How Much Does YouTube Pay For 100k Views? (Realistically)

Affiliate Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links that I get a kickback from.

You’re getting views but you’re not monetized yet?

And you want to know how much YouTube income you would have earned.

Or maybe you’re just trying to estimate how much someone else is making?

Then you’ve come to the right place.

I’ve been creating content for over a year trying to learn how to do YouTube.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through how much money someone can earn from this side hustle with different amounts of views.

I will also answer some of the most frequently asked questions and debunk common misconceptions about YouTube ad revenue.

How much does YouTube pay for 100k views?

Between $300 and $2,000

If your CPM is within the average, you’re looking at an RPM in the range of $3 to $20.

So for 100k views on YouTube, you would earn between $300 and $2000.

Here’s how much I made from YouTube after 1 year.

Get a free Notion template with the tutorial for the game of YouTube

🚀 10+ Notion pages about how to play the YouTube game

⚙️ List of tools & gear for YouTubers

🧑‍⚖️ How to make your first video and get your channel off the ground

💰 Detailed guide about finding your niche & making money

How much can you earn per month on YouTube with 1k, 5k, 10k, 50k, 100k, 200k, 500k, 1M, 2M, 5M views?

As you can see the amount of money that you can earn from 1000 views all the way up to 1M views varies a lot.

This is a rough estimate of how much you can expect to make on YouTube if you get 1000 – 5M views.

The low end represents the niches with the lowest CPM whilst the high end represents the ones with the highest CPM.

Of course, there are exceptions to everything.

Understanding CPM vs. RPM?

CPM (cost per mille) is the amount of money advertisers pay YouTube to place their ad on your video.

RPM (revenue per mille) is the amount of money you get after YouTube takes its cut.

If your RPM is a lot lower than your CPM that could mean that most of your viewers have ad-block and don’t see ads served to them.

That’s because CPM determines how much advertisers pay for 1000 monetized views.

And RPM is how much you make for 1000 views regardless if they’re monetized or not.

That means if you get 1000 views but only 100 of those viewers got served an ad then you’ll earn ad revenue from 0nly those 100 viewers.

How much do YouTubers make in different niches?

I’ve looked around on the r/youtubers subreddit to see how much YouTubers make in different niches.

Here are some interesting comments I found in the subreddit:

If you want to see a rough estimate of how much other YouTubers earn you can use Social Blade.

Social Blade is a website where you can enter a channel’s name and it’ll show you all the publicly available details about that channel.

This includes daily views, subscribers, and most importantly estimated daily earnings.

What determines your CPM?

There are a lot of different factors that dictate how much money you can earn on YouTube:

Your audience’s location
Your channel niche
Length of your video
Your video topic
Whether your channel is monetized or not
The season of the year
The advertisers that buy ads from YouTube
Channel perks
How long the viewer watches the ad

This means that we can only estimate how much money YouTube pays for 100k views. Every channel will have a different number and will not necessarily fall into this range.

Get a free Notion template with the tutorial for the game of YouTube

🚀 10+ Notion pages about how to play the YouTube game

⚙️ List of tools & gear for YouTubers

🧑‍⚖️ How to make your first video and get your channel off the ground

💰 Detailed guide about finding your niche & making money

How to get more views on YouTube?

We can do two things you can do to make more money on YouTube:

Increase RPM
Get more views

Let’s focus on the latter which should bring much better results in terms of revenue.

Here are the best things you can do to get more views on YouTube (based on my own experience):

1. Optimise your videos for SEO

One of the best ways to get more views on YouTube is to rank in YouTube search.

Unlike the browse features and YouTube suggested videos, YouTube search usually brings in consistent views over a long period of time.

You can optimize your videos for SEO by targeting high-search volume and low-competition keywords.

I use the VidIQ Chrome extension to do keyword research for my videos.

I’ve also made a separate, detailed list of the best (free and paid) YouTube SEO tools.

Try VidIQ for free.

2. Edit out silence in between words

The best way to get your videos recommended to new viewers by is to have a good CTR (click-through rate) on your thumbnails and great viewer retention.

Let’s focus on retention.

When editing your video don’t leave scient spaces in between sentences.

Try to cut out all the “fluff” and breaths in between.

This trick will make it so viewers don’t have to wait for you to say something next and it’ll feel like you’re not wasting their time.

P.S. If you’re interested I have a course on how I edit my YouTube videos.

3. Keep your video as short as it needs to be

If there’s something that you promised in the title or the thumbnail of the video get right to it!

Having a long intro can hurt your video.

New viewers don’t care who you are and they’re not going to subscribe or like the video because they got nothing in return.

So it’s better to ask for a like or a sub at the end once you’ve provided value for the viewer.

One more thing that you should keep in mind is that our attention spans are shrinking.

It used to be that YouTube encouraged creators to make 10-minute videos but now it’s down to 8.

That means that those creators that provide the most value to a viewer in the shortest amount of time usually come on top.

When making a video think about the viewer, what he or she wants to see, not what you want for them to want to see.

Make videos for people not for the algorithm.

If you do decide to make an intro and leave a captivating first impression you can do that with a cutting-edge Intro Maker. It’ll let you craft engaging videos that leave a lasting impact in just a few seconds.

4. Fix audio quality

It’s commonly said that audio is 50% of the video.

That means that I might have the best-looking video in the world but without good audio that video is as good as nothing.

The recording environment is one of the most overlooked things by beginners when it comes to recording good-quality audio.

Think about it, if I take my microphone and come out to a busy street then naturally the microphone will capture not only my voice but everything that’s going on around me.

You might say “Oh this is obvious” but what most fail to understand is that the street is an extreme example and the same logic can be applied to the room that you’re in.

If your room has a ticking clock, a buzzing refrigerator, an open window, or even a computer with loud fans it’s all going to be captured by the microphone.

And that’s not all.

When we speak the sound travels in all directions not only into the mic.

And if there are many open spaces or flat surfaces like walls, ceilings, and floors around me, the sound waves will bounce off of those surfaces and come straight back into the microphone.

P.S. I have a Skillshare class about how to make voice-over audio sound professional without expensive gear. You can take it for free with their 30-day free trial.

5. Show, don't tell

When talking about something in your video cut to the footage of that thing that you’re talking about.

In other words, use a-roll and b-roll.

In video production, a-roll is the main, primary footage (for example a talking headshot).

B-roll shots are supplemental footage.

The B-roll offers editors flexibility, and it is often combined with A-roll to support the narrative, intensify the dramatic tension, or better explain a point.

By using b-roll, in other words, showing not telling the viewer about something, you ensure that they don’t get bored and are engaged not only with their ears but also with their eyes.

The easiest way to get high-quality b-roll is to use stock footage.

My recommendation for getting high-quality stock videos is Envato Elements.

Switching up a-roll and b-roll makes it more likely that the viewers stay and that your video retention increases leading to more views!

What's the highest paying niche on YouTube?

When starting your own channel it’s very important to pick the right niche:

Something that you enjoy (so you can stick to it long-term)
Something that people want to watch
Something that will make money

Here’s an article showcasing which niches are the highest paid on YouTube:

What YouTube Videos Make The Most Money

Can you increase your RPM?

You can increase your RPM for new videos that you make but you can’t for old videos.

The way you can change how much you earn is by targeting a more competitive keyword (to advertisers).

You can find out how much advertisers pay for any keyphrase by going to Google keyword planner and typing it in the search bar.

Make sure to select all locations as your target location.

As you can see advertisers pay a lot more for their ads to be shown on videos about email marketing software compared to videos about Minecraft gameplay.

How to calculate your RPM?

You can calculate your RPM by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of video views and then multiplying by 1000. The formula can look something like this:

RPM = (Estimated earnings / Number of views) * 1000

Was this YouTube guide useful?

I hope this guide on how much YouTubers make from AdSense was useful.

But YouTubers not only make money from ads but also sponsorships, product placements, affiliate links, and merchandise sales.

So sometimes ad revenue might be the smaller slice of the pie.

If you’re serious about pursuing YouTube and want to learn more I recommend checking out this article about how to monetize your channel without AdSense.

And I’ll leave you with a few more cool resources:

Thanks for reading 👋!