- Hey everybody.
This is Roberto Blake helping you
create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
You know, I'm really shocked at something.
I'm shocked at how much misinformation
there is about how much money people make on YouTube.
That seems to be a topic of obsession.
Largely, the media almost always gets it wrong
and you'll see a lot of the interesting articles
about YouTubers struggling to make it
over the poverty line even if they're successful.
So today I want to do three things.
One, I'm gonna talk to you
about how much money I earned in 2018.
I'm gonna show you the real numbers behind that.
I'm going to talk to you about how much money on average
I make on YouTube ads in a month.
None of this is the money I make on affiliate marketing,
brand deals, my other businesses
or my investments in the market.
This is just straight up AdSense.
So for YouTubers not doing an actual business
or anything like that, this'll be important.
And then finally, I really want to explain how AdSense works
and why some videos make more money than others.
So if you're interested in that,
you'll want to watch the video,
you want to subscribe and hit the like button.
Now, before I get heavily into any of my numbers,
you need to understand that there are a lot
of different things that set YouTubers apart
and your ad earnings will be radically different.
You also need to understand
you cannot look this up in Social Blade.
YouTube does not give access to that part
if it's numbers and it's API on the back end
and we also know YouTube is getting ready to make changes
to what it discloses to third party apps.
So that's not a reliable way
to know how much money people make on YouTube
or even how much you can earn.
Another myth that I need to lay to bed
is the idea that you earn
between 25 cents and $2 as an average CPM rate.
What is an average CPM rate?
CPM means cost per mil or cost per 1,000 views
and this is what advertisers pay
for a thousand views on a video.
Now, it's also important to understand
that not every single view on a video is monetized
so we need to look at monetized views and not raw views
and this is something that a lot of YouTubers confuse.
Now, my CPM rate is abnormally high.
In terms of monetized views,
it's about roughly on average 15 to $20
and when it comes to raw views,
it averages out about between like 12 and 17.
So that's abnormally high for most content creators
but why is it gonna be different
from me and you and everybody else?
Because YouTube and the ads are all different
based on who the advertisers are,
where your views are coming from,
views in the United States, Canada and the UK
are gonna be much more valuable
than views in other countries.
I know YouTubers in India and Brazil
and other parts of South America
that don't get the ad rates that you and I are used to.
A friend of mine in the Netherlands
actually got 12 million views on a video
and it was only worth 1,700 Euro.
Which sounds really absurd when you think about
the value of 12 million views on a video.
But 46% of those views did come from India
and so you have to really think about who your audience is.
Different ages for viewers affect
how much the ads are worth as well.
I don't get a ton of views on this YouTube channel,
which you guys know that already and you're going to see.
'Cause education doesn't get as many views,
it's not as sensational as other things,
but I do all right,
but I get very good ad rates
and you could make a decent living,
a decent nine to five level living
with the YouTube AdSense that I bring in.
And the reason for that is that the views
are just worth more because I have an older audience.
More than 70% of you are between ages 22 and 44
and so that becomes something very important to think about.
Who are the advertisers in your niche,
in your part of YouTube?
Entertainment and prank videos and all those,
they get a lot of views, but even Ice Poseidon,
one of the biggest YouTubers on this platform,
on a million views, he got like $500.
By the way, I'll do a video at some point here very soon
on how much YouTube paid me for a million views
both channel wide and on a video that got one million views,
my biggest video of all time.
So make sure you're checking that out, stay subscribed.
Now looking here, you know, in analytics
and I'll show you guys this here on the screen
it looks like in 2018.
In 2018, I did $41,072.92.
So that's actually really good on AdSense
considering that that was 5.8 million views.
So 5.8 million views.
Now, the other factor here
is that I get a lot of watch time on my videos.
And long time viewers will know
that my videos tend to be longer
because all of my videos are basically Ted Talks.
That's kind of the style and format of most of my content.
If I'm not doing a sit down video here with you guys,
I'm doing kind of a lecture style video
in front of the bookcase
or I'm doing a tutorial, teaching you software
so that you can be a content creator
or so you can build your online business.
So I'm teaching you things like video editing
or I'm teaching you how to use software
and set up your email list
or your affiliate programs so that you can make money
because outside of YouTube
and outside all this AdSense stuff,
I built a six figure online business.
I built a stay at home business
and so I teach people how to do that.
Now, one of the things
that's really important here in the data
is to consider the fact that with my videos,
you would think that the reason that I make so much
is because maybe Roberto's running a bunch of mid roll ads.
Maybe Roberto is putting four and five ads in a video
because they're 20 minutes or longer.
Nope.
I can do that.
On occasion, on a longer video,
I will put one mid roll in a video.
Content creators that I know
that make the most money on YouTube,
are usually putting two mid roll ads in a video,
an ad at the beginning of the video and an ad at the end.
I typically am only putting an ad either
at the beginning of a video or the end of a video.
I rarely run mid roll ads.
When I do, it does increase the revenue a little bit
but it's something I don't do that often.
Now before get into well
what has the channel earned for the lifetime,
the six years that I've been uploading videos
since July of 2013 on a regular basis
and I say that because even though I started the channel
or I made the YouTube account
to comment on other videos mostly in 2009,
I didn't become a content creator until 2013.
I kind of like abandoned the channel.
I never really did much of anything with it.
I didn't have a plan for it.
I wasn't thinking about really making regular content.
I started really focusing on that in 2013.
So it's practically my six year anniversary right now,
so that's pretty cool.
But what I want to show you here in the data is
I want to show you what the last 90 days have looked like.
So let's take a look at that.
Pretty good, according to this
in the last 90 days on AdSense I've done $7,493.
So that's actually really strong, all things considered
and just remember that there a lot of YouTubers
and you're seeing this and you know,
there are videos out there where these ad rates
are not the same for everybody.
Business videos that I do perform better than videos
that I do on other topics like YouTube or social media
and so that's important.
Views aren't everything.
The type of views, the type of video,
the type of niche matters.
Let's compare in fact two videos real quick
that are very different.
So I got a video on
how to get 10,000 YouTube subscribers in 2019.
Video does very well, it has 361,000 views
and did over $2,500, so $2,500 in revenue.
But I have another video
that's on how to start affiliate marketing
and make $100 a day in passive income,
which I think is the more important video
and it got 133,000.
So literally a third of the views, but it earned $3,024.70.
$3,024.70, mind blowing.
This had 1/3 of the views and still made
about roughly $600 more
with 1/3 of the views.
Now think about that for a minute.
How is that even possible?
If all views are the same
and views are all that matters on YouTube,
as a lot of people like to think,
or becoming a big YouTuber or having a viral video
is all that matters,
why is it that there are videos with popular YouTubers
that do over a million views
that might be worth $500 or less
and videos that have 100,000 views
can do thousands of dollars in revenue
and have very good CPM rates?
These are very high CPM rates
when you look at those numbers, right?
And again, it's because of channel authority.
It's because of things like accumulating a lot of watch time
even when you don't have a lot of views.
It's about high average view duration.
It's about retention rates.
It's about what countries your audience speaks in.
It's about how you optimize
your titles, descriptions and tags.
All those things could affect how your videos perform
in terms of ad revenue.
Also, I did a whole video about this,
but things like not cursing in videos actually matters,
what's in the thumbnail.
Those things all impact your ad revenue.
So I've always wanted to be honest with you guys about that
and I've made videos about this in the past,
but people don't watch them
because they don't have sensational titles.
I'd sit there and I'd tell you literally
how to make more money on YouTube,
how to increase ad sense earnings, no clicks.
But I guarantee you that this video
will perform a lot better.
Now, when we go into how much I earned
in terms of lifetime on the channel.
Again, this is not how much money I make period,
this is how much money I've made just from AdSense
while doing this channel.
Now, this can be different for a lot of people.
If you're a smaller YouTuber
and you're in a deal with an MCN,
maybe you need to get out of it
because they might be taking 30 or 50% of your money.
If you're a larger channel, maybe it's only 10 or 20%.
But ask yourself if they're doing enough for you.
We've heard some real horror stories in the community
when it comes to what's happening to people
with their channels and with multichannel networks.
Not all of them are bad by the way,
there are a lot of the great ones out there
but let's take a look at this.
So in the lifetime of my channel,
my channel has 27 million views
and in the lifetime of the channel it's earned $134,060.90
as of the making of this video.
So hopefully that screen is up here.
But yeah, so we can see that that's actually really strong,
it's really good.
And it may not seem like a lot
because there are bigger channels out there
but again, I want you to think about what this means
in terms of CPM rates and that you don't have to be
the biggest YouTuber and that if I can do that,
there are a lot of smaller channels
also that by the way earn even more than me.
Just depends on what niche they are.
There are people who are doing financial advisor channels
and real estate channels that do very, very well in AdSense.
There are a lot of people, I've known some science channels
that just crushing it
and so there are a lot of different niches
that just perform better on YouTube
and a lot of channels that you have no idea
just because they're getting this views or that views,
people could be getting tens of millions of views
and not making a ton of money.
There could be channels with a million of subscribers
that might not be making money on the AdSense
which is why doing brand deals and negotiating brand deals
if you have a very attractive channel is really important
and you shouldn't feel ashamed
or embarrassed or like a sell out
if you're doing brand deals.
AdSense isn't everything and I don't live off of AdSense
and I wouldn't want to.
It's not reliable and you can't control it.
So you can try everything to help it along,
but you know, you have to just be realistic about this.
The other thing is I keep talking to you guys
about doing other things to earn passive income
because what if you can't make videos?
There were a lot of times where I was traveling
and I took two or three weeks off from YouTube.
There were times when I had family things,
I unfortunately had to go
to like funerals for elderly relatives.
I wasn't gonna upload, I wasn't in the mind space for that,
so I'm not gonna upload.
Do I want to worry about my channel taking a hit
or do I want to you know, do the right thing by my family?
You know, real talk.
So I think it's important to diversify your income
if you're a YouTuber or if you want to become a YouTuber,
but also I wanted to correct all of the misinformation
that's out there around YouTube AdSense
and give you some real information
and some real numbers and some data behind it.
You know, that's what I do on this channel.
I back everything I say up with the data.
I mean, and that's just what we do here.
Now I'm planning to make a video
on what a million views in YouTube are worth
and I'm also doing a video
on how to make your first $1,000 on YouTube.
So those are things you might be interested in.
But I also would encourage you to watch not only
the videos here on how to grow a YouTube channel,
but the videos here around entrepreneurship
and making money online
because they're a lot faster, better, more reliable ways
to make money than YouTube.
You can work at this for a long time
and not make a lot of money.
Now again, the ads are okay
if you're doing certain types of content
or if you're getting enough views,
but that is also something that you just never know.
You could be demonetized,
you may be part of an anomaly and you might get errors
and your content will get manually approved
and it will be perfectly fine
but if you missed out on the majority of the views
during that time, you're not gonna get that money.
So I just wouldn't rely on this
as your sole source of income
if you want to be a content creator.
I think still the fastest way to make money online
as a content creator is to also
do freelance work on the side
and then consider how you can build a real business
and then if you want passive income,
affiliate marketing or your own digital product sales.
We talk a lot about that here on this channel.
So yeah, now you have some real numbers,
now you have an understanding of why
just watching a video on how much people make on YouTube
or watching all those oh, my first YouTube paycheck videos,
it's encouraging and it might motivate you
but it has nothing to do with how much money you'll make.
There is no normal in YouTube
when it comes to CPMs and ad rates.
It's an option and advertisers pick and choose
what categories they want to advertise in
and they set budgets for what those things are worth
that you don't control and remember December,
there's more ad spending
because you gotta get rid of the budget
and in January it sucks.
So again, these things fluctuate.
They're different, month to month they are very different.
So you know, you can see that here in my numbers
that you know, there's not a ton of consistency.
It can go very well or it can not, you know?
And you just don't know what's going to happen.
Just depending on what type of channel you have
or what's happening in the market.
If you like the information and advice that I shared
then definitely make sure you subscribe to the channel.
Also, if you want to work with me
either one-on-one or join my membership program,
don't forget to check out awesomecreatoracademy.com.
There's gonna be a link in the description down below.
I'm also gonna link to a couple of books
that I think every single YouTuber should read
including "YouTube Secrets"
by friends Sean Cannell and Benji Travis.
Hashtag not sponsored.
Also, I'm planning a video that really helps you understand
how to negotiate brand deals a lot better
because I think a lot of you are struggling with that.
In fact, the question of the day.
Question of the day:
what's the most money you've made on a single YouTube video
and question of the day part B,
if you haven't made any money on YouTube at all,
question of the day part B would be
what is the most complicated question you have for me
about growing a YouTube channel?
I don't want generic questions
on how do I get more subscribers, Roberto?
How do I get more views, Roberto?
I want you to challenge me.
Give me and throw me
some like curve ball questions about YouTube
and I'll see if I can dig up an answer for you.
If I don't know, I'm sure I know someone who does.
Anyway, like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content here on the channel.
As always you guys, thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today.
Take care.