Every day, people watch 1 billion hours of video on YouTube. That’s about 5 billion videos watched per day. With figures like that, it should be easy to rack up 20K views for a video, right? The reality is that getting that many views to any piece of content is a real achievement.
But will that achievement pay off? How much does YouTube pay for 20K views? The answer is: it depends.
How much you earn for a video will depend on your niche, your audience’s location, the time of year you upload the video and other factors.
To get a better idea of how much you can earn with 20K views, let’s look at the average amount YouTube pays and how much a few real creators are making.
How Much Does YouTube Pay for 20K Views on Average?
Creators on YouTube make money through advertisements. They can make money in other ways, but this is how they get paid from YouTube directly.
YouTubers are paid on an RPM basis, which is essentially your rate per 1,000 views. It’s how much you get paid for every 1,000 views of your video.
The average RPM on YouTube is $5-$7. With this range in mind, we can estimate that 20K views can earn you:
- $100-$140
That’s a great start, especially since there’s a high chance that your video will continue to get more views over time and earn you more money in the coming weeks and months (maybe years) ahead.
But the question is: how does this estimate match up to real-world examples of earnings? Let’s find out by looking at real earnings from real people.
How Much YouTube Paid These 4 Creators for 20K Views
To get a real-world picture of how much you can make with 20K views, let’s see what real YouTubers are actually earning.
1. Franklin Emmanuel
Franklin Emmanuel has one goal – to help his viewers earn $1 million from the Internet. As you may have guessed, his channel is all about finance and how to achieve financial independence.
His videos cover everything from how to trade crypto with different platforms to making money with ecommerce sites and other side hustles.
Recently, Franklin shared a video on how much he earned for a video that got 25K views. Here’s what he made:
- $218.82
For this video, his RPM was $9.39. He also gained 1.4K subscribers and added 1.9K watch hours to his channel.
2. Daniel Chia Official
Daniel Chia is a saxophonist, educator and business owner, but most of his channel’s videos are focused on – you guessed it – his music. He shares covers of songs, videos of his performances and official music videos.
In a rare break from his usual content, Daniel shared how much he earned for one of his most popular videos at the time. That video had 23K views and was a cover of “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You.”
For that video, he earned:
- $8.69
That’s an RPM of $0.43, which is on the really low end for a YouTuber. Daniel does explain that his earnings are partly due to the fact that it’s a cover video. The copyright holder has a claim to the content (because it’s a cover and not an original song), which means that he has to split the revenue with the copyright holder.
If this was an original song, he could have potentially earned $17.38 for 23K views.
So, if you’re a musician and you plan to upload covers to YouTube, just be aware that you’ll have to split the revenue.
3. Physics Online
Physics Online is a YouTube channel that’s all about helping people understand physics. The UK-based channel has about 170K subscribers and has been around for a decade.
Over the lifetime of the channel, the team has uploaded over 1,000 videos and gained over 19 million views.
One video, The Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make A Level Physics,” has over 20K views. How much did YouTube pay for those views?
- ÂŁ15.26
The RPM for this video was just ÂŁ0.76, which is surprisingly low.
Generally, the education niche has a pretty low RPM, which explains his earnings. Since the goal of the channel is to help students, the earnings aren’t as important to the Physics Online team. However, if you’re thinking about entering into this niche, keep this caveat in mind.
4. Humphrey Yang
Humphrey Yang is a successful YouTuber with over 1.23 million subscribers. He’s a former financial advisor who previously worked in the gaming industry. His channel is a mix of personal finance, explainers, self-improvement and more.
Most of his content is focused on finance, which is one of the highest paying niches out there.
From time to time, Humphrey shares his YouTube earnings.
In this video, Humphrey talks about earnings for a video that actually had 96K views, which earned him $812.07. That’s an RPM of about $8.46.
We can use this RPM to estimate how much he would earn with just 20K views, which would be:
- $169.2
That’s an impressive amount, especially considering this was for a review on the Zynn app (a TikTok clone).
In that video, Humphrey also shares a little nugget of wisdom about earning income on YouTube. He estimates that if you want to make $1,000 a month with your channel, you need to aim for about 200K views, or about 6,500 views per day.
He reached that goal when he had 100-150 videos on his channel.
In other words – just keep going with your channel. Most people won’t start seeing real traction until they have 100+ videos on their channel.
Conclusion
Hitting 20K views on YouTube is a feat, especially when there are so many creators competing for attention and views. At this stage, your videos can earn you a decent amount, but you’ll want to keep going if you want your earnings to replace a full-time income. These YouTubers are inspiration that if you just stay consistent and continue to focus on creating great content, you will reach your goal.
