$448.52. That’s the total amount Adsense just showed for my November 2019 YouTube revenue. YouTube made a lot more off me but this is my cut of the profits (about 60%). They’re saying I’m making about $9.54 per thousand playbacks. Not great actually but a year ago, that figure was $5 so it is on the rise.
Why am I sharing this? Because I’ve long wanted to make YouTube a small portion of my spending. Meaning when I spend money on hobbies that I enjoy, fun things that shouldn’t have any return on them like travel, technology, motorcycling and car projects, I want to offset that spending with revenue from YouTube. It will never be my full time job. The YouTube revenue is an insignificant portion of my income but for 2019, having $4100 USD of extra income from YouTube is no small figure! It is taxable income sure but income nonetheless. An extra $40K over 10 years, enough to buy a regular car every 10 years, pay cash and drive it until it dies or to buy a new MacBook Pro every year or spend a few months on the road on my bike and eat ramen and camp. This is the first year I’ve ever felt like the income was really something substantial. I wanted to go over 2019’s numbers here for posterity and as a little minor pat on the back.
- $4088 Revenue for 2019 (as of 12/15 so at $10 a day, expect that to be around $4300 by end of year)
- Playback CPM is $7.50 (more on that later but this is actually pretty low which is not too surprising)
- 923,400 video plays that YouTube monetized on my behalf
- $110 from YouTube Premium users. These are the people who pay YouTube $10 a month to receive no ads and yet some of that money is passed on to creators.
- 70% of my revenue is from Skippable pre-roll video ads
- 17% from bumper ads
- And 7% of my revenue is from ads that are non-skippable (sorry)
Here is a screenshot of my monthly revenue. As you can see, it is still on the rise:
Here are my top-earning videos of the year:
This is where CPM really comes into play. I long felt (based on my channel) that you’ll earn about $1000USD for every 1 million views. LOL. How naive I was. Once I started getting an increased CPM things changed. Why the increase? First the diversity of the kind of videos I made but a larger audience meaning my viewers had more demographics and I became more interesting to advertisers. Remember they’re not buying ad space on my channel (not yet) but I’m in a few pools of certain demographics so ads get served up on my channel that happens to be similar to a few hundred other channels or has similar viewer demographics.
Back to CPM, look at how well the tech videos do compared to videos about my motorcycle. Due to motorcycle crashes, street racing and cursing in videos, a lot of motorcycle channels have very bad CPM because a lot of advertisers don’t want to buy ads on channels with motorcycles as the core subject matter. I make videos about a modified Golf R and motorcycles so for a long time, my CPM suffered. The tech videos do much better. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume the top tech YouTubers are getting $20 CPM with significantly higher monetized playbacks because advertisers are buying ads on their channels so someone with 5 million views on every single video at $20 CPM and 25% monetization (being generous) is making 10s of thousands of dollars per video. Pretty amazing. I do not have those kind of goals at all. No aspirations, I find that level of success on YouTube to be short-lived where these people have 10 years at most just like celebrities and then I spent my most productive years making YouTube videos instead of focusing on my career that is longer lasting. Just my opinion. Again though, this YouTube thing has always been for fun. As soon as it stops being fun, I’m done.
The CPM thing is why SocialBlade has such a wide range of earning estimates on each channel because they really don’t know where each creator falls. Their default CPM value is $2-$4 and mine is around $7.50 in 2019
Moving on, only 4.9% of my views were from subscribers. The majority (75%) of my views still originate from search & recommendations. I don’t do any “like and subscribe” BS and while I’d probably be making $2000 a month at this point if I did that, I don’t think that’s fair to my viewers because people who subscribed fro Golf R videos or Beer videos have no reason to subscribe now. Subscribing to my channel because of my snowblower review is not going to be a very satisfying subscription for you. My subscribed viewers spend 2 more minutes watching my videos. Their CPM contribution is higher than non-subscribed. The longer they view, the more money I make from ads. Non subscribed just want an answer to a query about how to install something so they scrub through the video to find that one bolt they’re stuck on. Subscribers hit play and strap in for almost 5 minutes before they turn it off (on average).
I’m 95.4% male on my viewership and men tend to watch videos 30 seconds longer than women.
57% of my viewers are over 35 years old. Surprisingly my largest demographic at 30% is the 25-34 year old crowd. Back to CPM, when my largest demo is over 35 year old men, I’m once again leaving money on the table but if you remove the money part of things, I have no complaints about the gender or age of my audience. They’re very representative of me as a person. I hang out with old dudes. That’s how I’ve always been so I’m okay with these figures. If 15 year old girls in South Korea love my channel, I’d have to seriously ponder why.
Speaking of geography, 2019 was made of United States being the biggest country with 34% of the watch time across all videos and 27.4% of views. Only Australia spent longer on average per video with US watching my videos on average of 3:33 each and. Australia at 3:34
Top countries were:
- US
- UK
- Canada
- Germany
- Australia
- netherlands
I’m happy with this figure.
Unfortunately, you all continue to let me down with 52% of total views being on smartphones. WTF guys. Luckily, only 40.6% of the total hours watched were on a smart phone. Also, smartphone users watched the lowest minutes per video at 2:52. Yeah, I too hate watching videos on a tiny screen. Seriously, I only do it like once a year? At most? Not sure the last time I watched a video on a phone. Stop doing that. Get a real computer. Every time you drop your phone on your face, think of me and go get your computer and watch the videos at a proper resolution.
30% of watch time came from computers followed by tablets at 15% and TV at 12.5%. TV viewers also watched the most per video at 5:34. If I can get people to subscribe and watch on their televisions, I’ll be rolling in dough and they’ll have a better experience. The videos are all shot in 4K, 60FPS. Seriously stop watching stuff on your phone.
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Now for the non-money stuff, I had 1.6 million video views in 2019, 74.3K watch hours and gained 1.9K subscribers
What did we learn? Well, I’m really thrilled with these numbers.
Another thing I could give in to in order to improve them would be developing a social presence beyond ADVRider and VWVortex. I promised myself in 2012 (can’t believe it’s been that long) that I would not use global social media properties anymore. I would only join places who took my money in exchange for an ad-free and tracking-free experience and support the companies who respected my privacy. YouTube is one of those massive properties and while I don’t have an AdamRides Twitter or Instagram account, I do participate in YouTube. Not a day goes by that this does not bother me. Once an alternative comes along, I will gladly jump ship away from YouTube.
Thanks for following along this journey so far. Lifetime YouTube Revenue (since 2005) is $10,544. I think I actually became monetized around 2006 and lifetime CPM is $6.76 with 2.7 million total playbacks. When you think 2019 had 1.6 million, that goes to show just how banner this year was from views & revenue. Finally, my top earning 5 Youtube videos of all time were all from the last 2 years. Nice work!
Thanks for your support!