The mathematics of how much YouTube pays vloggers is complicated.
There is however a way to get a rough estimate of the amount YouTube will pay you for different types of content.
Key Takeaways
- YouTube cares about the kind of audience you have.
- The type of channel you run determines the kind of audience you get.
- Therefore, different types of channels (genres) make different amounts of money for the same number of views.
- The higher the number of views for any channel, the better.
- Finance vlogs seem to make the most amount of money.
- In Kenya, partnering with brands is the best way to earn as a vlogger.
Get views then get paid
The basics of earning on YouTube are simple – you make videos, you get views, then YouTube pays you for those views.
YouTube is owned by Google and is therefore part of their AdSense advertisement platforms.
AdSense, in simple terms, receives payment from companies that want to advertise, looks for YouTube channels (or other platforms like blogs) whose audiences are likely to buy the company’s products, and displays the adverts to those audiences.
The content creator behind the channel then gets paid.
The relationship between the type of channel (content creator), YouTube revenue, and AdSense revenue
Here’s an even better explanation in an example of a beauty company and a makeup tutorial vlogger;
Company A wants to sell lipstick. It goes online, creates an AdSense account, and launches a campaign. (Or the campaign is created by a marketing agency on behalf of company A).
Vlogger A does tutorials on make-up and she has 20,000 subscribers on YouTube with an average of 15,000 views per video. She has an audience interested in makeup.
Google will take the contents of the advert (video clip) and show it to people interested in makeup items. Those people are followers of Vlogger A.
An advert will therefore play on Vlogger’s A videos and she will get paid for it.
How does YouTube calculate how much to pay each vlogger?
YouTube considers the following:
Number of views
The total number of view your videos gets. The higher the better.
Audience
The quality of your audience.
Quality is calculated by age, gender, the device they are using, location, and other similar factors and it eventually shows the purchasing power of the audience.
This is why YouTubers/vloggers in the US are likely to earn more than those in Kenya.
Genre of channel
The type of content you are creating e.g., fashion, tech, finance, farming, etc. Generally, as the earnings breakdown below shows – channels dealing with finance seem to have higher earnings.
Note – the number of subscribers does not matter.
The views you get are what matters. Subscribers are just to make sure when you post a video, there are people ready to view the videos once they are uploaded.
Earnings breakdown of some YouTube channels
YouTube pays in dollars per 1,000 views (Also called CPM). (For example, $2 per 1,000 views).
Also, before you can earn with YouTube you need to have at least 1,000 subscribers and a total of 4,000 watch hours within 12 months.
CPM can also vary per video based on topics covered by a vlogger.
The following calculation assumes that YouTube will show ads on all your videos (this may not be the case) hence monetizing all of your views.
| YouTube Channel Name | YouTube Channel Genre | YouTube Video Genre | Total Views on YouTube | Total earnings in dollars | Earnings per 1,000 views in dollars |
| Kenyan YouTubers | |||||
| Wabosha Maxine | Beauty/Lifestyle | Beauty | 1,700,000 | 706.37 | 0.41 |
| Michelle Anyango | Hair | Hair | 300,000 | 300 | 1 |
| Over Twenty Five | Lifestyle | Lifestyle | 360,000 | 179.23 | 0.49 |
| International YouTubers | |||||
| Jimmy Tries World | Tech | Finance | 713,800 | 5,857 | 8.20 |
| Jimmy Tries World | Tech | Tech | 35,400 | 83.76 | 2.36 |
| Jimmy Tries World | Tech | All videos combined | 4,465,144 | 13,225.63 | 2.96 |
| Amanda Monroe | Lifestyle | All videos combined | 619,900 | 3,990.80 | 6.40 |
| Cathrin Manning | Finance/Earning online | All videos combined | 13.300 | 126.17 | 9.48 |
| Odi productions | Finance/earning online | Total videos for a month | 334,035 | 8,445.14 | 25.28 |
| MattCS | Gaming | All videos combined | 3,000,000 | 1,683.25 | 0.56 |
| Shelby Church | Tech and Lifestyle | Finance | 1,600,000 | 6,629.97 | 4.14 |
| Gillian Perkins | Creator/startup focused | All videos combined | 9,500,000 | 65,579.85 | 6.90 |
The table clearly shows breakdowns of earnings from videos and channels from other people.
You can therefore approximate how much you may earn directly through AdSense based on the kind of content you choose to create.
Other revenue sources for Kenyan YouTubers/vloggers
AdSense is part of the income that local vloggers get.
In fact, very few Kenyan vloggers rely on AdSense earnings from YouTube because they are too little.
The best and most popular way is partnerships with brands. This means the vlogger is paid to create content that will help a brand market its products.
This happens when the vlogger already has a larger following across most of their social media channels and not just YouTube.
