The answer is not that simple, so let’s break it down. First, it’s important to note that YouTubers are able to leverage their following and make money off of a number of different streams of income. These include not just ad revenue, but brand deals, merchandise, live tours, and affiliate links.
This breakdown focuses primarily on the ad revenue made directly on YouTube. Before each video you watch on YouTube, there is usually a 15 or 30-second advertisement. A few minutes into the video, you’ll probably get another ad. This time, it’s a small banner at the bottom of the screen with a link. These are how YouTubers get paid directly within the platform, and the amount of money you get from these ads depends on a number of factors.
Here’s an example video about “How To Pose in Photos.” The video had 3,907,000 views. Pretty crazy right? The video made $1,275.99 from the 3,907,000 views on this video — a decent amount of money, but actually very low for YouTube. This video with 3 million views has earned less than some of other videos with 700,000 views.
Normally, you would expect a video with 3,000,000 views to make between $6,000-$15,000. there's even a video with 2,000,000 views made about $40,000.
On average, videos that have over 1,000,000 views have usually earned between $2,000-$5,000.
This particular video made so little because its viewers were mostly based outside of the United States, and the topic didn’t really garner any advertisers with a large budget.
This video also had more views from the United States and Canada, which typically means a higher CPM. This video had a playback based CPM of $11.06, which is much higher than the CPM from the first video, which averaged about $1.35.
Don’t forget that YouTube takes 45% though, so really that $11.06 CPM is $5.53. I’ve found the $4–6 CPM range to be pretty typical of most of videos. On average, videos that have over 1,000,000 views have usually earned between $2,000-$5,000.
While the amount you make on YouTube can vary greatly, I find it is most often in this $2,000-$5,000 range for 1,000,000 views. There are so many factors that go into how much a video can earn (viewer location, age, topic) — but all you really can control is the topic of your video.
