How much money I made from 1M views- How to make money on Youtube

You probably saw YouTubers buying luxury cars, designer clothing, and expensive houses. And I'm pretty sure that you have at least for once wondered how much do these YouTubers make. So in this video, I'm gonna show you exact data of how much money I made from 1 million views, and I'm going to explain you guys how you can make money as well.

Hi guys, it's me, Ruri. Today we're going to talk about money. Money is a taboo topic in our society, I know that. However, talking about money and learning about finance is a very important thing in my opinion. A year ago, I watched Ali Abdaal's "How much money I make as a doctor YouTuber" and "How much money I make as a YouTuber" videos. It truly opened my eyes, and it really helped me, so I hope this video will be helpful for you guys as well.

So let's get started. Here we have data from my video, which got 1 million views. This is the most popular video on my channel, which is titled "What is it like to be mixed." This is the video that blew up my channel; this is the video that changed my whole YouTube game. So this video got 1 million 20k views since it was published. Most of the time, when you look into other YouTubers’ data, people make around thousand to three thousand dollars approximately. However, this video made only five hundred dollars.

Don't get me wrong, five hundred dollars is a great amount of money; however, when you compare it to the other YouTubers making 1k to 3k dollars out of 1 million views, it is pretty low. And when you look at this video of mine, which is titled "How to learn Japanese," it got only 355k views. However, it made 578 dollars; it made more money than my 1 million view videos even though it has like one-third of the views of that viral video. Why is this happening? I'm gonna explain to you why.

When it comes to YouTube, it's not about views anymore. The amount of the views that you get is not really explaining how much money you make. There are so many factors that affect how much money you make, and I'm gonna break down every single thing about that. So when you look at this viral video, the video length is only seven minutes, and when you look into that Japanese video, it's 13 minutes.

What does it mean? So basically, in order to add mid-roll ads, which are the ads that you see in the middle of the video, your video needs to be longer than 8 minutes. Since this video is 7 minutes, it doesn't have any mid-roll ads. So you basically see only an ad before and after the video. However, this video is 13 minutes long, so I can add mid-roll ads.

When you go to the monetization section after you monetize your videos, you can manage the mid-roll ads, and you can add as much as you want. Maybe there is a limit that I don't know, but you can basically control your ads. So the length of the video is actually a very big factor when it comes to the revenue that you're making.

Another factor that affects how much money you make from that video is RPM. RPM basically means revenue per mille, so that is the exact amount of money you make from a thousand views. So when you look into this video, for every thousand views, I make only 49 cents, which is pretty low because the average RPM is about one dollar to four dollars. And when you look into the Japanese video, my RPM is about 1.66, which is four times higher than the other video.

So as you can see from the graph, my RPM is changing throughout the whole time. It was like 49 cents since it was published, but when we look to the last seven days, it was around like 73 cents. And when you look at this video, it was around like 1.66 cents; however, the last seven days, it was two point five dollars.

Why does RPM change? Let's talk about those. So since we learned about RPM—revenue per mille—now we can talk about the factors that affect RPM and the amount of money you make from a thousand views. So factor number one is the topic of your video. Basically, the topic that you choose for a video affects the amount of money you make.

If you choose a topic like real estate, finance, and technology, you can make money out of that video. Why is this happening? It’s simply because real estate or finance-related or technology-related companies that are running ads through the video have more money to burn. Since they have more money to burn, they pay much more for those Google ads running through YouTube.

That's why your RPM is higher compared to other topics of the video. For example, this video is about finance, so the RPM of the video is probably gonna be higher than other topics of my video, like books or productivity. Because when it comes to topics like books, the book publishing companies don’t have that much money compared to like banks or real estate agents or something.

So the RPM of the video is, of course, gonna be lower than topics like this video. If you want to make real good money, then going for a topic like technology, finance, or real estate is gonna make your RPM much higher, and you can make much more money than YouTubers who have like millions and millions of views.

In 2021, the amount of the views doesn’t describe anything. The thing that describes is your RPM. You can have much less view than those bigger YouTubers; however, you can make much more money than those. For example, Graham Stephan has a finance-related channel, and he breaks down his revenue, and his RPM is so high, like 10 or something. So he makes 10 times more money than me.

So if you want to start a YouTube channel, consider those three topics: real estate, finance, and technology. Another factor that affects your RPM is your watch time. If your viewers are watching your video for a longer period of time, then of course your RPM is gonna be higher because they’re more likely to watch an ad.

And if you have more YouTube Premium membership subscribers, then you'll gain more. I personally think like watching 5 to 25 seconds of ads here and there is such a waste of time, so I’m a YouTube Premium member, and my whole family is in YouTube Premium as well. You can make more money from YouTube Premium subscribers, so encouraging your subscribers to join YouTube Premium is also another great way to make your RPM higher.

Another fact that affects your RPM is the age of your viewers. If they're older, then you can make more money because they have more money to spend on those things, and they’re more likely to collect those ads and buy things.

So the last factor that affects your RPM is geography. Some countries have higher RPM than other countries, so if it's a developed country like the U.S. or Japan or something, it has a higher RPM than countries that are developing or undeveloped. So basically, it's another factor that affects your RPM.

Since we talked about what affects RPM, let's talk about how much money you should expect from 1 million views. Another factor that affected my viral video is that I wasn't able to turn on the monetization for half of the video because at that time my channel wasn't monetized. In 2021, you need to have a thousand subscribers and four thousand watch hours in order to monetize your channel, and reaching that point is very difficult. My channel went viral in a couple of months, and I was able to do that; however, this is like my fifth channel.

On my first channel, I was probably only making like a cent or so. I think I made only like five dollars out of like 16 videos, but at that time, I was pretty happy about that because, as Ali always says, "Journey before destination." So enjoying the process is the most important thing when it comes to YouTube.

However, if you are serious about getting started on YouTube, you're probably curious about how much money you can make. The average RPM is about one dollar to four dollars; if you can choose a topic like finance, real estate, and technology, it can go up to ten dollars. However, expecting ten dollars at the beginning is not a realistic way to do it. So let’s say your RPM is about 1.5 to 2 dollars, and the average views of your subscribers is the average views that YouTubers get.

For example, I have 180k subscribers, so 36k is the view amount that I should probably get from my videos. When you look at my average view ratio, it's currently about like 50k to 80k, so my videos are much higher than the expected rate. You can multiply that with RPM, and you can figure out how much money I roughly make.

However, when it comes to YouTubers, it's not the only way that people make money. For example, when it comes to Ali, he says that only 10 percent of his revenue comes from the YouTube AdSense. So when it comes to my channel, we also make money from sponsorships and from affiliates. The links that I put in my description below are affiliate links, so when you buy something from that link, I get a commission that depends on the product.

However, I usually get around like 3 to 5 percent commission, and every single month, I make like a little amount of money from those affiliates. The more people click your links and buy things, the better it is for you. Another factor is the sponsorships. I can't share the sponsorship deal because it's illegal, however, the thing that I can say is that a chunk of the money that you make comes from sponsorships.

Relying on a single source of income is not stable at all. Also, another really great plan for the long term: currently, I only have YouTube and sponsorships. However, I’m thinking about expanding my YouTube game a bit more, like creating Skillshare classes, maybe starting a podcast and stuff, so that I can expand my revenue and so that I don’t rely on a single source of income.

So yeah, that was it for today. I hope you guys learned a new thing from this video, and I hope you're now able to guess how much money YouTubers are making. I hope you like this video, and I would like to know down in the comments below how much did you guess YouTubers can make from 1 million views. Because I made an Instagram poll, and most of the people voted around like 1k up to 10k.

So let me know in the comments down below, and I’ll see you in my next video. Bye!