $28.70.
This is the amount of money make per 1000 monetized views.
My real CPM, when you add in those unmonetized views
is actually $15.89.
So this is one reason why Dunky's CPM
is gonna be lower than mine.
Because while most of my videos are indeed eligible for ads,
like all YouTube channels,
I've had some videos, very questionably demonetized.
However, given his more vulgar language
and inclusion of copyrighted characters,
such as Nintendo's characters,
a lot more of Dunky's videos will get demonetized.
And of course, another reason
why not everybody will see ads on my channel
is not because of the fact
that some videos get demonetized.
It's because,
well, some people have just tuned ad blocker on.
But to be honest, this is just scratching the surface
because there are much bigger reasons
why my CPM will be higher than Dunky's.
And while sadly, most YouTube does have zero idea
as to why that is.
- [Jimmy] I feel like girls
make a little bit more on YouTube than guys.
- Well, here's the actual truth,
it has nothing to do with that at all.
And it has everything to do with supply and demand
that is controlled by the advertisers.
It is the advertisers
that truly determine how much money you make, not YouTube.
Because, you see while it is indeed
a little bit of a simplification,
an easy way to think of YouTube ads
is to think about like a giant auction house.
I go and upload my video to YouTube and they go,
"Attention advertisers, Sarah Chrisp from Wholesale Ted
"has released a new video.
"Who would like to put an ad in front of her first viewer?"
Oh oh, me, me.
I would like to place a bid, good sir, I will bid $1.
I too wish to advertise to Sarah's first viewer,
I will pay $2.
$2?
Good sir, I will pay $3.
And now because of the fact
that there are three different advertisers
that each thing that there's gonna be a high chance
that my viewer is going to buy
whatever they are advertising,
they will fight over that advertising space
and they will bid the price up and up.
And the more money that these advertisers think
that they can earn per sale,
the higher and higher they bid up
and the higher and higher your CPM goes.
To see this in action, let's take Jimmy, our man.
Well, he earned $986 from AdSense
for roughly 234,000 views on his channel.
Which means then that he earns roughly $4.20 CPM
on his videos.
His videos are mostly tech reviews and gadget reviews.
And a small YouTube channel, The Icelandic Guy, made $58.
That was for 19,500 views.
That means that he earns around $3 CPM.
He makes videos about photography and photography gear.
And here's Shelby Church, a lifestyle-ish YouTuber
who has well over 1 million subscribers.
Well, she made $140,000 in 2019
and that was for about 32 million views
across a huge wide range of topics
from lifestyle to cars, to a video she made
about Amazon FBA businesses, so all sorts of topics.
the amount she owns per view drastically varies
depending on the topic.
But overall, it came out to be about $4.40 CPM.
And now we come to top finance YouTuber, Graham Stephan
who made $129,000 just last December alone.
He had roughly 7.8 million views
which means his CPM was roughly $16.50.
He makes his videos almost exclusively on financial topics
like the stock market, finance, investing and saving.
So if we were to rank how YouTube channels in order of CPM,
this is how we'd all stack up.
So of course, this all begs the question,
why are advertisers only willing to pay $4 for Jimmy
and $16.50 cents for Graham Stephan?
Well, we can find out by taking a look
at the type of advertisers
that are advertising on top of their videos.
So it started off with Jimmy.
- [Narrator] Writing's not that easy,
but Grammarly can help.
- All right, so we got an advertisement for Grammarly,
which has absolutely nothing to do
with the video reviewing AirPods.
But it's important to note
because advertisers are usually willing to pay more
if the videos they're advertising on top of
are directly related to the product that they're selling.
You think about it, people clicking on this video
they aren't interested in improving their grammar,
they're interested in AirPods.
So not many people watching this ad
are gonna be likely to click it.
So Grammarly are probably not willing
to pay much for this ad placement
because they don't expect to get great returns on it.
So chances are, Jimmy is not making a lot of money
for this ad.
But there's an even bigger issue for Jimmy here
because you see, Grammarly is really cheap,
in fact, it's free to download and use.
While it's true that they do indeed have a paid plan,
most people who use Grammarly don't buy this.
So while they will convince some people to their paid plans,
most of their uses will be on their free plan.
So keep this in mind as we go and take a look
at the types of ads that Graham Stephan gets on his channel.
- [Narrator] Why do people hate investing
in the stock market?
It's because of this.
As a five-year-old would say,
the stock market goes up and down.
- All right, so this ad here,
it's actually an advertisement
for a retirement investment service.
And let me tell you guys something
there is no free version of this to sign up to.
Nope.
So what it's advertising
is something we have here in New Zealand, called KiwiSaver.
You put money from your paycheck into it
and the money is reinvested.
And when you retire, you can pull it out.
It's very similar to IRAs,
i.e. Individual Retirement Accounts
that the USA has.
And these investment accounts, they make a lot of money.
Why? Well, because retirement accounts have yearly fees.
Every year, you pay a percentage
on all of the money you have saved in your account.
The average American pays $467 each year in phase
for their retirement accounts.
National Capital looked at Graham's videos and went,
"Ha, the New Zealanders who are watching his videos
"are interested in money.
"That means that they're probably interested
"in saving and investing.
"This is our target customer.
"And since our target customer makes us a lot of money,
"we are willing to bet against other advertisers
"and pay higher prices
"for the chance to have our ad show up for New Zealanders
"that watch his videos."
So basically, the moral of the story here
is if you want to make a lot of money
and have a high CPM on YouTube,
make videos on topics
that have lucrative products to sell in it.
And that is why the more specific my video is
with direct actionable business advice,
the higher my CPMs are.
So I went through my videos
to find the one with the highest CPM
and it ended up being this video here
where I gave my top 99 Shopify apps that I love.
Now, I released this video a year and a half ago.
So for those of you that don't know,
Shopify is an e-commerce platform,
that lets you open an online store.
Because this is so specific and actionable,
advertisers know who exactly is watching this video.
And it's people who are interested in expensive products
with high profits.
So even though this video doesn't get much traffic,
it's making me around a hundred dollars a month passively.
So, let's now compare that to my video with the lowest CPM,
it's way lower at $6.14 cents.
This video is such a low CPM
because it's an animated story time video.
And well, this video, it's just extremely different.
So, for one thing it's animated
so it's already attracting a very different type of crowd.
And secondly,
rather than containing actionable business advice,
it just tells the story of my first day
of a side hustle I had when I was 15
where I took advantage
of GameStop's video game trade-in policies
to make a bunch of money.
So while some people who watch this
are interested in business,
oftentimes the people who watch this
they're more interested in video games.
So you think about it.
The biggest thing that this audience has in common
is that they like video games.
Well products relating to video games
don't make nearly as much money
as products relating to money, business and finance
like investment accounts.
And so probably the sorts of ads
that this video is attracting
is for broad, random products like Grammarly
who as we've established,
don't expect high conversion rates.
Because of this this video has much lower CPM
and it's earned far less money over its lifetime
compared to my Shopify app video.
Even though this video
has collectively got around 125,000 views,
and my GameStop video has over 400,000 views,
my Shopify app video, despite having way less views
has earned me a thousand dollars more.
So keep that in mind
before you start a random vlogging channel.
Your choice of YouTube topic is crucial.
So pick a topic
which has high profit products to sell in it,
if you want to make the most AdSense dollars.
But that's not the only thing advertisers look for
because remember Graham and I make videos on topics
that attract the same types of products and advertisers.
So why is his CPM higher than mine?
If I had to take a guess,
I'd say it's because of our audiences.
So, let's take my 99 Shopify app video.
You'll see that over 90% of this audience
is over the age of 25.
Whereas you take my GameStop side hustle video,
for this one, it's skewed significantly younger,
over 40% are under the age of 25.
And considering that kids tend to be, well, broke.
And those adults 25 plus are usually working stable jobs
and usually thus have more money to spend,
advertisers prefer to stick their ads in front of them.
So if you can attract an older crowd
then that will bump up your CPM too
because advertisers can realistically expect your audience
to spend more money buying products.
However, there is another audience
that we have yet to talk about
and this audience makes a lot of money and that is America.
So if we come back and check my audience breakdown
we'll see that about 32% of my viewers are American.
Well, check this out.
The amount of money that I earn,
for each of American viewers, is crazy.
It's $41.93 CPM.
That is way higher than the other countries on this list.
And while it probably shouldn't have come
as a surprise to me, there is a lot of wealth in America.
Amongst my friends, I refer to America
as the land of milk and honey.
And if have established anything,
it's at advertisers love people
who have excessive money to spend.
The wealth in the USA may not be evenly distributed
but nevertheless, the wealth is there.
So with this all in mind, let me ask you a question
who do you think is watching this video here?
And this video here?
That are all exclusively discussing
America's stimulus checks,
that are being mailed out to American people
to stimulate the American economy due to COVID-19?
Gee, I don't know, maybe the Americans
who are actually receiving them?
I went through his videos and found a live
and talking exclusively about the American stimulus cheeks.
And this is just one example of a video topic
that Graham has on his channel,
which is 100% American centric.
And certainly not all of his video topics are
but several of his videos
do talk exclusively about American things.
And so, while I don't know for sure,
my guess is that his audience skews far more
towards the Yankee than mine,
which is why Graham's AdSense checks
are probably going to continue to look a lot like this,
and it's not because of his gender.
So, did I help to demystify YouTube's AdSense for you?
If I did, please hit subscribe
and click that little notification bell
for more videos about growing and scaling online businesses.
And if you'd like to learn more
about how and why I started this YouTube channel
then you should be sure to check out my video,
the five income sources
that make me a thousand dollars a day in my twenties.
So go ahead and watch my next video
and I'll see you over there.