How Much YouTube Paid 16 YouTubers for 1 Million Views

Can you become rich with 1 million views? Does 1 view equal 1 dollar? How does YouTube calculate how much to pay its creators?

Find out everything — and more — in this post.

How Much Does YouTube Pay You for 1 Million Views?

After analyzing 16 different YouTubers, we’ve found that, on average, they earned $5,752 per million views. The average RPM (revenue per mille views) was $5.75. But there is more to it.

For example, YouTubers with an English-speaking audience earned on average a lot more than others. They average around $6500 while channels from other languages earned $816 on average. This is because of how ad revenue works, which we will explain below.

But first, here’s all the data:

YouTuber	Niche	Country	Revenue	RPM
Shelby Church	Tech and Lifestyle	US	$1650	$1.65
Reyes The Entrepreneur	Business	US	$3360	$3.36
Graham Stephan	Credit Cards	US	$5800	$5.8
Web Hacks	Lifestyle	India	$240	$0.24
Vanessa Lau	Social Media Marketing	US	$3680	$3.68
Akosi Dogie	Lifestyle	Philippines	$560	$0.56
AutoVlog	Auto	US	$1170	$1.17
Coco Lili	Lifestyle	US	$2130	$2.13
Jeven Dovey	Photography and Filmmaking	US	$5120	$5.12
Pat Flynn	Entrepreneurship	US	$4000	$4
Jessica Os	Relationship	Ghana	$5710	$5.71
Nay Nicole	Business	US	$34900	$34.90
Athina	Fitness	US	$4240	$4.24
Matt Brighton	Make Money	UK	$12860	$12.86
Spencer Cornelia	Money	US	$5320	$5.32
Zoeunlimited	Health	US	$1220	$1.22

Some Important Notes

• RPM means Revenue Per Mille, which is how much money they earned for each thousand views.
• Shelby Church was earning around $1,650 and once she switched to videos that were 10 minutes long and played 2 ads during the video, revenue went up to around $4,000 per million views.
• As you can see on the table, audiences located in developing countries pay much less per view.
• AutoVlog’s video was really short (about 5 minutes long), and thus only showed 1 ad. He has other videos that get over $4 RPM.
• Coco Lili earned $460 with a video that was shorter than 5 minutes, and $2126 with another over 10 minutes long. Videos that are shorter than 10 minutes earn a LOT less because of the limited number of ads you can show in them.
• Even though Jessica Os is from Ghana, she makes her videos in English and has a big English-speaking audience. That’s why her RPM is good.
• Notice that not only language but also the particular topic of each video influences a lot the final revenue. For example, a video about business can earn 100x more than a video about how to pose for photographies.

Why Do Some YouTubers Earn Much Less Per Million Views? Does YouTube Hate Them?

No, this is due to something called CPM. 

In case you don’t know what YouTube CPM is, it’s the cost per thousand ad impressions on YouTube.

See, people get paid on YouTube thanks to the ads that are played on and around their videos.

In other words, CPM it’s the amount of money advertisers pay to YouTube — which then, around half of it gets paid to the YouTuber — every time their ads are shown 1,000 times.

CPM literally stands for “cost per mile,” though some users have, in the past, mistaken this for “cost per million.” 

Some YouTubers have a higher CPM than others because their audiences are more expensive to reach for advertisers.

So your CPM may be dramatically different from that of other vloggers, even if you have similar types of content.

Consider:

Demographics matter

Some countries have a much higher rate for CPM than others, and a lot of it is related to each country’s GDP per capita.

If, for example, you target developing countries with your videos, you’ll find that you have a much lower CPM than if you target, for example, Sweden, the Netherlands, or France. 

If you’re targeting English-speaking viewers, your views are most likely to come from English-speaking areas like the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK, so it’s important to consider that when calculating your average potential CPM. 

Time of year

The fight for advertising space is ongoing. Advertisers pay top dollars for the best spots, helping to ensure that their ads are seen by the best viewers. 

During some times of the year, advertisers will pay higher premiums for the same advertising space.

The holidays often generate a significant increase in ad revenue because there’s a lot of competition to show ads.

How attractive your audience is to advertisers

And I don’t mean how cute they are, but how valuable they are to businesses.

For example…

Let’s face it, a typical gamer doesn’t spend as much as a baby boomer that needs insurance for the entire family (including the gamer).

This automatically means that if your audience is full of baby boomers, you’ll earn a LOT more from the ads shown in your videos than if it was made of young gamers.

Video topic, keywords, and content

Not only does the quality of your video matter, but the topic also. As with quality, content matters.

Some types of content attract specific types of advertisements.

For example, most advertisers won’t place ads for adult products, including alcohol, in front of videos intended for children.

Other types of content may be more likely to attract specific advertisers who believe that your content fits with their industry.

Conclusion

Building an income on YouTube is a process that will take, at least, several months.

Unless you’re very lucky, you probably can’t quit your day job and jump straight into making the kind of money online that you would make in a traditional job. 

You can, however, continue to build your brand and your followers, gradually generating more money through your YouTube channel.

As you continue to produce exceptional content that your viewers can count on, you’ll find that you can generate a more consistent, reliable income. 

Before you know it, you’ll be the one making your own video about how much you earned from 1 million views on YouTube–as well as a household name that many of your viewers enjoy making part of their everyday lives.