YouTube pay me HOW MUCH!? How choosing the right topics gives you an incredible CPM on Youtube
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When I turned on YouTube Adsense and got my first payout, I was shocked!
I have a teeny tiny channel - 3,750 subscribers on average over the last year to be precise…small but perfectly formed of course 😉
But YouTube pays me a shocking amount for such a little channel… why? I have a CRAZY high CPM.
What’s a CPM Paige 🙋♀️?!
Glad you asked!
CPM if you're unfamiliar is Youtube speak for the money 💰 YouTube earns on Ads run on the videos on their platform and it's calculated per thousand views.
YouTube takes a portion… (45% of the ad revenue) and pays out the remaining 55% to the creator of the content…
Moi!
So when I say CPM, think ad revenue per thousand views!
I actually didn't realize how crazy high my CPM was until I heard a beauty blogger talking about making like $2 or $4 per thousand views 😭, to which I thought "that must be a mistake" coz mine was sooo much higher…
But when I looked into it I quickly realized, what YouTube is paying me is NOT normal. I Googled the highest CPM topics on YouTube and even the example numbers were also lower than my CPM!
How the CPM averages in some of the highest performing topics break down…
(source: Tasty Edits)
Making Money Online CPM = $13.52
Affiliate marketing $22 = CPM
Digital Marketing $12.52 = CPM
Personal Finance $12 = CPM
Now this is versus topics like fitness or gaming videos which make a CPM of $1.40 - $1.60 !
My average CPM over the course of 2022 however is ... wait for it…
💰 $166.61!
That means for every thousand views of my videos, advertisers pay $166.61 #winning!!
How did I get such a great CPM?
Now let me explain why this is…
When I heard what normal CPM's were (essentially peanuts 🥜), a dollar, two dollars, 4 dollars, per thousand views I did some investigating.
It turns out, without any strategy at all, without any specific intention, I was hitting on the highest CPM topics on YouTube naturally.
As you probs know by now… (humor me - it’s important context!) I’m Paige, and in my day job I teach people how to be website designers, even if they have no past website building experience.
So that means I teach people about website building platforms and how to use them, specifically Squarespace, AND the business side of being a designer, how to find clients, onboard clients, price projects, etc.
I also love talking about content creation because that’s how I personally built my business and I discuss a little bit of finance as well coz I’m just personally passionate about the topic.
All of which are… very happily for me… massively high CPM topics.
After watching a few YouTube vidoes on high CPM YouTube topics I learned they were things like
E-Commerce
Online Business
Website hosting
Personal Finance/Investing
…which, I hit on naturally without any specific intention to hit on high CPM topics.
I’ve talked about these topics on my blog (hey there!!) for literally years before I moved over to YouTube and it was a fantastic surprise when I moved to YouTube and saw I could be super well paid for creating the same content, just in video format!
Now if you’re currently creating content on a topic on maybe a blog as well and are considering doing YouTube, I have one vital tip that will make sure you make the transition successfully…
Making videos takes WAY more time than writing blogs.
Like 4-5 times more if we’re being honest!
So before I made the switch to YouTube I had to make sure my content workflow was on point!
Make sure you check out this on how I use Asana to create an editorial calendar that has my content organized and structured so I never miss a publishing date!
And whilst you’re at it - make sure you’re on your content game by grabbing these free content creation outlines to help you streamline your content & never struggle for an idea again! 👇👇👇
Okay, now onto what you’ve been waiting for, the total that YouTube paid me in 2022…
Context, my average subscribers over the course of 2022 was 3,750 subs, which is really not a lot in YouTube land! My videos get typically a few hundred views each, some older ones have racked up thousands of views, my top most-watched video (also oldest & most cringe - watch it for lolz) having 30,000 views.
So how much did YouTube pay me with 3,700 subs and just a few hundred views per video?
Over $7,000!
Now I actually wanna show you something super interesting that is my comparison of last year's YouTube revenue to this year's YouTube revenue and CPMs, cuz they are quite different.
So this is 2022, again, average CPM $ 1 66, 62, and just over $7,000 for the year. However, if we go back to 2021… remember those days…
You'll see that my CPM was actually even higher 😮
$218.92 was my average CPM in 2021.
And my YouTube revenue was almost the same.
Now let me give you context in what was happening in these two years…
I had put up a few videos on YouTube back in the day, like years and years ago, just to go along with some blog posts, which I had been writing about Squarespace. And so this was mostly just like old content where I wasn't really posting anything on the channel it was just racking up views.
It had a super high CPM based off the fact that I was creating a ton of tutorials on Squarespace on the channel, so the CPM last year was higher - because it was pretty much only Squarespace videos!
Last year, in 2022 I created a bit more variety of content on the channel and so that changed the CPM.
What content earned the most?
Okay, so switching back to this past year, the other thing which I wanna show you is the top-earning content…
The video, which made the most for my channel 💰 ($1,531 in 2022 - thanks friend!!) was my Squarespace e-commerce tutorial video.
Followed by my oldest video and the most uncomfortable one... eek! The Squarespace tags n categories video is literally from 2017 and made me $451! (Don’t worry - I’ve made an updated version recently!!)
I also have a video comparing Squarespace, membership areas to Teachable, which along with a range of other Squarespace tutorials all did really well with their CRM.
I also have one on Asana and how I use it to organize my life in business, and of course Honeybook* (my secret weapon for incredible client communication!) That’s an affiliate link - get yourself 50% off your first year, my margarita fund thanks you kindly!
So basically a whole lot of tech tutorials are the things that are really making money on the platform!
Now. Interestingly though, that isn't the only thing earning Chez PB on the ‘tube, so I actually have a life update of why I moved to London. That one also did super well with an average CPM of $176.
I also had my video on 10 things I'm afraid to share with you achieve a CPM of $77 - not too shabby either!
What other factors influence CPM?
Of course, there are other factors that influence the CPM your channel can achieve… one of the interesting ones is gender - there are more men creating content on youtube, so as a gal you have a natural leg-up, as advertisers know that women buy more from women (and vice versa!)
Also… the location of your viewers counts too!
Super interesting… and I’ve been geeking out more about it, with this incredible book - The Youtube Formula - highly recommended if you want to dive more into all things Youtube!!
Now I should clarify, YouTube is one teeny tiny fraction of a revenue stream in my business.
Want to know the others?
Watch this video next as I detail each of my 7 income streams that make a total of $62,500/month.
