I’ve been posting twice a week on my YouTube channel for 1 year.
In this blog post, I want to share the most interesting data and how much views and income I made from doing YouTube for 1 year.
YouTube Channel 1-Year Income Breakdown
In total this year my YouTube channel made 183.58€.
I think this is quite good considering that I wasn’t monetized for most of the year.
But there are many ways to make money without Adsense.
Let’s look at some general stats for my channel which should reveal more details and how I got to this point.
Later I’ll share how you could start earning money from YouTube faster than me by not repeating my mistakes.
Videos published:
In my first year, I posted 118 videos on my channel.
It ain’t much but it’s honest work.
102 of them are public and 16 I unlisted because they were terrible and I think I’m going to unlist more because of the cringe that eats up my body when I look at my old videos.
I also posted 13 Shorts (which were quite successful).
I wrote an entire guide on how to get more views on YouTube Shorts.
All the videos got me 1.5 thousand subscribers in the first year.
How long did it take to get monetized:
It didn’t take the whole year to get monetized and start earning money.
It took me 323,000 views, 109 videos, and 11 shorts to get monetized after the first 10.5 months of starting my YouTube channel.
So if we average everything out, I was uploading one video every 3 days for 10.5 months before earning any money from YouTube.
The first YouTube monetization requirement that I hit was 4k hours of watch time and then after a month the 1000 subscriber milestone.
The review process and getting accepted into the monetization program took around a week.
I started earning ad revenue from YouTube only in the last 2 months of the year.
What if I was monetized?
How much would I have made?
The total views that I got this year from long-form videos were 402.2K and seeing that I earn an average of 1.4 euros for every 1000 views if I was monetized for the whole year I would have earned approximately 563.08 euros for the whole year.
Which is like a PS5.
Not bad.
Average video length:
The average length of all my videos this year was 3 minutes and 48 seconds.
I made a total of 6 hours and 27 minutes of video content in total on YouTube.
I’ve also made four Skillshare courses this year which could count toward the total hours of content that I produced.
Most viewed video:
My most viewed video this year was a quick tutorial with 179,000 views.
It gave me 2,5 thousand hours of watch time of the needed 4K for the monetization requirement and it earned me 69 euros.
Nice.
P.S. I made this free Notion template with everything I know about starting and growing a YouTube channel from scratch. I hope you’ll like it.
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My Hourly Rate Being a YouTuber
All this data from the first year of running my channel got me thinking and then I tried to calculate my hourly wage on YouTube.
It takes me around 13 – 18 hours to make 5 minutes of video.
That means that my hourly rate for making YouTube videos this year was approximately 0.15 euro cents per hour which is still higher than an hourly wage in Malawi according to Wikipedia.
Not great, but as my channel grows that number will definitely increase.
I just had to pay my ignorance debt because I had no idea what I was doing.
It’s very hard to grow a channel to the first 1000 subscribers. From there it gets easier.
Tools I Used to Get My Channel Discovered
The strategy I used, in the beginning, was trying to make more educational or how-to videos.
I applied the blue ocean strategy.
I thought this was genius since I had to compete with a lot fewer people for a search term than compete with everyone on the entire platform if I’m making the video for youtube’s homepage (or browse features).
I used a Chrome extension called Vidiq for keyword research.
I recommend it.
I think it’s a very good tool for new YouTubers especially.
Here’s my VidIQ review.
Try VidIQ for free.
Go to Vidiq -> click on keywords -> type in any keyword you are thinking of making a video about.
VidIQ will show you how competitive that keyword is and how many people search for that phrase per month through YouTube.
I thought if there are 20 000 people searching that phrase up and I manage to get 10% of that, then that’s 2K views every month on one video.
In reality, it’s pretty hard to rank a video and the keyword scores are not always accurate.
This extension also shows related keywords.
It’s great for finding ideas for other videos or improving the description and title of any current video so it ranks for SEO better.
Audience Insights
Most people in my audience are 18–24 years old and from the US.
India takes second place.
And of course, the vast majority of viewers are male and unsubscribed to my channel.
According to YouTube analytics, most people find my channel through search and only 6,4% through browse features which are basically things you see on the home page.
That’s why doing keyword research before making a video is a great strategy for new YouTubers.
As a new YouTuber if you are not lucky you’re probably going to get most of your views through YouTube search.
In my case, the VidIQ extension helped me a lot in terms of finding search phrases to make videos about, but there’s another way to see what’s popular.
You can type the start of the sentence into YouTube and look at what it suggests after that.
Chances are a lot of people search for those top keywords and that’s why YouTube is suggesting them.
Biggest Mistakes When Growing My YouTube Channel
Of course, I made mistakes with the channel.
The first one was making videos on very different subjects because I’m still trying to explore what I like making videos about and so far I’ve landed on 3 major categories which I can’t really choose from:
- Computer productivity tips (like Windows vs Mac, or tips for Mac)
- How to make money online (like side hustle ideas or websites to make money online)
- Self-development, where I just distil ideas from other people I look up to and share what I learned.
The other mistake was making separate short videos about the same thing rather than one big video.
I think it might have hurt the channel since all those small videos were competing for the same viewer but if I combined them they would have been a lot more valuable.
But nevertheless, I’m very happy because I’ve achieved all the goals for the channel: I got monetized, stayed consistent, didn’t miss a single upload, and hopefully was able to improve the life of at least 1 person out there.
I took the first year to learn YouTube, editing, thumbnail design, and everything else that comes with being a content creator.
This year I learned a lot, especially when looking back at my old videos.
Best Habit for Someone Starting a YouTube Channel
Patience is the best habit to have when starting a new YouTube channel.
If you’re not patient enough there’s a very low chance that you’re going to grow a viral YouTube channel.
You can think of your channel as a large wheel.
It’s very hard to spin the wheel in the beginning but once you give it enough force it starts spinning and rolling on its own.
Then, only a little bit of force is required to keep the wheel spinning.
In the beginning, most videos get a few views.
A few hundred at most.
That’s why it’s very important to be patient and stick with making videos because the payoff is worth it in the end.
The longer you’re patient the more each video will spin the “YouTube wheel” and the more your channel will grow.
Resources to Grow Your YouTube Channel This Year
At the end of the day, what makes your channel grow is making videos that people want to watch.
Here are a few killer resources to help you make the best videos possible in every niche: