How Much YouTube Pays You For 1,000 Views In 2026

Once you get 4,000 hours of watch time and 1,000 subscribers, you can join what's called the YouTube Partner Program. And once you join this, YouTube will put ads on your videos and you'll get paid every single time someone views an ad on one of your videos. Now at this point, you're probably asking, Matt, how much will I get paid? Well, I personally run 12 different YouTube channels and I run a community of 6,000 other YouTubers, and here's what we found. The answer is that channels make anywhere from $1 $30 per 1,000 views. So for every 100,000 views, a channel can make anywhere from $100 to $3,000. And the average channel, based off of my research looking into this, in the middle of those two numbers, makes $15.50 per 1,000 views. That'd be $1,550 per 100,000 views. But based off of my personal experience running channels myself, most channels only make $5 to $10 per 1,000 views, and that would be $500 to $1,000 per 100,000 views. But it's not that simple. The thing is that different types of content can make different amounts of money per 1,000 views, and here's how you can potentially make more money per 1,000 views. So the way that we measure how much money a channel makes per 1,000 views is by a metric called CPM, or cost per milli. And if you want to get really scientific with it, it would be called RPM, or revenue per thousand views. But for the purpose of this video, I'm going to be using both terms interchangeably. And you see, different advertisers spend different amounts of money on YouTube. For example, Apple is one of the biggest advertisers on YouTube, so therefore they are likely going to be putting their ads on technology-related content. And that's why technology videos on average have a slightly higher CPM than most niches on YouTube. Now right here is a list of some of the highest CPM niches on YouTube. Feel free to screenshot this. They're not all the same CPM, but all of these in my experience, and with communicating with people running thousands of different channels, these types of content on average make more money per 1,000 views. But you don't just wanna compare how much money a channel can make per 1,000 views, you also wanna compare the amount of views that a channel could get. Because even though some niches are lower CPM or RPM, they can get more views, which in some cases would make up for that. These can be niches like scary videos, prank videos, general top 10 videos, and gaming videos depending on the game. And a secret for making more money per 1,000 views is to make videos longer than 8 minutes. And the reasoning for this is because if you make videos longer than 8 minutes, you're then allowed by YouTube to put multiple ad breaks throughout your video, and this can increase your CPMs by quite a bit. And I recommend putting your ads every few minutes so as not to interrupt your viewer experience, and then also put an ad at the beginning and end. And the way that you do this is you can go to your YouTube channel and then click Manage Videos right here, and then go to one of your videos that is longer than 8 minutes. For example, this video right here. And if I click it, then if we go on to the left-hand side and scroll down to this monetization icon, we can click that and then click Review Placement right here. Make sure monetization is on and you place ads during the video, mid-roll ads. These are the ads that are going to allow us to make a lot more money potentially per 1,000 views. And as you can see on this video right here, I've placed ads at 2 minutes, 6 minutes, 11 minutes, and 17 minutes, as opposed to just one ad being on the video like they would be by default if your video is shorter. That being said, don't just make videos for the sake of them being long make sure to fill your videos with extra value to make sure people keep watching so your videos still do well within the algorithm. And here's a list that came out a couple years ago about the top advertisers on YouTube, and these include companies like PayPal, Apple, Disney, Geico, Expedia, Liberty Mutual, Tax. And what this tells us is that the types of content that these companies are going to be putting ads on is likely going to be much higher in CPM, and higher than usual CPMs are going to be on niches of content where people generally have problems that they're willing to pay to solve because companies will invest in solving those problems. And the most prominent categories for this relate to health, wealth, relationships, travel, and technology, and then also entertainment like movies. And now here's how to calculate how much a channel could be making per month, and then I'll just straight up reveal to you how much this channel is actually making per month. So for the purpose of this example, we're gonna take a look at my channel Make Money Matt that you're watching this video on right here. If you install an extension called vidIQ, and I'll leave a link down below if you're interested in that, then you will be able to see this button on all YouTube channels to view the channel stats. And if we click this button right here, as you can see, this channel is pulling in 1.1 million views per month. And what we want to do is plug this number right here into a calculator and then divide it by 1,000. And the reason for doing that is we want to see how many thousand views per month that this channel is getting. So this channel is getting 1,000,000 views per month. So then from this number right here, we're going to multiply it by what we suspect the CPM for this niche to be. And since this is in the make money online niche, it's going to make more money than most channels because it's related to finance and money. So let's estimate the CPM to be $15 per 1,000 views. So we'll take that number multiplied by 15. Our estimate would be that this channel is making $16,000 per month. They might be asking, Matt, how much money is this channel actually making? Well, I'll actually hop into my YouTube Studio to show you how much this channel is really making, and this will help you get a better understanding of how much channels can make here. So if we hop on over to my analytics right here, as you can see, this channel is pulling in $22,000 per month. So it's making a little bit more than our estimated CPM was, and this is just a testament as to how much money that channels within niches similar to this can potentially make. But with making this video, I feel like I should let you in on a really big secret. This channel actually makes over $200 per 1,000 views. You might be saying, Matt, I don't believe you. I need proof of this. How in the world is that even possible? Well, this is by selling a digital product with my channel, doing sponsorships, and doing affiliate marketing. You see, I sell a course called Tube Mastery, which teaches people how to grow and succeed with faceless YouTube channels, and we make over $100,000 $10,000 per month just from this channel alone selling Tube Mastery. So make sure to consider selling something with your YouTube channel if you can, and the best niches that you can do that in are related to health, wealth, happiness, relationships, technology, and travel. Now let's take a look at a couple more YouTube channels and how much money they could potentially be making. Here's a channel called Magnets Media right here, which does these faceless YouTube videos about the backstories of different popular businesses. And if we look at vidIQ, they are getting 5.3 million views per month. And just a rough estimate, if we take 5,300,000 views per month, multiply that number by a reasonable CPM— we know business niches are typically a little bit higher than usual CPMs— we'll say $15. This channel is likely making more than $80,000 per month, which is absolutely crazy, especially given the fact they could be running multiple channels. This channel right here, World According to Briggs, produces these faceless videos related to travel all around the world. And this channel pulls in 6.8 million views per month. So if we take 6,800, multiply by a reasonable CPM, we'll say $10 per thousand views because it's likely going to be higher than normal since we saw that Expedia, which is related to travel, is one of the top advertisers on YouTube, which would mean this channel is pulling in $68,000 per month. That's more than a full-time income for a lot of people. And this channel right here is called Debt Busters. They only have 20,000 subscribers and they only pull in 60,000 views per month. Yet what if I were to tell you that this channel right here makes over $10,000 per month? And the reason I know that is because my student actually runs this channel and he showed me how much he's making from it. And the way he's able to make so much with so little views is by selling affiliate products. You see, he talks about some of the best AI video making software and tools within his videos, and then he makes sure to put an affiliate link to these AI tools in the descriptions of his videos. And boom, he makes over $10,000 a month doing that. And all 3 of these channels that I just shared with you are completely faceless YouTube channels. And the other channels that I run that got me play buttons just like this for getting over a million subscribers are also faceless YouTube channels. This is how I got my start with making money online, and I think it's one of the best work-from-home businesses that's out there. Feel free to check out this video right here, which is essentially a free course, goes over exactly how to make money on YouTube without making videos. This isn't just another video though. This reveals the best niches to do this in that I personally would do if I was starting a new faceless channel from scratch. It shows how to actually generate content within these niches, how to actually get a ton of views and make this worth it for you, and how to monetize to the next level. Couple secrets I've never shared publicly so you can potentially make as much money as possible. Honestly, make sure to check it out. I believe you'll get a ton of value. See you there.