YouTube Earnings: Decoding How Much Views Really Pay
YouTube’s Partner Program serves as a primary revenue stream for influencers, enabling content creators to monetize their videos through advertisements. Google assesses numerous factors to determine ad placement and creator payouts, including video watch time, video length, and viewer demographics.
It’s worth remembering that YouTube creators with at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours are eligible for the Partner Program. Established YouTube influencers employ diverse strategies to boost their earnings. Some opt for mid-roll ads, while many avoid copyrighted music and profanity in their videos to prevent demonetization by YouTube.
Last year, we explored the earnings of YouTube content creators from videos and brand partnerships. Now, we’re delving into the estimated earnings of creators based on video views of 100,000, 1 million, and 150 million.
100,000 Views: $500 – $1,000
Natalie Barbu started her YouTube channel as a hobby eight years ago while in high school. Filming fashion and beauty videos at home after school, Barbu quickly began generating income from her content.
Currently boasting 257,000 subscribers, Barbu shares weekly vlogs documenting her daily life. With over 20 videos surpassing 100,000 views, she estimates these videos earn between $500 and $1,000. Video earnings fluctuate based on the number of ads included. Barbu recalls an older video with 100,000 views that earned only $100 due to having just a single advertisement.
Barbu notes that advertisers tend to pay more for informative, business-related videos compared to vlogs. Payouts also vary depending on CPM rates, seasonal periods, and advertising budgets.
1 Million Views: $2,000 – $40,000
Data shared by various content creators corroborates Natalie Barbu’s insights. Notably, not every video reaching 1 million views generates the same revenue. Figures from four influencers across different content niches reveal that a video with 1 million views can earn anywhere from $2,000 to $40,000.
Marina Magilko, with 1.7 million subscribers, reported earning $10,000 from a million-view video. Kevin David, with 844,000 subscribers, impressively earned $40,000. Austen Alexander, with a smaller subscriber base of 165,000, made $6,000, while Shelby Church, whose channel teenmakeuptips has 1.4 million subscribers, earns between $2,000 and $5,000 per million-view video.
150 Million Views: $97,000
Paul Kousky, who creates videos featuring toy guns on his PDK Films channel with 10.9 million subscribers, has one standout video: Nerf War: Tank Battle. This globally viral video, reaching 150 million views, generated $97,000 through AdSense.
Kousky mentioned that initially, 50% of the video’s viewership came from the United States. As the video went viral, the US viewership dropped to 5%, causing a decrease in CPM rates. Kousky believes that had the majority of viewers remained US-based, the video’s earnings would have been significantly higher.