This post was originally published in Marina Mogilko's newsletter, where you can learn more about starting a lucrative YouTube career.
When I interviewed Graham Stephan last year, he shared that he made $500,000 on YouTube in a single month. That was a record for him. His revenue for a regular month is a tad lower, though, around $250,000 to $350,000 – which is still more than most creators make.
A large portion of Stephan's revenue is from Google Adsense. Here's the full breakdown:
Read More: Starting a YouTube Career - 7 Steps to Monetize Your Passion
Stephan has more than 3 million subscribers on his main channel, where he talks about real estate and financial investing. At some points in 2020 and 2021, he was getting nearly 13 million monthly views.
My channel Linguamarina generates 4-5 million views a month, but I am not even close to $100,000 in revenue. My monthly check from that channel is $10,000.
Why is there a huge gap in AdSense revenue despite both of us getting millions of views? Most of it has to do with CPMs, or cost per millie. A CPM is the "price" advertisers pay per 1,000 YouTube views. Depending on the video topic, a CPM can be as low as 20 cents or as high as $50.
Views aren’t the only metric affecting your AdSense income. First of all, not all views qualify because certain topics aren't suitable for advertisers. At the start of the pandemic, if you used the term “COVID” or “coronavirus” in your video, you got demonetized right away. And generally, if you talk about controversial things (guns, war, and drugs), you won’t make much AdSense revenue.
Read More: Google AdSense 101 - How to Benefit from Ad Revenue on YouTube
Second, there's a rumor that “get rich quick” courses are one of the most generous advertisers on the platform. These courses cost around $400, sometimes even more. The net profits are very high because the classes are mostly pre-recorded.
Course producers could invest 90% of their revenue into ads and still break even. That means creators with suitable videos for finance-driven advertisers can make lots of money.
This mostly applies to creators who talk about:
Other advertisers that pay high CPMs have customers with a high lifetime value. These advertisers could be brokers, banks, and credit card issuers.
This explains why guys like Stephan, Kevin Paffrath of Meet Kevin, and Andrei Jikh have such high CPMs and sometimes make 10 times more than creators with equivalent views. They're making videos for high-value industries.
I make videos about business and investing on my second channel, Silicon Valley Girl. Sometimes my CPM goes as high as $50 per 1,000 views. I never get those numbers on my language learning channel.
On YouTube, you get paid because a specific audience finds your content useful. And the more that audience is able to spend online, the more you get paid as a creator. YouTube takes 45% of all ad revenue, but the remaining 55% goes to you.
These two parameters affect your revenue the most:
Of course, there is more to it. A viewer's age and their individual interests are important factors.
Using the two parameters above, we've created a table showing video topics and their CPMs. The numbers vary from channel to channel because factors like age and viewer interest do make a difference.
As you can see, there are seven lucrative YouTube topics. Their CPMs range from $14-$21.
Here's my advice. The CPMs for these topics are high, but don't post videos for the sole purpose of making money. Focus on bringing as much value to the viewer as you can. You’ll figure out how to monetize your channel along the way. If your niche happens to be one of the lucrative topics above, all the better.
Marina is a YouTube creator with 5 million followers across three channels: Lingumarina, Silicon Valley Girl, and Marina Mogilko. She is the co-founder of LinguaTrip and Fluent.Express, a school for YouTube creators.
