YouTUBE CPM is really low says the data


Written on April 17, 2008 – 4:16 pm | by admin

Trying to make a living by producing and posting video content on YouTube? It might be a while before the big fat paycheck that you are hoping for comes in the mail. Recent data of Google payouts for YouTube producers show that advertising on the video site cannot manage more than $1 CPM. This CPM is very low compared to text advertising. Essentially, you video has to receive many million views before it actually generates some revenue and even then, the revenue isn’t anything to write home about. Let’s look at one example as reported on Silicon Alley Insider.

Break a Leg’s Yuri Baranovsky said he’d collected $1,600 for more than 2 million views on YouTube. So if that means $800 for a million views (which it doesn’t exactly, but just to get an idea), user partners have been responsible for 1.25 billion paid views so far.

And yes, Break a Leg is a decent quality video involving many actors. Even if over time the video is seen another two million times, it is not likely that it will generate enough revenue to seriously compensate any of the people involved. User generated video content is not easy to monetize. This content has very little value. Silicon Alley Insider further reports on the estimated CPM for video content on YouTube.

As SAI’s Vas Sridharan reports, YouTube proudly reported that it has shelled out…ONE MIIIIIILLLLLLLION DOLLARS…to producer partners in the past four months. The producer of one video, the 2-million-view smash hit “Break a Leg,” got a check for $1,600–which equates to a net $0.80 CPM.

What can we learn from this? First, it is a good thing that Google owns YouTube because the latter will continue to barely pay the bills until a better way to monetize all that user generated content is found. This brings me to my second point. There is lots of room for some entrepreneurs to come up with a way to monetize user generated video content and make it big. Will this person be you?

Lastly, I want to say, don’t give up on your blogs because they still are the best way to make money online from textual user generated content. Of course, there is also affiliate marketing but that is an entirely different revenue stream.

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