YouTube has been a popular platform for uploading your videos since 2005. More and more you see people making a profession out of YouTube. From big Youtubers like MrBeast to smaller Youtubers who upload gaming videos, for example. But how much does YouTube actually pay?
It is important to be monetized on YouTube in order to earn money with it, because only then will YouTube pay out. To be monetized on YouTube, your account must have 1000 YouTube Subscribers and your videos must have 4000 hours of viewing time.
Viewing time comes from YouTube views, however, it is important to know that viewing time means how long someone has watched your video. So 4000 views on a one-hour video does not automatically mean you have reached the 4000 hours of viewing time.
How does making money on YouTube work?
When your account is monetized you get portions of YouTube’s revenue. This is because YouTube has advertising on their videos. Companies can register on YouTube and then pay per 1000 views to promote their products on YouTube.
YouTube pays out 55% of this revenue to the content creator and keeps 45% itself. So if your video has 2 ads, for example, you get 55% of the revenue from these. So the more ads and views the more revenue you get.
How much does YouTube pay?
In the ad world, you always look at how much something costs or earns per 1000 views. This is called RPM, which stands for “revenue per mille.” It is important with YouTube to split videos and YouTube shorts from each other because YouTube shorts earn much less per 1,000 views than regular videos.
For videos on YouTube, you can earn $1 to $30 per 1,000 views as a content creator. For shorts, this is only $0.01 to $0.06 per 1,000 views.
This means that when you have 1 million views on YouTube you earn between $1,000 and $30,000 on YouTube. So with 1 million shorts views this is between $10 and $60. A very big difference, however, it is much easier to achieve 1 million views on YouTube shorts than traditional videos.
So the RPM can vary a lot on YouTube, being between $1 and $30. Although the average RPM is around $10 it depends on many different factors.
How much you get paid on YouTube per 1,000 views depends on the:
• Language of the channel
• Target audience
• Length of your video
• Retention rate
• Amount of ads in your video
• Niche
These 6 different factors affect how much you get paid per 1000 views and will be explained further below.
Language of the channel
The language of your videos are very important for your RPM, this is because advertisers pay more for certain languages and countries. On average the higher the buying power is of a country the higher the RPM is. This is because an average viewer in a rich country naturally has more economic value than in a poor country.
The Netherlands and the United States are considered high purchasing power countries. The average revenue per 1,000 views will therefore be higher here than in, say, India. But languages in German, Norwegian and Swedish will also provide a high RPM.
Target audience
The target audience also plays an important role for your RPM. As indicated earlier, advertisers pay more for views with high purchasing power. Indeed, the higher the purchasing power, the more the advertiser can earn. So also logically the more the advertiser can pay to still be profitable.
The Target audience with the highest RPM are from a Western country with an age between 24 and 48. Higher educated with high Income also plays an important role for high RPM.
Otherwise, there is little difference in the RPM of men and women. It is mainly about income, education, geographical location and a person’s interests.
Length of your videos
The RPM is higher for videos that are longer than 8 minutes. This is because from 8 minutes on, you get multiple ads on your video and you can also set them up yourself. For example, you can place an ad just before an exciting bit. It is important not to place too many ads on your video so that viewers will click away.
The longer your video is, the more you can get away with placing lots of ads on your video without annoying viewers. On a 1-hour video, you can obviously put more ads. Because of this, your RPM will also be much higher when your videos are longer.
Videos under 8 minutes cannot be arranged by yourself and generally have only 1 ad. Because of this, the RPM is often lowest for videos under 8 minutes.
Retention Ratio
Perhaps even more important than the length of your video is the retention ratio of your video. The retention ratio of your video means how long your audience watches your video on average. For example, if your video is 10 minutes long, and on average your audience watches the video for 6 minutes then your retention ratio is 0.6. The higher the ratio is the better this is for your RPM.
The level of your retention ratio is important because if few people finish your video they also haven’t seen all the ads. When your retention ratio is only 0.1 you may even earn almost nothing per 1000 YouTube views because no one watches the ads.
This is why it is important that you provide quality as well as video length. A 10-minute video with a retention ratio of 0.9 has a higher RPM than a 20-minute video with a retention ratio of 0.2. So the viewing time is very important to how much you earn on YouTube. The combination of the length of your video and your retention ratio results in your view time.
Amount of ads in your video
A factor that is also important for how much you earn on YouTube is the amount of ads you place on your video. Starting at the 8-minute mark, you can set this up yourself, and the more ads the higher your RPM becomes.
However, it is important that you do not put too many ads in a row, this can cause people to click away and your retention ratio and thus your RPM goes down. It is not recommended to place more than one ad every 2 minutes.
It is also important to place your ads in the right positions. For example, just before an exciting piece so that people are less likely to click away while watching the video.
Niche
The niche of your account is one of the most important points for how much you earn on YouTube per 1,000 views. For example, niche finance has the highest RPM at an average of $13.52, while niche humor has the lowest at an average of $1.
A niche is important for your RPM because advertisers pay more for certain niches. This does not always mean you should go for the niche with the highest RPM. For example, the niche gaming only has an RPM of $1.40, while that of education sits at $9.89. Still, more is earned in the niche gaming because there are simply many more potential viewers for this niche. When you have many more views on a niche with a low RPM, you will still earn more with few views and a high RPM.
Exactly how much can you earn?
So all these factors affect how much you can earn on YouTube. If you score high on these 6 factors, you can expect $30 per 1000 YouTube views. When your score is low on all 6 factors you can expect towards $1 per 1000 views. When you are in between all factors you can expect around $15 per 1000 views.
When you want to compare your RPM with other channels, this is useful to do with similarly situated accounts. After all, it makes sense that a financial YouTube account with hour-long videos will have a higher RPM than an account that focuses on short gaming clips. So always compare the results of your account with those of a similar account.
If you have more questions about the RPM on YouTube or would like to spar about which niche could be right for you, you can always contact us.
