- So you clicked on this video
because you wanna know how much we earn
from 1 million YouTube views.
There, it's $3200.
But we know you want all of the gory details
from Shorts to live streams to everything in between,
and why we've earned so little from so many views.
The vidIQ YouTube channel opened its doors in 2013
with a single video that was basically an ad.
- [Man] Optimization, engagement, and analysis
can turn into an impossible feat.
- Yeah, chuck us an emoji in the chat
if you've ever seen this video.
Also, the guy who voiced this video,
no idea what happened to him.
Allegedly.
Anyway, I turned up in 2016 and I've been here ever since.
Well, except for that time when I trolled you all.
Yep, vidIQ family, it's time for me to say goodbye.
And go on a three-month holiday!
And do nothing but play video games.
Yeah, it was time well spent.
I've made over 1,000 videos on the channel,
got us to our first million subscribers,
and racked up over 150 million views and counting.
And yet, despite all of those impressive numbers,
this channel has only made $222,000.
Only, you might say.
Well, if we turn all of these numbers into ad revenue,
it would be a CPM of just $1.48.
And I'm gonna be frank with you,
we don't dance on this channel
and we don't play video games.
We should be earning more than $1.48 per 1,000 views.
And we do.
In actual fact, the CPM of the vidIQ channel
is over $10.50
But here's the twist.
Up until 18 months ago, the middle of 2022,
this channel wasn't monetized.
Now, had we turned on monetization from the very beginning,
our total revenue from those 150 million views
would be closer to $600,000.
And I might have retired already.
So why didn't we switch on the YouTube ATM earlier?
Well, we made a very conscious decision.
We didn't want to create any barrier
to your YouTube education, even if it was a simple ad.
All we wanted to do was raise the awareness
of the vidIQ brand.
And to be honest, I myself am a very kind-hearted person.
But then, I watched an incredible film
that changed my whole outlook on life.
- Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
(bell dinging)
- Yes, it's time to bring in the money.
But jokes aside, we did get your permission
to turn on monetization.
We pump all of the revenue earned back into the channel,
and it allows us to make videos like this
to help you even further.
Which leads us onto a very fun, quick pop quiz.
You're gonna like this one.
How many subscribers did the vidIQ channel have
before we turned on monetization?
Answer, after this next bit.
Let's start with 1 million views then.
You already know the amount, but how did we get there?
Well as you can see, typically more than 90% of our revenue
comes from ads or YouTube Premium.
Almost none of it comes from Shorts.
We'll get back to that later.
From these 1 million views,
almost a quarter of a million were monetized views
with a CPM of over $13.
But in all honesty, these numbers can only be taken
as a broad estimate as the amount we might expect to make
from a million views on the channel.
If we take another random million views from the channel,
on this occasion, we earned $600 more,
and that's despite the CPMs being lower.
But in this instance,
there are an additional 200,000 playback views
from the same million views in total.
Monetization variables like this that you can't control
can be found everywhere.
For example, as per the norm,
CPMs have increased throughout the year
and they will reach a peak in the last three months.
You might be working just as hard in January
as you are in December, but the time of year
does dictate how much you're gonna get paid.
And where in the world your videos are watched
has a massive impact on CPM.
10% of our audience watch from India,
which is around half a million views a month.
But look at the contrast in CPMs.
That is a 10X difference.
And then, there are some things even I can't explain.
Why does this video have nearly double the CPM
of this video?
Could it be as simple as one video is about the algorithm,
whereas the other video is about subscribers?
Ah, you know what?
I need to investigate this.
So according to the data,
most viewers watching the algorithm video come from the US,
but for the more subscribers video,
the geography share is flipped,
more people from India are watching,
meaning a much lower CPM.
Forgive me if you find all of this too nerdy,
but I find it fascinating.
The topic and the terminology
used in the packaging and the video
can drastically impact the demographics of the audience,
which, in turn, changes the revenue
that a video can potentially make.
This is a real eye-opener for me.
But come on, let's be honest,
does this really mean that I'm going to engineer my videos
in the future to be watched more by Americans then Indians?
- Greed is right.
Greed works.
- Yes.
In other random fun stuff,
this single video also has nearly a million views,
but has pulled in over $7,000, which is double the amounts
we've been looking at previously.
This might be because this video is 20 minutes long,
so it can support lots of mid-roll ads,
but when I tried to cram the entire video
full of nothing but ads,
it didn't change the revenue needle at all.
And when I investigated this extra bit of data,
I realized we didn't turn monetization on
for this video immediately,
so it's actually making more than $1,000 per 100,000 views,
which is incredible.
The algorithm video we mentioned earlier
is without doubt the standout performer on the channel
when it comes to revenue.
But after that, there are dozens of videos
with half a million to a million views
that have contributed thousands of dollars
to the vidIQ coffers.
This is certainly the hallmark of a channel
that consistently pumps out out quality content
that spreads out the revenue between videos
that have been on YouTube, at this point, for years
and still get views and therefore, dollars today.
Alright, folks, it's back to that pop quiz.
How many subscribers did the vidIQ channel have
when we turned on monetization?
We turned monetization on on July the 18th, 2022,
earning a whopping 16 cents
because we were testing on a single video.
And on that day, we had 1,180,151 subscribers.
Congratulations if you got this right,
which I guarantee absolutely none of you did,
and boo if you skipped this section.
YouTube Shorts.
Yeah, they're not going to make you rich.
At this rate, you'd need 100 million views a month
to bring in $10,000, and how many creators are doing that?
But the weirdest thing of all is this.
You could make more money from YouTube Shorts
before you could monetize YouTube Shorts.
This time last year, we were making double what we are now
from 1 million Shorts views.
Now admittedly, the reason for this
was that one short was driving loads of views
and therefore, a lot of the revenue.
But look what happens in 2023.
All of a sudden, revenue collapses.
This is the moment all YouTube Shorts
were played through the YouTube Shorts player.
Previously, some videos, like this one,
were often watched outside of a Shorts player
and benefited from watch page ads,
but then YouTube flipped the switch and killed revenue
on these weird YouTube Shorts anomalies.
Also, can you remember the YouTube Shorts creator fund?
Yeah, that was quite handy for a lot of people.
This was when YouTube was paying out a hundred dollars
to creators if they got a few million views through Shorts.
But once YouTube introduced the new requirements
of 10 million YouTube Shorts views over three months,
many creators simply have never met those requirements.
When it comes to YouTube Shorts then,
the real money is not made through views, but-
- I think that a Shorts creator
could make just as much money as a long-form creator.
I know a couple of creators
who literally make a million dollars per sponsored short.
- And Jenny should know a thing or two about YouTube Shorts
because each one of hers gets 10 million views.
Watch her full interview over here
after you're finished watching this video.
Live streams.
Yeah, there's money to be made in this format.
$10,000 from 1 million views
is the most impressive income stream yet,
and this is because you can tap into your audience directly
for income through features
such as Super Chats and memberships.
Every Tuesday, every week, without fail,
we do channel audits for the vidIQ community,
which are completely free,
but we also throw in these pay extra segments
whereby anybody can ask a question through a Super Chat,
it'll be read live on air, and answered by the hosts.
And we also offer custom emojis
through YouTube's membership scheme
that people can play around with in the live chat.
Now, I would say this is a really light approach
to tapping into revenue streams from live streams,
but if you ratcheted it up,
you could make an absolute fortune.
Live streams also illustrate the importance of RPM.
The differences between RPM and CPM are on screen now,
but in summary, CPM is what advertisers pay YouTube.
RPM, on the other hand, is what you earn from ad revenue
and every other YouTube revenue source,
so it's a far more reliable figure.
For example, earlier on,
we said that the CPM for the vidIQ channel was over $10.50,
but that's not actually what we earn every 1,000 views
because this is all before YouTube's cuts of 45%.
But to live streams,
yes, they are a lucrative moneymaking opportunity
with quite a big caveat.
You've actually gotta get people to watch your live streams.
Yes, I don't know if you noticed earlier,
but those 1 million livestream views
were gained over the course of 11 months.
Getting people to turn up a day specific time
to engage with content is a challenge.
Although there are standout examples,
such as Emily D. Baker and the Spiffing Britt,
who were able to get tens of thousands of people
to regularly turn up for their live streams,
and no doubt, they will be making some serious fat stacks.
- Greed clarifies, cuts through,
and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
- Oh, preach to me, God, and preach!
Now you know how much we make.
What about you?
What if you had 1,000, 10,000,
or a hundred thousand subscribers?
What are you likely to earn?
You'll find out all of that and more
in this amazing case study.