A creator compares his two YouTube channels: one earned $323,000 from 285 million views in entertainment, while his educational channel made $699,000 from just 41 million views. Educational niches hit $1–$10 per 1,000 views versus entertainment's $0.04–$0.20. The real money comes from pairing videos with course sales or affiliate commissions.
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So how much has YouTube paid me for 300 million views? Now, quick disclaimer, even though I personally have made millions of dollars from YouTube, it's taken me over a decade to get to this point. So remember, YouTube is a long-term thing. So let's start with channel number 1, which paid me out $323,000 for 285 million views. Now, this channel is an entertainment audience in a very low CPM niche, and CPM is essentially how much money you make $0.04 per 1,000 views. And here's a list of low CPM niches just like the channel I just showed you. And these are niches or categories of content that I personally recommend avoiding. Now take a look at this second channel right here. This channel made $699,000 from just 41 million views. So how did this channel get way less views but make way more money? Well, it's because this channel is in a very high CPM niche. And here's a list of all of the highest CPM niches that I personally recommend getting into. So now let's take a look at some videos and I'll show you how to make way more from your YouTube videos than most people do on YouTube. And let's start with this entertainment video right here that got 30 million views and it made $35,000. Now this is a pretty short video. It's only a couple minutes long and that's part of the reason that the CPM is so low. And here's another entertainment video that got 8 million views that made $18,000. And this was a slightly longer video, but it was still in that low CPM niche. And now here's a 5-minute video on my high CPM CPM channel that made $27,000 from 3.1 million views. And here's a 30-minute video that got 1.8 million views that made $55,000 just from one YouTube video. Well, what if I were to tell you that this video right here has actually made way more than just $50,000? And so you might be saying, Matt, what's the secret for that video making way more and for how your videos can make way more money than 99% of people on YouTube? Well, the first part of the secret is doing education. Educational videos instead of just entertainment videos. And that's because almost all of these high CPM niches are educational. And most channels on YouTube make between $1 and $10 per 1,000 views. But what if I were to tell you that this channel right here makes over $100 per 1,000 views? And this channel has actually made over $10 million and it's gotten awards like this. And so what's the secret? Well, the secret is I sell a course from the channel. And this channel that you're watching right now started completely faceless, by the way. This video right here that made $55,000 from ad revenue sold the course at the end of it. And while I don't have exact tracking to tell you exactly how many courses that this video sold, I can tell you that this channel pulls in multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars per month because it's educational and because it sells something. And now if you don't wanna create a course or a digital product yourself, you can promote somebody else's course as an affiliate from websites like digistore24.com Or you can even promote somebody else's school community, which are basically communities that people pay monthly for. But you do have to first be a member of that community. Or you could even promote a software like my software, vidAI and TubeMagic, which pay out monthly recurring commissions for life as long as somebody stays subscribed. And now the third part of the secret to making more money per 1,000 views is to do longer videos. YouTube Shorts only pay $0.05 to $0.20 per 1,000 views. Compare that against making $2 to $20 per 1,000 views from long-form videos. Of course, this depends on the niche and everything, but as we discussed, you can make over $100 per 1,000 views, which would never be possible with Shorts. And the reason these videos make more is because longer videos can put more ad breaks, but only make videos longer if you can fill them with more value, whether it's educational or entertainment value, but I prefer education. At a very minimum, try to make your videos longer than 8 minutes because that's the minimum to be able to put multiple different ad breaks. And every now and then, do a super long video on your channel from 30 minutes to an hour long if you can. And now if you want to discover how I grew a YouTube business without ever showing my face and the best educational niches to do right now, as well as a secret that I've never shared publicly about how I consistently go viral on my channels, then feel free to check out this video right here and I will see you there.
