16 YouTube stars reveal how much they get paid per 1,000 views
- YouTube's Partner Program allows influencers to earn money off their YouTube channels by placing ads within videos.
- Google places these ads and pays a creator based on factors like a video's watch time, length, and viewer demographic.
- Business Insider spoke with 16 YouTube creators about how much each of them earn on average for every 1,000 views.
- Click here for more BI Prime stories.
How much money YouTube pays a creator for every 1,000 views is called the CPM rate, which stands for cost per mille (Latin for 1,000). CPM rates vary between creators, and no creator consistently has the same rate.
This number can vary based on a variety of factors, like the type of viewers the video attracts, how long the video is, and the content. Some videos that contain swearing or copyrighted music can be flagged by YouTube and demonetized, earning hardly any money for the creator (or none at all).
Creators with at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours in the past year are eligible to apply for YouTube's Partner Program, which lets them put ads in videos. These ads are filtered and placed by Google (called AdSense).
Advertisers usually pay more for an informative, business-related video than a vlog-style video. The rate also depends on seasonality, with lower CPM rates at the start of the year and higher ones toward the end.
Some subjects, like talking about money on YouTube, often can boost a creator's CPM rate by attracting a lucrative audience. For instance, personal-finance creator Marko Zlatic told Business Insider that his audience is valuable to advertisers because they usually are in a high income bracket and care about finance.
Business Insider spoke with 16 YouTube creators about how much each of them earn on average for every 1,000 views.
Here's what they said:
This article has been updated to include additional creators.
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Jimmy Ton — between $2 and $4
Jimmy Ton lives in Texas and runs the YouTube channel JimmyTriesWorld with 22,000 subscribers.
Ton, 24, created his channel while he was in college, as a creative outlet for his love of video editing and because he thought the information he got from running a YouTube channel would help him in his marketing classes.
On average, his CPM rate is between $2 and $4, he told Business Insider in March.
He films videos about technology and consumer electronics. He has 11 videos over 100,000 views, and his most popular video is titled, "How Much Money Does My Small 9,000 Subscriber YouTube Channel Make?" with 770,000 views. That video has a CPM rate between $7.50 to $8.50, he said.
"CPM fluctuates a little bit from month to month," he said. "Different video topics will give you different CPM."
Shelby Church — between $2 and $5
Shelby Church is a YouTube creator with 1.4 million subscribers.
In general, Church's No. 1 source of revenue as an online creator is brand sponsorships and No. 2 is Google-placed ads in her videos.
Last year, she realized that if she extended her videos to over 10 minutes, she could include more ads and earn more money. She said she usually includes one pre-roll ad before the video (which is the default on YouTube), and two ads within the video, three or four minutes apart. Her videos are typically about 10 to 12 minutes.
Her videos over 10 minutes long generally made $5.00 per 1,000 views, while the videos under 10 minutes usually made $2.00 per 1,000 views, she told Business Insider in January.
Read the full post: How much money YouTube paid a creator with 1.4 million subscribers during 2019
Thomas Game Docs — between $3 and $5
Thomas Game Docs is a 17-year-old YouTube creator with 162,000 subscribers.
Thomas films game-history videos for his channel, from Animal Crossing's sound design to videos about Zelda.
Looking at his channel's history, the average rate he earns for every 1,000 views is about $5, he told Business Insider in April.
Recently, his channel has experienced a CPM drop, and in April he was earning around $3 (due to changing ad budgets).
He started his YouTube channel in 2018 and was hoping to focus on his channel full time this fall, he said. But with his recent changes in revenue, he's uncertain if he'll be able to do that without finding additional ways to make money.
Read the full post: Some YouTube creators say their ad rates have dropped sharply in recent weeks and increased views haven't made up for the loss in income
Marina Mogilko — between $4 and $14
Marina Mogilko has three YouTube channels: a language channel, a lifestyle channel, and a business channel.
She told Business Insider that her business channel was more appealing to advertisers than her other two channels because of the type of content, thus making more per view in Google AdSense revenue.
Some YouTube creators will label their content as "educational" or "business" to raise their rates, she said, but in her experience, YouTube's algorithm is smart enough to know whether a video is educational or not.
Mogilko makes an average $14.17 per every 1,000 views on Silicon Valley Girl, her business channel, she told Business Insider in March. Her language channel, Linguamarina, makes an average of $5.56 per 1,000 views. Her third channel, the lifestyle one, makes even less than that, at $4 per 1,000 views.
Read the full post here: A YouTube creator breaks down the ad revenue rates for each of her 3 channels, and why one is a lot higher
Michael Groth – between $5 and $12
Michael Groth, a YouTube creator with 1 million subscribers, films Pokémon-related videos and scripted content for his YouTube channel MandJTV. He posts videos about twice a week and films them from the studio in his house.
He told Business Insider in April that the average rate YouTube paid him began dropping sharply at the end of March.
Normally, Groth's YouTube channel earns between $9 and $12 for every 1,000 views, he said in April. But by the end of March, his CPM rate dropped to $6, and in April he earned about $5, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.
"I thankfully am a large enough channel that this doesn't financially break me, and I'm not worried about not being able to pay rent and stuff like that," he said. "But it's obviously not fun to see, and I worry about smaller creators."
Read the full post: Some YouTube creators say their ad rates have dropped sharply in recent weeks and increased views haven't made up for the loss in income
Austen Alexander — between $7 and $9
Austen Alexander is a YouTube influencer with 135,000 subscribers and an active-duty sailor for the US Navy.
Alexander started his channel in 2016, and now he posts videos like "A Day in the Life of an Enlisted US Sailor," (800,000 views) and "Ms. Bikini Olympia Attempts the US Navy Physical Test" (3.6 million views).
His channel earns between $7.70 and $9.50 on average for every 1,000 views, he told Business Insider in November.
Alexander increases his videos' watch time (how long a viewer watches a video for) by building up the anticipation at the start of a video, he said. He enables every ad option on his videos, which include banner, preroll, and midroll ads. He also adds an "ad break" in the middle of a video, which he said has helped his earnings.
Read the full post here: A YouTube star and active-duty US Navy sailor shares how much money a video with 1 million views makes him
Natalie Barbu — between $7 and $20
Natalie Barbu is a 22-year-old social-media influencer and YouTube creator with 227,000 subscribers.
She started her YouTube channel about eight years ago, while she was in high school. She'd post videos talking about fashion and beauty as an after-school hobby, long before she knew she could be earning any money from the platform, she said.
On average, her CPM rate ranges from $7 to $20 with her business-related videos earning more per view, she said in February.
Barbu graduated with an engineering degree from NC State University and said while she was attending college, she began to take her channel more seriously. She would post one video to her channel a week about her college life experiences and what it was like to be a girl studying engineering, she said.
Read the full post (and watch the video): CRASH COURSE: An influencer explains how YouTube ads work, her advice for making more money, and how much she earns
Sienna Santer — $8
Sienna Santer is a Harvard student and a YouTube influencer with 346,000 subscribers.
Some of Santer's college friends have part-time jobs at bookstores and waitressing on weekends to help pay for food and student loans. Her job is YouTube.
Santer's channel blew up after she uploaded a video moving into her college dorm room at Harvard, which now has 5.2 million views.
Santer's channel quickly went from a few viral videos into a full-blown online business. She has done sponsorships with companies like Audible and the vitamin company Care/of.
On average, her channel earns around $8 for every 1,000 views, she told Business Insider in March.
Read the full post: A Harvard student with 265,000 YouTube subscribers breaks down how much money she earns as a college influencer
Jade Darmawangsa — between $8 and $15
Jade Darmawangsa is a YouTube creator and entrepreneur.
Darmawangsa, 18, has 311,000 subscribers on her channel, which she launched in 2015.
In 2018, YouTube featured Darmawangsa for 24 hours on its worldwide trending page as a "Creator on The Rise."
Today, she helps other social media influencers and young creators build channels and businesses online.
Her average CPM rate is between $8 and $15, she said in March.
"The reason for the higher CPM is due to my audience demographic and niche," she said. "My content is largely business related, therefore it attracts advertisers with larger budget."
Ruby Asabor – between $10 and $20
Ruby Asabor is a 22-year-old YouTube content creator and motivational speaker.
She has 140,000 subscribers on her YouTube channel, Lavish Ruby, which she started four years ago, and today she has established several revenue streams around her digital business.
Asabor's finance- and business-related videos target an older audience, which is favorable to Google's advertisers. Her average viewer is someone who cares about financial education and the advertisements that play in her videos will often be for banks or stockbrokers, she said. These advertisers pay more than others because there are fewer videos on YouTube that attract their target audience.
Her average CPM rate on YouTube is between $10, to mid-$20, she said in February.
Read the full post: A recent college grad living in New York says she makes a 6-figure income as a YouTube influencer. She broke down how she does it.
CurlyCandi — between $11 and $18
Candice Celeste, who goes by the name CurlyCandi online, has 16,000 subscribers on YouTube.
She is a natural hair and lifestyle influencer on YouTube and Instagram, focused on helping women of color embrace their natural hair.
Celeste is 27-years-old and based in Georgia. She has a degree in marketing and she decided to start her channel in July 2019, after constantly receiving questions from people about what products she uses and how she styles her hair.
Her YouTube content is mainly about natural hair with topics ranging from hair growth tips and hairstyle tutorials to product reviews and wash day routines.
On average, her channel earns $11 per 1,000 views, but sometimes she will have a spike in CPM depending on the topic of her video. For example, in December she uploaded a video about her experience doing business on YouTube titled "My First Three Youtube Paychecks + How to Money on Youtube in 2020" and her CPM jumped to $18, she told Business Insider in March.
Griffin Milks — between $12 to $34
Griffin Milks started consistently posting videos to YouTube in 2018.
Now he has 27,000 subscribers, and he is known online as a personal-finance YouTube creator.
His average CPM rate on YouTube is around $18 Canadian dollars, he told Business Insider in March (around $12 US dollars). But he said this number is skewed because a GoPro video he posted in 2011, with over 8 million views, still gets thousands of views a day.
His current finance videos earn him between $30 to $50 Canadian dollars for every 1,000 views, ($20 to $34 US dollars), he said.
On his channel, he talks about all things personal finance, stock-market investing, and real-estate investing in Canada.
Cathrin Manning — $17
Cathrin Manning started her blog, thecontentbug.com, in 2016 and after a year she was able to transition out of her full-time job and into freelancing work.
In October of 2017, she created her YouTube channel as an extension of her blog. Now YouTube is her main platform.
She mainly shares YouTube tips for creators who are looking to grow a channel. She shares anything from how to understand and use the algorithm to grow faster on YouTube to how much money she makes from the platform.
In the beginning, she was mainly focused on blogging and Pinterest tips. Then after sharing a few videos about YouTube, her YouTube-related videos started to get more traction and she switched her focus away from talking about blogging to now talking about all things YouTube.
Her YouTube channel averages around $17 for every 1,000 views, she told Business Insider in March. Her videos are focused on YouTube tips, so her CPM doesn't vary much, she added. She said the videos on her channel with the lowest CPM have to do with making money on YouTube.
Marko Zlatic — between $20 and $27
Marko Zlatic is a fiance YouTuber with 318,000 subscribers.
He started his channel two years ago and now he posts videos twice a week to YouTube about personal finance, stocks, and real-estate investing.
He is part of a community of YouTubers who film videos dedicated to teaching their audiences about personal finance — which can make creators more money than many other subjects.
His average CPM rate on YouTube is between $20 and $27, he said in March.
"A big part of my income is that ad revenue," Zlatic told Business Insider. "It's scary not knowing if that's going to go away. You really have to keep pumping out good quality content."
Read the full post: How much YouTube pays for a video with 100,000 views, according to a personal-finance creator
Roberto Blake — $21
Roberto Blake started posting videos to YouTube in 2009, sharing Photoshop tutorials and the best equipment for starting a channel.
Shortly after, his online business became his full-time career, and today he posts mostly business and tech-related videos to his channel, which now has 436,000 subscribers.
Blake earns money through brand sponsorships, affiliate marketing, ads in his videos, and business coaching. He has previously worked with brands like Samsung, PayPal, and HP on sponsorships.
Blake's YouTube videos about business and finance tend to earn him more money per view than others because they bring in an older audience demographic which is valuable to advertisers.
His channel maintains an average $21 CPM rate, he said in March.
Check out this post for how much money he earns per sponsorship on LinkedIn: How influencers can make money on LinkedIn, according to a creator who has worked with brands like Adobe and PayPal on sponsored posts
Jessica Stansberry — $31
Jessica Stansberry runs the YouTube channel "Hey Jessica" with 66,000 subscribers.
She began creating online courses and tutorials in graphic design in 2016, and used YouTube and her blog to push out free tutorials and content to customers.
Her content is created as a resource for beginning to mid-level business owners who are looking to grow their presence online and market their business using digital-marketing tactics, she said. Her channel has videos like how to start an email list, how to grow on YouTube, and how to use specific software related to online marketing.
Her YouTube channel earns about $31 for every 1,000 views, she told Business Insider in March.
Some of the popular videos on her channel have a higher CPM rate, around $80 per 1,000 views, she said.
"I definitely see spikes in CPM for specific videos based on my analytics and my own research," she said. "Most of the videos on my channel with a higher-than-normal CPM are tech or software-based tutorials which, I think, is due to the fact that the competitors of the software I'm teaching about within the video are specifically placing ads on those videos to target a hyper-warm audience for their own software."
Source
https://www.businessinsider.in/advertising/news/8-youtube-stars-share-how-much-money-they-get-paid-for-every-1000-views-on-average/articleshow/74737625.cms
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