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How Much YouTube Paid Me For 10M Views

2022-07-22 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Ali Abdaal (channel) · recording, 16:17 · watch on YouTube

Topic: YouTube, writing online and creators (also: Business and entrepreneurship) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own numbers, His medical past, His own products discussed

Five years after starting, with $1 million from YouTube ads, Ali breaks down the revenue of his top videos, draws three lessons (play the long game, one video can change your life, the choice of niche multiplies income) and estimates how many monthly views it takes to make pocket money, go part-time, quit a job or feel rich.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Five years and $1 million in YouTube ad revenue

  • ★★★ Five years after he started making YouTube videos, Ali's channel has crossed $1 million in revenue from YouTube ads alone. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Lesson one: the long game

  • ★★ Ali started making YouTube videos in June 2017; the channel made no money until nine months in, when he had made around 85 videos. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Once monetised, Ali's channel made about $80 to $120 a day, the equivalent of what he earned as a junior doctor working 40 to 60 hours a week in the NHS. — 00:00:58 · NHS
  • ★★★ Ali's first lesson is that good things take a long time and benefit from compounding: many people try making content or a business for a while but do not stick with it long enough to see results. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — Lesson two: it just takes one video to change your life

  • ★★ A video Ali uploaded on 31 May 2018, about his 85th, exploded and has changed the trajectory of his channel, and so his life, more than anything else he has made. — 00:01:27

  • ★★★ Ali's second lesson is that a single piece of content can change your life and you never know which one: had he quit YouTube at 84 videos, he would not have made the 85th. — 00:01:27

    “it just takes one single piece of content to change your life”

  • ★★★ Ali's highest-performing video, Nine Passive Income Ideas, has had 9.8 million views and made $191,258 in revenue, and still brought 17,000 views in the last 48 hours. — 00:01:56 · passive income

00:02:07 — His highest-performing video, Nine Passive Income Ideas, as an investment

  • ★★★ Ali says YouTube videos can be treated as digital assets and investments: once made, a video generates passive income, making money even while he sleeps. — 00:02:26 · passive income
  • ★★ Ali says his crypto has currently lost him a lot of money. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Ali paid £300,000 for a property in Manchester that makes about 10,000 a year; the Nine Passive Income Ideas video alone has already returned more than that property will in the next 20 or 30 years. — 00:02:55 · passive income
  • ★★ Treating his videos as investments puts Ali in the right mindset: he expects a return over the long term, so he is less attached to how a video does in its first 24 hours. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ The Nine Passive Income Ideas video nearly did not happen: it was meant as a plug for a Skillshare class Ali was making, until at the last minute the team decided to take it seriously as a YouTube video. — 00:03:24 · Skillshare, passive income
  • ★★★ When tempted to half-ass something, Ali recalls the Nine Passive Income Ideas video: sometimes an extra 15 minutes of effort pays off in ways you would never have predicted. — 00:03:53 · passive income
  • ★★ Ali's second-highest-performing video, How to Invest for Beginners, published in October 2020, has had 5.2 million views and made $87,200, though at first it was the worst performer of the previous ten. — 00:03:53

00:04:15 — How to Invest for Beginners and not worrying about what is outside your control

  • ★★★ Ali's lesson from How to Invest for Beginners: effort is within your control but results are not, and choosing not to worry about what is outside your control, as in stoicism or the serenity prayer, makes life less stressful. — 00:04:52 · stoicism

00:05:21 — Part-Time YouTuber Crash Course plug

00:05:44 — How to Build a Website and its RPM

  • ★★ Ali's How to Build a Website video has made $42,132 from 866,000 views, at an RPM of $48.68, by far the highest RPM on his channel. — 00:05:50
  • ★★ Ali nearly skipped the website video as outside his productivity niche; his test was whether a video would be useful to at least one person, and he knew how to make websites. — 00:05:50
  • ★★ Ali thinks website-making videos earn so much because website builders such as Squarespace and Wix compete to advertise on them, driving ad prices up. (hedged) — 00:06:19

00:06:58 — How I Type Really Fast and its low RPM

  • ★★ Ali's video on how he types at 156 words per minute went viral with 8.2 million views but made only $25,143, an RPM 15 times lower than the website video's. — 00:07:18
  • ★★ Ali does not treat revenue as the main metric for his channel and would rather make videos about things he is passionate about. — 00:07:18

00:07:47 — Lesson three: your choice of industry can be a multiplier

  • ★★★ Ali's third lesson: for a business owner or side hustler, the choice of industry, niche or target audience is a huge multiplier on how much money the business can make. — 00:07:47
  • ★★★ Ali says businesses that target students struggle because students famously do not have the money to pay for anything, whereas a business that targets business owners, who spend money to make more money and save time, makes a decent living far more easily. — 00:07:47

00:08:16 — How many views you need to make pocket money

  • ★★ To make any money on YouTube you must join the YouTube Partner Program, which requires 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. — 00:08:45
  • ★★ Ali took 52 videos and six months to reach his first 1,000 subscribers. — 00:08:45
  • ★★ Asked by Ali on Twitter, Marques Brownlee replied that it took him five months and 200 videos to reach 1,000 subscribers. — 00:08:45 · Marques Brownlee, Twitter
  • ★★ According to TubeBuddy's average stats, the average channel with 1,000 subscribers has 152 videos. — 00:09:15
  • ★★★ Ali always says you have to sign up to YouTube for at least two years if you expect any return from it, though good videos can get lucky earlier. — 00:09:15
  • ★★★ Once monetised, Ali says, you probably need about 15,000 views a month to make $5 to $10 a day of pocket money, depending on niche and CPM. (hedged) — 00:09:44
  • ★★ Each video joins a creator's back catalogue and is watched for years: with 300 videos getting 10 views a day each, a channel gets 3,000 views a day. — 00:10:13
  • ★★ Ali describes YouTube as a flywheel: each video earns, introduces new viewers who watch more and may buy products, and teaches the algorithm; it takes ages to start but then almost keeps going by itself. — 00:10:42

00:11:08 — How many views you need to go part-time

  • ★★ About a month after monetising, a year into making videos, Ali was making 1,665 a month, and about that for the next six months. — 00:11:12
  • ★★ To earn the $600 a month that lets someone on $35,000 a year cut to a four-day week, Ali estimates that at an average RPM of about $3 you need 200,000 views a month. (hypothetical) — 00:11:41
  • ★★★ If Ali started a YouTube channel now without his current one, he would probably make a personal finance, investing and crypto channel, which needs about ten times fewer views for the same money. (hedged) — 00:12:10

00:12:27 — How many views you need to quit your job

  • ★★ When Silicon Valley Girl, a channel for tech-focused viewers in the West, got 500,000 views a month, it made about $3,900 a month, around $47,000 a year, enough to quit a job. — 00:12:39
  • ★★ Marina's 1.5-million-subscriber Russian-language channel has a lower RPM, since fewer companies advertise to Russian speakers: 2.3 million views a month make about $4,000. — 00:12:39
  • ★★ With the same YouTube skills, one of Marina's channels is 16 times more profitable than another purely because of its niche. — 00:13:08
  • ★★ About two and a bit years into YouTube, after 100-odd videos, Ali's channel made enough to quit his job, around $4,000 a month, at 1.5 to 2 million views a month. — 00:13:08
  • ★★ Ali's channel has a lower RPM because books, productivity and student content draw viewers with little money, and many of his viewers are in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where ad rates are about ten times lower than in the UK, US or Canada. — 00:13:37 · Pakistan

00:14:06 — How many views you need to become rich; treating a channel like a business

  • ★★ Ali felt rich when his channel made over $100,000 a year, at around 3 to 5 million views a month. — 00:14:07
  • ★★ Two years in, Ali began building other revenue streams, and AdSense is now only about 20% of his business's revenue. — 00:14:36
  • ★★★ Ali says a mistake creators make is treating their channel as a creative outlet rather than a business: they can learn from business how to monetise YouTube, Instagram or TikTok, build sustainable businesses, hire and delegate. — 00:14:36 · Instagram, TikTok

00:15:05 — Creatorpreneur and Part-Time YouTuber crash course plugs and sign-off

  • ★★ Ali's team calls creators who start thinking like entrepreneurs "creatorpreneurs". — 00:15:05

    “We call them creatorpreneurs.”

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked whether the revenue figures are after YouTube's 45% share, the channel confirms they are. — creator comment
  • ★★ Asked whether he would name a new personal finance channel after himself or a brand, Ali says he would use his real name, since people prefer to follow people rather than brands. — creator comment
  • ★★ Asked how YouTube income is taxed, Ali says it is very country-specific and promises to break it down in a future video. — creator comment
  • ★★ Asked whether he is financially free, Ali says it is complicated: the main thing is to figure out the point of "enough", which he has not quite figured out. — creator comment
  • ★ Told that James Jani reached a million subscribers with ten videos, Ali calls it an alternative approach to YouTube that can work too; they are friends and he loves James's approach. — creator comment
  • ★ Asked for more videos on studying for teenagers, Ali feels he has exhausted the subject. — creator comment
  • ★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked whether YouTube's policy forbids creators to talk about their YouTube earnings, the channel says YouTube is relaxed about it these days. — creator comment · YouTube

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: passive income · RPM · YouTube AdSense

Also: People: Marina Mogilko · Marques Brownlee

Projects: Creatorpreneur

Organizations: Instagram · NHS · Skillshare · TikTok · Twitter

Concepts: compounding · CPM · digital asset · flywheel · stoicism · watch time

Places: Bangladesh · Canada · India · Manchester · Pakistan

Products: Squarespace · TubeBuddy · Wix · YouTube Partner Program

Only in the description or credits: James Jani · Part-Time YouTuber Academy · personal brand

Also centred on RPM: How Much Money I Made as a YouTuber & Entrepreneur (2022)

Also centred on YouTube AdSense: How Much Money I Earn in a Week as a Doctor & YouTuber · How Much Money I Earn as a Doctor + YouTuber · How Much Money I Make as a YouTuber (2021)💰 · How Much Money I Made as a YouTuber & Entrepreneur (2022)

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