Here is the answer to the question that everyone asks me
Here?s a video I made about ?How To Pose in Photos.? When I wrote this, the video had 3,907,000 views. Pretty crazy right? I really did not expect this video to blow up. I made $1,275.99 from the 3,907,000 views on this video ? a decent amount of money, but actually very low for YouTube. This video with 3 million views has earned less than some of my videos with 700,000 views.
Normally, I would expect a video with 3,000,000 views to make between $6,000-$15,000. I?ve even had one video with 2,000,000 views make about $40,000.
On average, my videos that have over 1,000,000 views have usually earned between $2,000-$5,000.
This particular video made so little because its viewers were mostly based outside of the United States, and the topic didn?t really garner any advertisers with a large budget.
The analytics show me that this video was pushed by YouTube?s algorithm to a lot of people that were not even subscribed to me (97%!), and the top countries were India, Philippines, Pakistan, and Nepal.
Each of these countries has a significantly lower CPM (cost per thousand views) than the United States, Australia, and Canada.
Here you can see the playback-based CPM was $4.08 from the views in the United States, while it was only $1.16 in India. YouTube takes 45% of that playback based CPM, so really I only got $0.58 per one thousand views from the views in India on this video. This video is the lowest CPM I?ve ever had, so it doesn?t give the full picture of how much you can make on YouTube.
Example two ? ?The Top 10 Features of the Tesla Model 3? video
Here?s a video I made about the ?Top 10 Features of the Tesla Model 3.? At the time of writing, the video had 2,057,000 views and had made $11,653.93. It has fewer views than the first example, but it?s a much longer video than the first example. Since it?s 10 minutes long, I was able to place a second ad into the video, which I?ve found usually doubles the amount I make.
This video also had more views from the United States and Canada, which typically means a higher CPM. This video had a playback based CPM of $11.06, which is much higher than the CPM from the first video, which averaged about $1.35.
Don?t forget that YouTube takes 45% though, so really that $11.06 CPM is $5.53. I?ve found the $4?6 CPM range to be pretty typical of most of my videos. On average, my videos that have over 1,000,000 views have usually earned between $2,000-$5,000.
While the amount you make on YouTube can vary greatly, I find it is most often in this $2,000-$5,000 range for 1,000,000 views. There are so many factors that go into how much a video can earn (viewer location, age, topic) ? but all you really can control is the topic of your video.