- Hi, guys. It's Mark.
So there's one question that I get asked all the time.
How much money do you make from YouTube?
After one year of doing YouTube,
I've never asked that question.
I just don't wanna come across as showing off.
Believe it or not in England,
we're a bit shy talking about money.
It's just not the British way.
Tea and crumpets anyone?
However, I started this channel to help people
with personal finance, business, and investing tips
by sharing my 35 years of experience.
It only seems fair to be completely transparent
about everything.
After all, if you didn't find my videos helpful
and laugh at my bad jokes,
then none of this would be possible.
So my aim today is
to satisfy your curiosity once and for all,
and who knows, maybe inspire some future YouTubers.
So I asked you guys two questions on Instagram.
@MarkTilbury, if you wanna follow.
(tongue clicks)
First, I asked you if you'd find it interesting
if I revealed how much YouTube paid me
for a two-million-viewed video.
Or would you think is a bit showy off-y?
The response was pretty clear on that one,
as many of you even stated you enjoyed similar videos
from other YouTubers.
The second question was just a little bit of fun.
I just wanted to see
if you could guess how much YouTube paid me
for this video of over 2 million views.
Now your responses range from one penny to $1 million.
But to be fair, it's almost impossible question
to actually answer, as there five main factors
that determine how much YouTube pays you.
That's why I find videos like this so interesting.
It's everyone is earning different amounts.
I thought about starting a YouTube channel years
before taking the plunge.
I've even been asking you guys to smash the like button
on my son's channel even before Graham Stephan
and that was six years ago.
If you liked the video, don't forget to smash
(ding)
that like button.
Hopefully by showing you what's been possible
after one year on YouTube, it'll help inspire you
to do whatever you've been putting off.
Maybe that's grabbing your free stock
from the investing social network Public.com
worth up to $50.
I'll leave the link in the description below.
And Freetrade are giving away a free stock
to anyone in the UK worth up to 200 pounds.
First of all,
let's break down how money is actually made from videos.
It's actually views that make the money, not subscribers.
This is something boomers my age never seem to understand.
There are lots
of different platforms you can upload videos to.
The biggest and best, in my opinion,
are YouTube and TikTok.
I'm going to let you into a bit of a secret.
The platform is the first big factor that affects
how much money creators can earn and their relationship
with advertisers, because that's where the money comes from.
Let's take a look at one of my TikTok videos
which has over 2 million views.
TikTok has something called the creator fund
which they split up between all the creators every day,
depending on how many views they get.
So this video has around 2 million views
and it's made a grand total of $48.
Now that's not actually bad when you consider
that's only a 30 second video,
and I would have been doing it for free anyway.
But it's certainly not what a lot of people would expect.
But this helps me to pay for my son,
and all the filming and editing work that he does for me.
However, the YouTube numbers look entirely different.
Even I was shocked when I saw them.
So let's look at
what actually makes a YouTube video more valuable
and why there is such a huge difference,
even between other YouTubers.
So stick with me guys,
as this will really help you understand
who gets paid what and why.
YouTube pays its creators per thousand views.
This is known as a CPM.
This stands for cost per mille, which is French for 1000.
I actually didn't put adverts on my channel at first,
as I didn't want to distract from the content.
But when I started thinking about it a little bit more,
I did wonder if YouTube would really want
to promote my videos
if they weren't making any money from them.
So I tested it out by including a few ad breaks,
and almost instantly my channel exploded.
This may have just been a coincidence,
but it does sort-of, kind-of make sense
because YouTube is a business,
and of course it needs to make money.
Factor two is the type of niche.
There are lots of different YouTubers
and topics that they talk about,
and they all have a big impact
on how much money they get paid.
On the lower end, you have the gamers and vloggers
who generally make an average
of $1 to $4 per thousand views.
Now I love a bit of Casey Neistat and PewDiePie,
as a lot of people do.
And that's exactly the issue.
Everyone likes them.
It's nearly impossible for brands to know
who they're actually advertising to,
which means these creators get more generic ads running
on the videos that pay less.
Imagine you had a bunch of chocolate
for Easter and you wanted to sell it.
Would you choose to go to a room with a bunch
of random people that could be vegan, lactose intolerant,
or just simply didn't like chocolate?
Or would you go to a room full of chocoholics?
I think the answer is really clear.
You'd sell out in seconds.
And this is exactly how advertisers think,
and why they're prepared to spend more
on targeted audiences.
In the middle, you have the beauty bloggers
and the car channels who make
on average $7 to $10 per thousand views.
Again, the advertisers can target our ads
to these two subjects very easily
with makeup and car products, to name a few.
And at the very top, you have the highest paid,
and you may have guessed it by now.
It's finance and business channels,
which of course is what I talk about.
Now we don't have to guess about this one
because I can just show you my average CPM,
which is $45 per thousand views.
This is of course, before YouTube, boom, take their cut.
These earnings in all categories depend
on factor number three.
Whether you're family-friendly or not.
A few swear words can really cost you a lot of money.
It's not YouTube itself.
It's because a lot of advertisers don't want
to be associated with this kind of content.
I've always had the rule to avoid swearing
on the channel and to keep it family-friendly,
as more people can enjoy the videos
and we don't get censored.
The length of the video is the fourth factor that goes
into this big calculation.
This is because the longer the video,
the more adverts can be placed inside it.
If you make your video over eight minutes,
you can actually place an advert
every 10 seconds if you wanted to.
But this would be just silly because no one would watch it.
YouTube is obsessed with watch time.
So as a creator,
it's really important to be a good storyteller
so people want to watch your video in full.
This makes sense as YouTube wants to keep viewers
on their platform for as long as possible.
Number five is the time of the year.
This has an impact on YouTuber's earnings.
That's why lots of them do Vlogmas in December
and upload every single day, as near to the holidays
advertisers have lots of money to spend.
And also, you may have noticed a lot of them go away
in January for a break
because the advertisers budgets dropped through the floor.
My video that hit 2 million views,
luckily, seemed to be the perfect combination
of all of these factors.
Firstly, it's in the investor niche.
As I talk about all the different options people have
to invest a hundred dollars,
and I actually do it myself.
Next, the watch time is extremely high.
The average view duration is nearly 40%,
which is pretty good
when you consider it's quite an in-depth topic
which most people would usually find boring and click off.
I think it's great that there's still 30%
of people watching right to the end.
They must've really loved watching me go
through those lotto scratchers.
And it's also very family friendly.
I even have my son in some of it,
and to top it all off, it was posted in November
which is great for the December advertising rates.
Not that that was planned.
It was just good luck.
Looking at the graph, the video actually did really well
in the first few days,
but it wasn't until day 20
that it actually hit the YouTube algorithm.
And it actually exploded.
Look at that.
One of the questions I get asked the most is why I speak
in dollars and not in Great British pounds
as I'm from England.
So now's the perfect time to answer that.
U.S. dollars are seen as the currency of the internet.
And most people understand their value.
So it's just a good way for more people to get as much
as possible out of the videos.
This is actually one
of the reasons I think this video has done really,
really well and got the amount of views that it did.
Looking at the stats, nearly half of the views come
from the United States of America.
And it's not just the U.S. that uses dollars.
Australia, Canada, and many others have their own versions.
So it just makes more sense to use this currency.
The CPM for this video is $55
which is a lot higher than usual.
This is probably due to the video being 18 minutes long,
meaning YouTube can show more adverts.
This number's the RPM, and this is what I actually get paid
after YouTube take their cut.
And that comes out at $32 per thousand views.
So if you're quick at the maths,
then you'll probably be able to work out the total
but I'm not going to make you wait any longer.
So here are the numbers that you've all been waiting for.
Over the last four months,
YouTube have paid $76,391 for the views on this video,
which I'm still trying to wrap my head around.
What makes me even more happy is it brought in
over a hundred thousand subscribers,
which meant we managed to get this award from YouTube.
Without you guys, that wouldn't of happened.
I remember wanting to thank each and every one
of you individually who subscribed to the channel.
It also had a knock-on effect on my other videos
as they started to gain more traction.
So in reality, it could be more valuable
than the final figures suggest.
Just to show you the difference the niche makes,
let's have a look at the video all about my Tesla.
The idea behind this video is to make the money back
for the car in different ways,
like renting it out and repping it in adverts.
And if I manage to succeed
then I'm giving away $5,000 to a random subscriber.
As you can see, the CPM is much, much lower on this.
It's only $25 per thousand views,
and the amount I get is $14.
This video is a mixture
between the car and the finance niches.
So it does make sense.
I'm looking forward to releasing episode two soon
as we've been working on really hard on it.
This video has outperformed every video I've ever posted,
and please don't think I take any of this for granted.
35 years ago, I started my business and investing journey,
and now I'm really happy to get the chance
to be able to pass some of that knowledge onto you.
And I really appreciate all of your support.
It means so much to me
and now I could spend more time creating more videos
and also improving the camera equipment.
I really love that YouTube allows me to do all this
for free and that's how I'm gonna to keep things.
So I'm gonna link the next video right up here,
but don't click on it just yet.
Remember to subscribe to the channel
and pick up your free stock worth up to $50 from Public.com.
I'll leave the link in the description below.
All right.
See you over there.