How to increase YouTube Revenue by Optimizing RPM and CPM ?

My gaming video, which had 1 million views, actually made only $70. My crypto video also made $70, but with much fewer views. 

In this article, I’m going to explain to you how you can increase youtube revenue by optimising your CPM and RPM Rates and also what factors determine if your RPM is going to be low or high. Because it’s very simple, it’s not that hard, and there are only three factors that decide how high your RPM is going to be, or your CPM.

How RPM works?

RPM is earnings per thousand views, and it solely depends on what type of ads are showing on the video.

For example, ads that are about investing, crypto exchanges, legal services are extremely expensive ads, so you’re making more money.

If your ads are about Doritos or some type of food delivery or anything like that, your ads are not that expensive, so you’re making much less money.

How to optimize CPM/RPM to increase YouTube Revenue?

There are three factors that determine how high your RPM is going to be, and I’m going to explain to you how you can increase all three factors to reach the maximum RPM possible. This will ultimately help you increase your youtube earnings.

Country and Age of your viewers

The reason why my gaming video with 1 million views in Serbian language has made only $70, which is extremely bad, is because it is watched by kids and also watched in a country which has low buying power or GDP.

So it is what, my audience are kids in a very poor country, and there are no expensive ads that want kids from a poor country. And that’s the reason why I had such a terrible RPM and why I earned so little.

On the other side, my crypto video, which has much fewer views, earned the same amount of money because my audience was crypto lovers who invest their money, who are an expensive audience, who are older than the kids who watch gaming videos, and also are from different countries. So, country and the age of your viewer determine your RPM in a big way, and it’s probably the most important factor.

So, what you should do if you want to increase your RPM is to make videos for the countries that have a high GDP. For example, the United States, Canada, Norway, Australia. 

There are also many more, but these are some of the richest countries. So, you will get the richest ads if your viewers are from those countries.

If your videos are mostly gaming, entertainment for kids, for teenagers who don’t have money to actually click on the ad and purchase something because that’s the way you are getting paid on YouTube by showing the ads and actually cost per click, you will also not get fairly paid because you have a pretty low-quality audience for the advertisers.

Content Type

Type of content is the second most important factor if you want to increase your RPM and CPM and also increase your YouTube earnings.

Let me start with bad examples of content that have very low RPM: cute cat videos, best fails, sports videos, gaming (Fortnite or Roblox). 

They are all videos that don’t have expensive ads from them. Like, who is looking to place ads on Roblox or Fortnite videos or cute cat videos?

There are people and agencies who are putting their advertisements on those types of videos, but the problem is they know that this audience is very low quality and doesn’t have too much cash to purchase something from their ads. 

So, they are putting as low as possible cost per click, which means that your RPM is going to be very low.

Here are a few good examples of how to make money online: affiliate marketing, real estate investing, stocks, crypto. Those are all types of videos that are designed for the expensive audience which has money in the pocket, which are working audiences. 

For example, on affiliate marketing videos, there are going to be affiliate agencies that are going to advertise and put a lot of money into.

Real estate sellers are going to put as much money as possible, real estate agencies onto that ad. For example, lawyer videos, as you probably know, lawyers are really expensive and they don’t mind putting as much money as possible into YouTube ads/videos. 

So, they can charge you 10x more than they paid in the ad. That’s the reason why they are succeeding so much.

Investing, of course, exchanges such as finance, Coinbase, eToro, whichever you want, are investing into their crypto audience because they need people who are going to register on their exchanges because they’re going to trade there, and they are going to make such great money from them. 

This is why they are fighting to get a better audience as possible with as much money in their pockets as possible. So, they will earn at the end.

The whole point is that crypto exchanges will target crypto lovers, not Fortnite kids or anything like that. So, everything from the finance niche, for example, carnage is also good. Everything that attracts rich people from the rich countries that are older. 

When they are older, they have more money because they are working. And, of course, kids are not working, and they don’t have too much money to spend. These are all audiences that will make you great RPM. So, make videos for that audience.

Watch Time and Video Duration

Last but not least, duration of the video and watch time are significantly increasing or decreasing your revenue and your RPM and CPM. So, Let me explain.

YouTube is fighting for the watch time. If you make good watch time, your videos are going to get more promoted by YouTube, and you’re going to get more views.

If you make a podcast which is long-form content, or a tutorial which is pretty long, or anything that is long in general and people need to watch through it to learn something, then you are going to get paid more because on longer content you can put as many ads as you want, and you are going to pay double, triple, or even five times than just creating a two or four-minute video.

This guy got 100 RPM on his traffic affiliate video, and this is a perfect example of why he has such a great RPM. He has a long video, a 40-minute long video, nice average watch time. 

It is a finance niche, earn money niche, so this is also good because he will have expensive ads and people who are watching his videos. So, country and age groups all are from USA, Canada, Australia.

Of course, there are some other third-world countries, but these are the most important that are watching his video, and they are also older. 

Of course, kids will not watch how to get into email marketing, affiliate marketing, how to get traffic, and stuff like that. So, this is why this guy has 100 RPM on his video.

At the end, you don’t need an extremely big amount of views. If your RPM is very good, you will earn pretty good money.