$6k at 2 million views?

[Noria]

Hello,
Over the past 30 days my channel has gained close to 3 million views but I only get paid about $2k a month. I have a friend who gets paid significantly more but has less views than me. He gets paid about $6k from YouTube and has only gained 2 million views this month. How come?

Does location actually matter in this instance? I’m pretty sure that your location is redundant and it only matters where your audience is from. If you get views from top CPM countries like the US, Australia and Norway you still get paid the same regardless of your location. Or am I wrong?

Thanks!

 

[Crown]

Moved to the monetization forum.

Hello,
Over the past 30 days my channel has gained close to 3 million views but I only get paid about $2k a month. I have a friend who gets paid significantly more but has less views than me. He gets paid about $6k from YouTube and has only gained 2 million views this month. How come?

Does location actually matter in this instance? I’m pretty sure that your location is redundant and it only matters where your audience is from. If you get views from top CPM countries like the US, Australia and Norway you still get paid the same regardless of your location. Or am I wrong?

Thanks!

There are loads of variables: Time of year, length of video, subject of video, demographics of viewers etc etc.

 

[wbang]

Hello,
Over the past 30 days my channel has gained close to 3 million views but I only get paid about $2k a month. I have a friend who gets paid significantly more but has less views than me. He gets paid about $6k from YouTube and has only gained 2 million views this month. How come?

Does location actually matter in this instance? I’m pretty sure that your location is redundant and it only matters where your audience is from. If you get views from top CPM countries like the US, Australia and Norway you still get paid the same regardless of your location. Or am I wrong?

Thanks!

I think your friend is lying or somehow his brand is highly sought after. He's mostly likely lying though. Years ago, one of my channels got 10 Milion views per month and it got close to 6K, almost, not even.

 

[Min/Max Munchking]

It's all topic/niche related. I used to operate dozens of blogs and websites with Adsense ads on them back in 2014/15. None of them were earning the same amount of money. I remember specifically running auto-blogs about recipes & cooking (I was into botting and blackhat stuff in my early and mid-twenties), getting a lot of traffic from Pinterest back when it was relatively easy to pump up Pinterest profiles with massive followings.

None of those 10 sites had the same CPM. Even though it was just a bunch of auto-rewritten/copypasta recipes on all those sites, one site had a few viral posts and earned more ad revenue than others based on sheer traffic volume, but it was getting trash CPM, while a smaller site with very little traffic was getting 2x higher CPM.

YT ads are basically Adsense built into the YT platform, so that's why some channels earn less than $500/1 million views while others can go as high as $10k-30k/1 mil.

EDIT: Somewhat unrelated, but I just recalled watching a video a month or two ago about an apparent network of allegedly/supposedly Eastern European/Russian botters running a vast operation currently on YT, uploading thousands of auto-generated/text-to-speech fake-news videos and artificially pumping their numbers (subs, views, likes etc). The internal YT bots are weirdly unsuccessful at flagging these videos and YT is relying on actual human viewers reporting those videos and channels. However, for every one they remove, 10 more come out of the woodworks. I can't remember the name of the video, but it was fascinating to me. I didn't expect it would still be relatively easy to game the system in 2019/2020.

Based on these obvious flaws in the system, your channel very well may be in a different "algorithm category" based on these unknown factors that are taken into consideration when distributing higher paying ads across channels.

 

[wbang]

It's all topic/niche related. I used to operate dozens of blogs and websites with Adsense ads on them back in 2014/15. None of them were earning the same amount of money. I remember specifically running auto-blogs about recipes & cooking (I was into botting and blackhat stuff in my early and mid-twenties), getting a lot of traffic from Pinterest back when it was relatively easy to pump up Pinterest profiles with massive followings.

None of those 10 sites had the same CPM. Even though it was just a bunch of auto-rewritten/copypasta recipes on all those sites, one site had a few viral posts and earned more ad revenue than others based on sheer traffic volume, but it was getting trash CPM, while a smaller site with very little traffic was getting 2x higher CPM.

YT ads are basically Adsense built into the YT platform, so that's why some channels earn less than $500/1 million views while others can go as high as $10k-30k/1 mil.

EDIT: Somewhat unrelated, but I just recalled watching a video a month or two ago about an apparent network of allegedly/supposedly Eastern European/Russian botters running a vast operation currently on YT, uploading thousands of auto-generated/text-to-speech fake-news videos and artificially pumping their numbers (subs, views, likes etc). The internal YT bots are weirdly unsuccessful at flagging these videos and YT is relying on actual human viewers reporting those videos and channels. However, for every one they remove, 10 more come out of the woodworks. I can't remember the name of the video, but it was fascinating to me. I didn't expect it would still be relatively easy to game the system in 2019/2020.

Based on these obvious flaws in the system, your channel very well may be in a different "algorithm category" based on these unknown factors that are taken into consideration when distributing higher paying ads across channels.

while that is true to some extent. It is based on viewership and brand. The CPM is nothing more than advertisers bidding on your channel videos.

The more advertisers that bid, the higher the CPM. It is extremely unlikely advertisers are bidding up videos and channels with 2 million views to so he can generate 6K. Blogs and websites are not the same. Websites you get about 70% of the revenue share while YouTube, they take 50% of the revenue.

I am not saying it’s not impossible. It’s just highly improbable. Even if it is a niche. The only thing I can think of is that estimate was in December. That’s because during the holidays the revenue is doubled and usually people want to only mention their highest earning to make themselves look good while all the other months might be just around 1-2k.

 

[Min/Max Munchking]

while that is true to some extent. It is based on viewership and brand. The CPM is nothing more than advertisers bidding on your channel videos.

The more advertisers that bid, the higher the CPM. It is extremely unlikely advertisers are bidding up videos and channels with 2 million views to so he can generate 6K. Blogs and websites are not the same. Websites you get about 70% of the revenue share while YouTube, they take 50% of the revenue.

I am not saying it’s not impossible. It’s just highly improbable. Even if it is a niche. The only thing I can think of is that estimate was in December. That’s because during the holidays the revenue is doubled and usually people want to only mention their highest earning to make themselves look good while all the other months might be just around 1-2k.

The shared revenue percentages don't mean much when it's possible to get different CPMs across websites and YT channels with very, very similar content. Also, advertisers don't necessarily always bid on your channel's videos specifically, they often bid across the entire network for the niche/category they choose their ads to run.

That's why you see personalized ads all the time. You will get bombarded with the same ad promoting the newest, healthiest dog food regardless of whether you watch a video about hockey or a video about repairing broken Tesla. It's because your behavior prior to watching any of those 2 given videos (search history, dog videos you watch, dog meme pages etc...) indicates to the YT ad algorithm that you're a dog owner who might be interested in buying the best dog food.

That's why videos in the same niche get slightly different CPMs, because your viewership isn't some unchangeable constant, it's a variable that constantly shifts. I also wouldn't be surprised if every channel's viewership is a unique cross-section of multiple common interests, potentially even unrelated to one another, but appealing to the majority of that channel's audience.

 

[wbang]

The shared revenue percentages don't mean much when it's possible to get different CPMs across websites and YT channels with very, very similar content. Also, advertisers don't necessarily always bid on your channel's videos specifically, they often bid across the entire network for the niche/category they choose their ads to run.

That's why you see personalized ads all the time. You will get bombarded with the same ad promoting the newest, healthiest dog food regardless of whether you watch a video about hockey or a video about repairing broken Tesla. It's because your behavior prior to watching any of those 2 given videos (search history, dog videos you watch, dog meme pages etc...) indicates to the YT ad algorithm that you're a dog owner who might be interested in buying the best dog food.

That's why videos in the same niche get slightly different CPMs, because your viewership isn't some unchangeable constant, it's a variable that constantly shifts. I also wouldn't be surprised if every channel's viewership is a unique cross-section of multiple common interests, potentially even unrelated to one another, but appealing to the majority of that channel's audience.

The only reason why I brought up the difference between websites and YT is because you brought it up. Kind of contradicting.

I agree that the CPM are different across niche and many other factors however the possibility of his claims is extremely extremely low. That’s why I said it’s improbable. You can argue your case all you want but many people will find their stats and earnings similar to OP. Are there people with special case? Sure.

How do I know? I have had over 5 channels and 10 websites with a collective viewership of 500,000,000. Have I quit some? Sure. The experience is still there.

 

[Min/Max Munchking]

The only reason why I brought up the difference between websites and YT is because you brought it up. Kind of contradicting.

I agree that the CPM are different across niche and many other factors however the possibility of his claims is extremely extremely low. That’s why I said it’s improbable. You can argue your case all you want but many people will find their stats and earnings similar to OP. Are there people with special case? Sure.

How do I know? I have had over 5 channels and 10 websites with a collective viewership of 500,000,000. Have I quit some? Sure. The experience is still there.

Do we even know if the OP's channel and his/her friend's channel are in the same niche? I'd agree it's improbable to have 3x higher earnings with 50% less views if the channels are similar, but if it's about some "rich people" niche like finance, supercars or yachts, I wouldn't be surprised.

Check out just how much this dude makes every month. It's insane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opXTv-SxJLw

 

[Crown]

I agree with @Min/Max Munchking in that it's mostly niche related.


OP's earnings are very low. $2k for 3 million views is an RPM of $0.66 - I believe his niche is music which is very generic so it makes sense. I mean everyone likes music so it's hard for advertisers to target a channel like that.

Compare that to a channel making videos about building websites, hosting, investing or a niche like that. Judging by how much hosting companies are prepared to pay affiliates, those niches would have a very high RPM.

OP's friend claims he gets an RPM of $3 ($6k from 2 million views) - It's definitely possible.

A member here gets a CPM of about $20 ( http://yttalk.com/threads/big-drop-in-cpm-around-the-10th.293378/ ) That would probably equate to an RPM of $5+

 

[Noria]

I think your friend is lying or somehow his brand is highly sought after. He's mostly likely lying though. Years ago, one of my channels got 10 Milion views per month and it got close to 6K, almost, not even.

I thought he was lying as well, until he showed me his YouTube analytics and he actually is making that much money. I don’t know how he does it. I thought the CPM might come into play as well but again, isn’t the CPM related to your audience’s location and not actually to the creator’s? If say 50% of your viewers are from the US (CPM approx. $5) and 50% from Netherlands (CPM $3), wouldn’t you need to add up both then divide by 2 to find the average CPM for your channel (which is gonna be $5 + $3 = $8 / 2 = $4)? Technically he could be making 6k a month if most of his viewers were from the US/Australia, because the CPM there is higher than $5. With a CPM that high you can even earn $5k a million.

But then say you live in, I don’t know... take India, where the CPM is one of the lowest. Will YouTube be more likely to recommend your content to users from your country, even though it is targeted to people in the US? Does YOUR location actually matter?