How Much YouTube Paid Me For 10,000,000 Views

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How Much YouTube Paid Me For 10,000,000 Views

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Transcript
00:00Five years ago today, I started making videos on YouTube
00:03and the channel has just crossed $1 million in revenue
00:06just through YouTube ads alone.
00:08And if we look at my top performing video,
00:09it's gotten nearly 10 million views
00:11and it's brought in $191,000 in revenue.
00:14Now, this is an absolutely ridiculous amount of money
00:16to make on the internet.
00:17And so in this video,
00:18I wanna break down the revenue
00:19of my top five videos on YouTube.
00:21And we're gonna talk about some lessons
00:22I've learned along the way
00:23that you could potentially apply
00:24to your side hustles as well.
00:25We're also gonna break down
00:26how many views you need to get on YouTube
00:27to be able to make a living.
00:28And the flywheel economics of the platform
00:30that make it a particularly lucrative place
00:32to make content even today.
00:33Now, the first thing to keep in mind
00:34is this is very much of the long game.
00:36So I started making videos in June of 2017
00:38and you can see I was getting like five views,
00:4010 views, 20 views, 22 views, and so on.
00:43And revenue-wise, the channel did not make a single penny
00:46until nine months into my YouTube journey
00:48where I'd made around 85 videos at that point.
00:50Then the channel did start making money
00:52and you can see the numbers
00:52are fairly small in the early days.
00:54But then we start to get into interesting territory
00:56where each day the channel is making
00:57around about 80 to $120.
01:00And this was the equivalent to what I was making
01:01working as a junior doctor for 40 to 60 hours a week
01:04in the UK's National Health Service.
01:05And then around the three-year mark in 2020,
01:08the revenue of the channel starts going absolutely insane.
01:10And so the first lesson we can learn from all of this
01:12is that stuff really takes a large amount of time.
01:14Every good thing in life benefits from compounding.
01:16The more effort you put into it
01:17over a very long period of time,
01:19the more likely it is to return results.
01:20And when it comes to things like making content
01:22or building a business,
01:23there are so many people that try it out for a little bit,
01:26but they don't stick with it long enough
01:27to actually see the results that come over time.
01:28All right, for lesson number two,
01:29let's have a look at this video
01:31that I uploaded on the 31st of May, 2018.
01:33So about nine months into my YouTube journey,
01:35this was around video number 85.
01:37And somehow this video completely exploded onto the scene.
01:40And this was the video that out of anything I've ever made
01:42has most changed the trajectory of my YouTube channel
01:44and therefore changed my life completely.
01:46But crucially, this was video number 85.
01:48There was no guarantee at all
01:50that this video was gonna be successful.
01:51And so lesson number two is that genuinely,
01:52it just takes one single piece of content
01:55to change your life.
01:56You just never know which one that's gonna be.
01:58Had I quit YouTube at 84 videos,
02:00not making any penny up until that point,
02:02thinking, oh, this thing isn't working,
02:04I would not have made the 85th video
02:05that kind of really made all the difference.
02:07All right, let's now move on
02:08to the highest performing video I've ever made.
02:09And that is this one,
02:109 Passive Income Ideas,
02:11which has had 9.8 million views
02:13and has created a revenue of $191,258.
02:18And this video continues to be the gift
02:19that keeps on giving,
02:20bringing in 17,000 views in the last 48 hours alone.
02:23And there's two points that I wanna make from this video.
02:25The first one is that we can kind of treat
02:27these sorts of YouTube videos as digital assets.
02:29They are investments.
02:31An investment is something that puts money in our pocket.
02:33And so the fact that I've put the time
02:34and the effort into making this video
02:36and sticking it on YouTube
02:37means that this video is generating money,
02:39it's generating passive income,
02:40it is making me money even when I'm sleeping,
02:42which is kind of the definition of an investment.
02:43Now, when we think of investment,
02:44we often think of things like real estate
02:46or crypto and stuff.
02:47But like right now,
02:48my crypto has lost me a lot of money
02:51and real estate investments I've made
02:52in properties and stuff
02:53have generated way less than $191,258.
02:56In fact, there's a property I bought in Manchester
02:58in the North of the UK
02:59where I paid 300,000 pounds for that property.
03:02And every year it makes around 10,000.
03:04This one video alone has already returned way more
03:07than that investment in Manchester
03:08is gonna return for the next 20 or 30 years.
03:10And for me, I found that this attitude
03:12of treating YouTube videos
03:13and stuff that I create on the internet
03:15as if it's an investment,
03:16it kind of helps me get into the right mindset
03:18because the thing with an investment
03:19is that you wouldn't expect it
03:20to have a return immediately.
03:21You'd expect it to have a return over the long-term.
03:24And so to be honest,
03:24the more I think of it in these terms,
03:26the less I'm attached to the individual outcomes
03:28of a video.
03:29How well did it do in its first 24 hours?
03:31I don't really care.
03:32What I care is that these videos are investment vehicles.
03:34They're hopefully providing value to people
03:35on the internet over the long-term
03:37and I'm hopefully making money from them as well
03:38over the long-term.
03:39The second lesson that we can learn
03:40from this video in particular
03:41is that this video nearly didn't happen.
03:43It was meant to be just a plug
03:44for a Skillshare class that I was making
03:45about productivity or something.
03:47But then at the last minute,
03:48instead of sort of half-assing it
03:49and being like, hey, this is just a class,
03:51check it out, link below.
03:52We decided that actually, you know what?
03:54This is a video on the YouTube channel.
03:55Let's take it seriously.
03:56It's worth investing a little bit more time
03:58into planning this video
03:59and trying to make it actually good.
04:00And I often think back to this video
04:01because if I'm ever in the mood,
04:02and this happens quite often,
04:03where I'm thinking,
04:04oh, I don't want to put effort into this thing.
04:06Oh, I kind of want to half-ass it.
04:07I'll think back to this video and think,
04:08no, sometimes putting in just that extra 15 minutes
04:11of effort, like really, really, really pays off
04:13in a way that you would not have ever predicted.
04:15All right, the second highest performing video
04:17on the channel is this one,
04:18How to Invest for Beginners.
04:19This video has had 5.2 million views
04:21since it was published in October, 2020,
04:23and it's generated $87,200 of revenue.
04:26And the lesson for this video is that this video
04:28did not do well at all in the first few days
04:30to weeks after it was published.
04:32It was squarely the worst performing video
04:34we'd had in the previous 10.
04:35And so when I put this video out,
04:36I was feeling a bit like, oh, you know,
04:37I spent so long making this video.
04:39I put so much effort into it.
04:40It was a 29 minute long video.
04:41It took ages to edit.
04:42And I was a little bit down in the dumps
04:43that the video didn't perform particularly well.
04:45But then somehow over time,
04:47it's just continued to grow and grow.
04:48And now it's one of the highest performing videos
04:50on the channel.
04:51And the lesson I've learned from this
04:51is to not worry about things that are outside of my control.
04:54Like it's within my control,
04:55how much time and effort and energy
04:57I'm putting into this video,
04:58but it's completely outside of my control
04:59how well this video is performing.
05:01And the lesson I've learned over time
05:02is that this applies to everything in life,
05:03not just YouTube videos as well.
05:05Like we always have those anxieties and fears and concerns
05:07about things that are fundamentally outside of our control.
05:09But if we can figure out where that line is,
05:11you know, what are the things in my control?
05:12What are the things outside of it?
05:13And I'm choosing to not worry
05:15about the things outside of my control.
05:16This is a standard concept from stoicism
05:18or the serenity prayer.
05:19Then it just makes life a lot less stressful
05:21and a lot more fun.
05:21By the way, quick thing.
05:22If you wanna get a slice of some of this YouTuber pie money
05:25and you've been thinking of starting
05:26or levelling up a YouTube channel,
05:27you should definitely check out
05:28my completely free seven day email course.
05:31It's called the Part-Time YouTuber Crash Course.
05:32And it's a series of emails
05:33that I'll send you every day for seven days
05:35that teach you loads of stuff
05:36about how to be a part-time YouTuber.
05:37And people have said,
05:38I can't believe this is a free email course.
05:40It's just that valuable.
05:41So if you wanna check that out,
05:42hit the link in the video description.
05:43Anyway, let's get on with the video.
05:44All right, the third highest grossing video
05:45on the channel in revenue is this one,
05:47how to build a website in 2022.
05:48This video has had 866,000 views,
05:51but has generated an enormous $42,000 in revenue.
05:54And if we look at the RPM, the revenue per thousand views,
05:56it's $48.68, which is absolutely absurd.
06:00And it's by far the highest RPM video on the channel.
06:02Now again, this was a bit of a rogue one.
06:04I almost didn't make this video
06:05because it's sort of a little bit outside of my wheelhouse.
06:07I'm meant to be a productivity YouTube channel,
06:09but I'm making a video about how to make a website.
06:11But the mental model for this video,
06:13the thing I was thinking about at the time was,
06:14will this video be useful to at least one person out there?
06:17I knew how to make websites.
06:18I thought I had a reasonable amount of expertise in that,
06:20and I wanted to teach the topic.
06:22And even though it was outside of my niche,
06:23I decided that, you know what,
06:24hopefully this video will be helpful to at least one person.
06:26Therefore, let's make the video.
06:27And again, we can see from the graph
06:28that I absolutely tanked in the initial few weeks
06:31following the launch of the video.
06:32But then very nicely over time,
06:33it just grew and grew and grew and grew and grew.
06:35And somehow the niche of making websites,
06:38probably because companies like Squarespace and Wix
06:40and all these other website builders
06:41are trying to run ads on it
06:42and competing against each other,
06:44all of these companies have so much money
06:46and therefore the ad prices go higher and higher.
06:48And that's why the RPM for this video is so absurdly high
06:51and why this video,
06:51even though it doesn't have anywhere near as many views
06:54as some of the other ones,
06:55it's generated $42,132 in revenue.
06:58We've already talked about video four,
06:59so let's move on to video number five,
07:01which is how I type really fast, 156 words per minute.
07:04Again, I had no idea that this video would do well.
07:06I was just like, you know what,
07:07I'm gonna teach something that I know.
07:08I know how to type fast.
07:09I've been working on this skill for the last 10 years.
07:12So let me just make a video breaking down the tips
07:13and tricks that I've learned along the way.
07:15And again, completely out of the blue,
07:16completely inexplicably,
07:17this video somehow found an audience and went viral
07:20to the point that it's got 8.2 million views
07:22and has generated $25,143 in revenue.
07:25Now the RPM of this video is really low,
07:27the revenue per thousand views,
07:28it's 15 times lower than the revenue of the website video.
07:31And the lesson here is that even though this video
07:33did really well by the numbers,
07:34had I put the same amount of time and effort
07:36into making videos of a different genre,
07:38then maybe those videos would have made even more money.
07:40I'm not saying I should have done,
07:42I don't really care about revenue
07:43as like the primary metric I'm driving for with the channel,
07:45I'd much rather make videos
07:46about things I'm passionate about.
07:48But the lesson here is for any kind of business owner
07:49or anyone starting a side hustle,
07:51often the choice of industry that you're gonna be in
07:54or the choice of niche or the choice of audience
07:56that you're targeting is gonna be a huge multiplier
07:59or not on the amount of money
08:00you can make from that business.
08:01For example, I know a bunch of students
08:02who like setting up businesses that help other students,
08:05but students famously don't have money.
08:06And so it's really hard to make a sustainable business
08:09that targets students
08:10because they're not gonna have the money
08:11to pay you for anything.
08:12Whereas it's way easier making a business
08:13that targets people who own businesses
08:15because people who own businesses make lots of money
08:17and want to spend money to make more money and save time.
08:19And so targeting businesses with money,
08:21with your product is generally a way easier
08:23to make a decent living on the side.
08:25Speaking of making a living,
08:26let's now talk about how many views you actually need
08:28on YouTube to get to different levels of wealth.
08:30Now, firstly, this depends on a few different things
08:32like what geography you're in, where you're from,
08:34what your niche is,
08:35whether you have monetization sources
08:37outside of just AdSense.
08:38But to keep things simple,
08:39we're just gonna use AdSense,
08:40just those five to 30 second ads
08:42that play before YouTube videos
08:44as the primary source of monetization.
08:46All right, let's start with question number one.
08:47How many views do you need on YouTube
08:48to make some pocket money?
08:49Now here, in order to make any money on YouTube at all,
08:52you have to join the YouTube Partner Program,
08:53which requires 1000 subscribers
08:56and 4000 hours of watch time.
08:57So how much effort do you have to put in
08:59to get to the point
09:00where you're even making this pocket money?
09:01And so for me, that was 52 videos and six months
09:04to get to my first 1000 subscribers.
09:06I asked on Twitter,
09:07how many people who are monetized,
09:08how long did it take you?
09:09And MKBHD, Marques Brownlee replied,
09:11Marques, if you're watching this,
09:12hit me up for a collab.
09:13Marques replied saying it took him five months
09:15and 200 videos to get to that 1000 subscribers.
09:18For some people it takes less,
09:19for some people it takes more.
09:20But if we look at the average stats provided by TubeBuddy,
09:23link down below if you wanna check it out,
09:24the average stats show that the average channel
09:26with 1000 subscribers has 152 videos.
09:29So it takes quite a lot of ramp up time
09:32to get to the point
09:32where YouTube is making any money at all.
09:34You can get lucky beforehand,
09:36or if your videos are really good
09:37and they find an audience somehow,
09:38you might be able to get monetized
09:39from video number one and two.
09:40But generally the thing I always say
09:42is that you have to sign up to doing this
09:43for at least two years
09:45if you wanna expect any kind of return out of it.
09:47Now, once you're monetized,
09:48again, depending on your niche and CPM and stuff,
09:49on average, you probably need somewhere
09:51in the region of 15,000 views a month
09:54to be making somewhere between five and $10 a day
09:57as kind of pocket money.
09:58Now, this might sound like quite a lot of views
10:00because if you're thinking,
10:01okay, I need to publish a video every week,
10:02it means that each of those videos
10:03need to get 4,000 views.
10:05But the nice thing about YouTube
10:06is that every single time you make a video,
10:07it's not just the initial views that that video gets.
10:10That video gets added to your library,
10:12your back catalog,
10:13and people might well watch that video
10:15years after you've actually uploaded it.
10:17And so really, the more of these videos you can put out,
10:19the more you're building up the back catalog.
10:20And now each of these little views,
10:21even if you're getting, I don't know,
10:2310 views a day on each of your videos,
10:25if you have 300 videos,
10:26you're getting 3,000 views a day
10:27across all of your videos,
10:28which is pretty solid.
10:29And this contributes to the flywheel economies of YouTube.
10:32Every time you make a video,
10:33A, that's making you revenue
10:34from the people watching that video,
10:36but secondly, if that person is a new viewer,
10:37then they're getting introduced
10:38to the rest of your content.
10:39And then they might watch even more of your videos,
10:41which generates you even more revenue,
10:42and now they're gonna become even more of a fan,
10:44so they might even then decide to buy your products
10:46if you sell things.
10:47And on top of that,
10:48the algorithm is then learning
10:49what sort of viewer preferences
10:50are liking your videos on your channel.
10:52And so the more data it gets
10:53from certain types of viewers,
10:54the more it can push out that video
10:55to other types of viewers,
10:57and you create this sort of flywheel
10:58where it takes ages to get going in the first place
11:00because it takes a lot of effort
11:01to put these videos out there.
11:03But once it's going,
11:04then it's genuinely quite hard to stop,
11:06and it almost keeps going by itself.
11:08All right, let's move on to the next level of wealth,
11:09which is how many views you need on YouTube
11:11to be able to go part-time on your job.
11:13So for example,
11:14let's say you're making $35,000 a year in your day job.
11:17That means that if you're working five days a week,
11:19then for every day a week that you're working,
11:21you're making $7,000 a year.
11:23So if you wanna cut down from five days a week
11:24to, for example, four days a week,
11:26then you've gotta figure out a way
11:27of making up that extra $7,000 a year.
11:29And that means that every month,
11:30you need to be making around $600 from YouTube.
11:33If we look at my stats,
11:34from basically the instant that I monetized my channel
11:36after about a month,
11:37so a year into making YouTube videos,
11:39I was now making $1,665 a month,
11:42and I was making roundabout that amount
11:43for the next six months.
11:44So if I wanted to,
11:45and I was allowed to,
11:47I could have gone part-time in my job as a junior doctor
11:49and gone maybe down to three days a week,
11:51which would have been pretty fun.
11:52And so if we say that, for example,
11:53the average RPM revenue per thousand views
11:55is around about $3,
11:56then to make $600 a month
11:58to be able to cut down to four days a week,
11:59you would need 200,000 views every month.
12:01Again, obviously this varies depending on your niche.
12:04If you're, for example,
12:05a personal finance or investing or crypto type YouTuber,
12:08then your RPMs,
12:09your niche is way more profitable.
12:10And so you need really a lot fewer views than that
12:13to be able to go part-time on your job.
12:15And in fact,
12:16if I was starting a YouTube channel like right now,
12:17and I didn't have my current one,
12:19I'd probably make a personal finance,
12:20investing and crypto themed channel,
12:22because for the same amount of effort,
12:24I just have to get like 10 times less views
12:26to get the same amount of money,
12:27which would be pretty good.
12:28All right, so how much money do you need
12:29to be able to quit your job?
12:30To answer that, let's have a look at a few examples.
12:32So we've got this example of Silicon Valley girl.
12:34Now she's in a highly profitable niche,
12:36essentially targeting tech focused people in the West,
12:39which is a highly profitable niche.
12:40And when her channel was getting 500,000 views a month,
12:43she was making around $3,900 in monthly revenue.
12:46That's around $47,000 a year,
12:48which is enough to quit your job.
12:50That's a pretty good living
12:51for someone going full-time on YouTube, for example.
12:53Now Marina also has a 1.5 million subscriber channel
12:56in Russian,
12:56and this is a lower RPM channel because it's Russia,
12:59and there are fewer companies advertising
13:00in for Russian speaking viewers
13:02than there are for English speaking viewers in the West.
13:03Now, if that channel gets 2.3 million views a month,
13:06that corresponds to around $4,000 a month,
13:08which is around $50,000 a year,
13:10which is enough to quit your job.
13:11And I think using Marina as an example is interesting
13:13because she's got these three separate channels.
13:15She's got exactly the same skills on YouTube,
13:17but one channel is 16 times more profitable
13:20than another channel,
13:21purely because of the niche that she's picked.
13:22Now, in my case, it was about two and a bit years
13:25into the journey of making YouTube videos
13:26when I probably made 100 and something YouTube videos
13:29that my channel was making enough money
13:30for me to quit my job.
13:31That is, around about $4,000 a month.
13:32And we can see here that that corresponds
13:34to 1.6 million views, 1.9, 2 million views,
13:372 million views, 2 million views.
13:38Somewhere between 1.5 to 2 million views per month
13:41was what was corresponding to enough revenue
13:43for me to quit my job.
13:43Now, my channel has a lower RPM than it would
13:45if I was just a tech channel or just a finance channel,
13:47but because I'm making lots of videos about books
13:49and about productivity and about student stuff,
13:51that stuff tends to have lower RPMs
13:53because those people tend not to have that much money.
13:55And also because I have a decent chunk of my viewers
13:58that are from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
14:00countries like that.
14:01My homeboys, those countries also have
14:02about 10 times lower ad rates than they do
14:04in the UK or the US or Canada.
14:06All right, so how many views do you need
14:07on YouTube to become rich?
14:09Well, obviously that massively depends
14:10on your definition of rich.
14:12I certainly felt rich when my channel
14:14was making over $100,000 a year.
14:16That was when I was like, oh my fricking God,
14:18this is absolutely insane.
14:19And that happened around the time
14:20when we were getting somewhere between
14:22three and 5 million views per month.
14:24That was corresponding to 100,000 a month
14:26just in AdSense revenue.
14:27But because then two years into the journey,
14:28I started building other streams of revenue
14:30around the business.
14:31Like it wasn't just AdSense that was contributing
14:33to the revenue of this channel.
14:34And I made a bunch of videos breaking down
14:36all the different revenue streams
14:37and how AdSense is only like 20% of the pie.
14:39And one of the mistakes that I noticed
14:40YouTubers and creators in general make today
14:42is that in a way they don't treat their thing
14:44like a business.
14:45They treat it like a creative outlet, which is fine.
14:47But businesses have been trying to figure this stuff out
14:49for absolutely decades, if not hundreds of years.
14:51And there's a lot of stuff that we can learn
14:53from the world of business
14:54about how to appropriately monetize our YouTube channels
14:57or our Instagram pages or our TikTok channels
14:59and how to turn those into sustainable businesses
15:00where we're potentially even hiring people
15:02and being able to delegate the stuff
15:03that we don't wanna do.
15:04And the creators that start thinking like entrepreneurs,
15:07we've come up with a word for it in our team.
15:08We call them a creatorpreneurs.
15:09And if you're interested in learning more about that,
15:11we've got this five-day completely free email crash course,
15:14the creatorpreneur crash course,
15:15where if you click the link in the video description,
15:17you can give us your email.
15:18And then every day for the next five days,
15:19I will send you an email.
15:20I won't actually personally send it.
15:22It's automated, but it's like really good content.
15:24Every day for the next five days,
15:25it'll send you an email with like a bunch of information
15:27and resources and stuff
15:28around how you can also level up your creative side hustle
15:31and start thinking more like an entrepreneur.
15:33We've had responses
15:33just to that completely free email sequence
15:35from people saying,
15:36oh my God, I can't believe this is free.
15:37I would have paid money for this thing.
15:39Alternatively, if you're not yet at the point
15:40where you're leveling up your creative side hustle
15:42and you haven't maybe gotten started,
15:43you might like to check out, again,
15:44a completely free part-time YouTuber crash course,
15:47which is a seven-day email sequence
15:49where every day for seven days,
15:49I'll send you an email with like some information
15:51about how you can potentially get started on YouTube
15:53and start on this path to, I don't know,
15:55building an audience, making money, providing value,
15:57all that fun stuff.
15:58Anyway, if you enjoyed this video,
15:59you might like to check out this video over here,
16:00which is that nine passive income ideas video.
16:03So you'll see what it was about that video
16:04that made it go viral.
16:05And hopefully you'll also get nine ideas
16:07for passive income that you can apply to your life.
16:08So thank you so much for watching.
16:10Do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already,
16:11and I'll see you in the next video.
16:12Bye.