Hi everyone, it's KJ here and today is a different type of video.
I know that as I began to grow my channel, I was always curious about how other channels
did financially.
Life is a series of choices, and I feel as if you should be able to understand, to some
respect, the risks and rewards involved, so you'll be able to weigh the two.
So with YouTube, the risks are that you just really don't know how quickly your channel
will grow, which is based on a lot of things like your available time to film, any shout
outs you may get, or your niche specifically.
But in terms of rewards, there are plenty.
On one hand, I have the ability to have a positive impact on millions of people, and
that is really fulfilling to me.
I also love video editing.
It's a very therapeutic experience for me building out a story that was in my head that
can now be shared with the world.
These are great rewards, and I would say that you shouldn't get started with YouTube if
you don't feel completely fulfilled without money getting involved.
But let's be real, for anything to be sustainable, you need sufficient resources to continue,
and luckily YouTube isn't too bad of a place to make a living, once you've become a certain
size.
So in this video, I'm going to give you all of the details about how my videos were performing
over the past year as I grew from around 38,000 subscribers to now almost 75,000 subscribers,
and I'll also show you the actual numbers in regards to how much money those videos
made.
Let's get right into it.
The first thing that helps to understand how much money you can make on YouTube is CPM.
CPM is the cost per mile ad rates that advertisers pay per 1000 ad views.
This isn't for every thousand views because it only counts if people watch the entire
15-30 second ad or at least 30 seconds of the skippable ads.
CPM is an interesting metric to look at it because it varies not only by topic, but also
by the region the primary audience of that video is in.
Typical CPMs that I've seen range from $2 to $15.
I typically post tech and college-related videos, and honestly, the CPMs don't vary
too much between those two topics.
Over the last year, my average CPM has been $4.81.
But to show you how much two videos of the same topic can vary in terms of CPM just because
of differences in audience, I have two different camera comparisons where the one that got
113,000 views made $130 more dollars than one that got 791,000 views.
This is because the former had a mainly US-based audience and a CPM of $10.97, whereas the
latter had a mainly India-based audience and a CPM of $1.81.
So views themselves aren't the driver for ad rates, but of course a lot of views can
balance out a lower CPM if a video goes viral.
Because of the variability of CPM, the amount that YouTubers make from month to month varies
greatly.
And hopefully by diving deeper into my analytics, you can gain a better understanding of how
all of this works.
By the way, YouTube pays partnered channels every month on the 21st.
I have it set up to just direct deposit into my account every month, and that has been
really convenient for me.
So let's look at how much I earned the past 28 days, which will more-or-less coincide
with my paycheck next month from YouTube.
So I've actually not posted as much over the past month because I am still getting into
the swing of things this semester, but it looks like I am still doing pretty well in
terms of the revenue generated.
I'll show you later in this video how this month compares to other months this past year,
but for now, I'd say that it looks good.
Looking a little closer I can see that one, the Tesla video I posted a couple of weeks
ago has quickly gained traction and has about 80,000 views now.
But like I've mentioned before, the views doesn't tell the whole story.
Looking at the CPM, we can see that it is at almost $8, which is significantly above
average.
I have seen that car videos do have higher CPMs.
My Tesla Model 3 review for example has a CPM of $15.
And really this is because for right now, a lot of Tesla ownership is within the US
and other car manufacturers would want to advertise cars in front of other car videos.
And since the price of cars is so high, they're willing to pay more to advertise where they
want their videos to be placed.
Looking at the top 5 earning videos this past month, two of them weren't even posted within
the past month.
So the thing about growing on YouTube is that it is all compounding.
The more videos you have on your channel, the more likely it is someone stays on your
channel to continue watching your videos.
I posted my first Day in the Life of an MIT Student video over a year ago, and it is still
my third highest earning video over the past month alone.
My iPad Pro video was made in November and it is my second highest earning video over
the past month.
So yeah, even if I didn't actually make that many videos this past month, my past videos
are still keeping my channel's momentum going.
This is why it seems like bigger channels appear to be growing very fast, because they
actually are because of what I just mentioned.
There are simply more videos to watch.
Okay so now you see that I've made around $600 last month due to ad revenue alone, which
is not bad at all since I did not make too many videos in that time.
But let's take a step back to see how much the channel made over the last year.
Looking at those statistics we can see that over the past year, there really hasn't been
too many months that stood out.
Keep in mind that the February revenue is so far this month, and we still have the second
half of the month to go, so I would expect it to end closer to $700.
A lot of people ask me whether or not YouTube pays linearly with subscribers, but really,
I'd say it's more of a series of plateaus.
The past year, I went from 38,000 subscribers to almost 75,000, but it wasn't until the
November mark where I began to see a consistent increase in monthly ad revenue.
February to November didn't vary too much in terms of ad revenue, but now, outside of
January, which is always a slow month because no new tech products and winter break, my
ad revenue is almost double what it was last year at this time.
And I'd expect it to stay at that level for now until my channel begins to gain momentum
again, which could be happening right now, or in a couple of months or in a year.
The thing with YouTube is that consistency is really everything.
You need to consistently put out quality content otherwise your channel will lose momentum.
And once that momentum is lost, it is really difficult to recover.
So if you're thinking about starting a channel, you really need to make sure that you have
the time and energy to make at least a video a week or every two weeks, otherwise YouTube's
algorithm will just not favor your videos.
The momentum is real, and honestly it does get tough when life just gets busy, but it
is those bursts of momentum that get you to a new plateau with a new norm revenue per
month and a view count.
But I've learned to slow things down when I have to so that I can sit back and enjoy
life.
Okay so back to the money.
As you can see, I made a total of around $5300 dollars over the last year in ad revenue alone.
And you're probably thinking wait that is not much of a salary at all.
And you're right.
That's because for most creators, ad revenue only makes up about 5 to 25% of total revenue,
at least for what I've seen.
And the varying percentages just really depends on the other value creators are bringing to
their viewers.
A lot of creators have Patreon pages or online courses or merch, and those could really bring
in a lot of income.
But the single biggest source of revenue will typically be brand deals.
With how much ad rates vary, brand deals and sponsorships are ways that creators can begin
to receive steady incomes.
I can't specifically disclose how much I make per ad segment, but I can say that I do fall
into that typical ad revenue percentage that I mentioned earlier.
And when creators say that you'd really be supporting the channel if you click the link
in the description, they're being honest.
I've learned to appreciate sponsored videos because they allow the creators to do things
like improve their gear and make their living.
Because with just ad revenue alone, most YouTubers are making less than minimum wage.
And the biggest thing that draws in these sponsorships is views.
IF you're a channel with a million subscribers, but only average 20,000 views a video, sponsors
are going to pay just as much as they would with someone with 20,000 subscribers and averages
29,999 views a video.
So views alone will not change the CPM of your videos, but more views can really lead
to more brand deals and overall more opportunities for the channel.
Another way companies can "pay" me is by giving me review units.
For example, Google sent over their Pixelbook Go for review and a nice backpack.
The model they gave me retails for around $800, but in exchange of me sharing my honest
opinion on my channel, I get to keep this.
And as someone who genuinely loves tech, I'm receiving products for free that I would've
spent money on otherwise, so it is like I'm getting paid.
And as I've grown, I've seen that more subscribers just leads to more respect when I do reach
out to these companies for review units.
My subscribers get me into a conversation, and then my videos are able to speak for themselves
in terms of quality.
I'd say a major perk of being a technology-focused channel is also that these review units usually
have pretty high values.
And being able to go to launch events and use products that haven't even come out yet
is always really cool to me.
So is YouTube a sustainable job?
Yeah, I think it is.
YouTube has become more popular than TV, and YouTubers are actually starting to get more
name-recognition than a lot of actors and actresses.
I will go out on a limb and say that if I absolutely had to, at the current size of
my channel, I would be able to go fulltime with YouTube.
I'd be able to make more videos, which would lead to more views, which would lead to more
ad revenue and brand deals.
But of course this is not something that I would do anytime soon.
With YouTube, as long as you stay with the grind, your revenue associated with your channel
will just continue to grow with the channel.
So it isn't unrealistic to see YouTubers who are doubling their income every year.
And that's not something you can say for most professions.
YouTube has been a ton of work.
There were countless nights where I was finishing up an edit at around 5 am.
And if you couple it with a full time job, or in my case a full time engineering student
workload, a YouTube channel becomes very difficult to maintain.
But what keeps me going is that I absolutely love it.
I love inspiring others in terms of college, and I love talking about tech.
If you go into YouTube for the money, you're just not going to last.
YouTube is a pretty good job, but you'll only get successful when it stops feeling like
a job.
When you get to the point where you're excited to make a new video and get it up for the
world to see, that's who I view as a successful YouTuber.
But money does allow YouTubers to make videos for a living.
Hopefully the glimpse into my analytics and video information helped you better understand
how YouTube works in terms of paying YouTubers.
There are a lot of different pieces that come together to determine how much someone makes
off of YouTube, but ultimately, as your channel grows, your income will grow.
You just have to keep making it to the next plateau.
So that's all I had to talk about today.
If you haven't already, make sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter to stay up to
date with what I'm doing.
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check out my new hoodies that I worked hard on.
As always, thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next video.