4 YouTube creators break down how much money they made from videos with 1 million views
- YouTube's Partner Program allows influencers to earn money off their YouTube channels by placing ads within videos.
- Google places these ads and pays a creator based on factors like a video's watch time, length, and viewer demographic.
- Business Insider spoke with four YouTube creators - Marina Mogilko, Kevin David, Austen Alexander, and Shelby Church - about how much each of them earned from videos with 1 million views.
- Sign up for Business Insider's influencer newsletter, Influencer Dashboard, to get more stories like this in your inbox.
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A video with 1 million YouTube views doesn't always make the same amount of money for a creator - in fact, how much the YouTuber earns can vary wildly.
How much an influencer earns from Google's AdSense program on a YouTube video depends on a number of factors, from the place in the video where viewers normally drop off, to the type of advertisers the video gets. Some top creators have ad placement strategies for earning the most money possible, and generally how much money is earned varies based on a video's watch time, length, and viewer demographic.
Business Insider spoke with four YouTube influencers with vastly different channels - Marina Mogilko, Kevin David, Austen Alexander, and Shelby Church - on how much they earned from videos with 1 million (or more) views.
Here's what they said:
Marina Mogilko - $10,000
Marina Mogilko has three YouTube channels: a language channel, lifestyle channel, and a business channel.
She told Business Insider that her business channel is more appealing to advertisers than her other two channels because of the type of content, and makes more per view in Google AdSense revenue.
Some YouTube creators will label their content as "educational" or "business" to raise their rates, she said, but in her experience, YouTube's algorithm is smart enough to know whether a video is educational or not.
Mogilko makes an average $10.73 per every 1,000 views on Silicon Valley Girl, her business channel, she told Business Insider. Her language channel Linguamarina makes an average of $4 per 1,000 views. Her third channel, the lifestyle one, makes even less than that, at $2.71 per 1,000 views.
She said her video titled "10 HIGH PAYING JOBS YOU CAN LEARN AND DO FROM HOME," on Linguamarina, with 1.7 million views, made $10,000 in AdSense revenue.
Read the full post here: A YouTube creator breaks down the ad revenue rates for each of her 3 channels, and why one is a lot higher
Kevin David - $40,000
Kevin David is a YouTube creator and entrepreneur with 800,000 subscribers.
His "Shopify Tutorial for Beginners" video, which required minimal production because he filmed it using the screen-record feature on his laptop, made over $40,000, according to a screenshot viewed by Business Insider.
David gets the ideas for his content by looking at the Google Ads Keyword Planner to see how often people are searching particular phrases, and looking at other combinations of video topics and thumbnails that have been successful in view count, he told Business Insider.
He said he made his Shopify tutorial video while staying in a cheap hostel in Australia, with no camera or equipment. But his videos make such a high rate from AdSense because he focuses on business topics, which are often more appealing to advertisers.
Read the full post here: A YouTube creator explains how he made nearly $50,000 in ad revenue from one video, without millions of subscribers
Austen Alexander - $6,000
Austen Alexander - a YouTube influencer with 135,000 subscribers and an active-duty sailor for the US Navy - told Business Insider that a video with roughly 1 million views earns him about $6,000 in Google AdSense revenue.
Alexander started his channel in 2016, and now he posts videos like "A Day in the Life of an Enlisted US Sailor," (800,000 views) and "Ms. Bikini Olympia Attempts the US Navy Physical Test" (3.6 million views).
Alexander increases his videos' watch time (how long a viewer watches a video for) by building up the anticipation at the start of a video, he said. He enables every ad option on his videos, which include banner, preroll, and mid-roll ads. He also adds an "ad break" in the middle of a video, which he said has helped his earnings.
Read the full post here: A YouTube star and active-duty US Navy sailor shares how much money a video with 1 million views makes him
Shelby Church - between $2,000 and $5,000
For Shelby Church, a YouTuber who has 1.2 million subscribers, videos with about 1 million views have earned her between $2,000 and $5,000, she told Business Insider.
Church has 17 videos with over 1 million views. She typically earns most of her revenue from sponsored posts than from AdSense on YouTube, she said. Church mainly films tech review videos, with topics like which iPhone is worth the cost or the features of her Tesla Model 3.
Church generally makes her videos over 10 minutes long so that she can include more ads. On average, she includes four ads: one preroll ad before the video starts, two ads in the middle, and one at the end of the video.
Read the full post here: YouTube star Shelby Church breaks down how much money a video with 1 million views makes her
For more on the economics of an influencer career, according to YouTube and Instagram stars, check out these Business Insider Prime posts:
- YouTube creator Natalie Barbu breaks down how much money she earns from a video with 100,000 views: Natalie Barbu, a social-media influencer and YouTube creator with 227,000 subscribers, shared how much money she earns from a video with 100,000 views.
- An Instagram influencer with 166,000 followers breaks down how much money she earns from a sponsored post: Katy Bellotte, a YouTube creator and Instagram influencer, broke down how much she earns per sponsored Instagram post.
- A 20-year-old YouTube creator explains how she earned $23,000 in ad revenue from a single video: The Canadian YouTube creator Alyssa Kulani, who has 676,000 subscribers, broke down for Business Insider how she made $23,000 in ad revenue from a single YouTube video.
