YouTubers earn, on average, $18 RPM, but creators are earning even more in the most profitable YouTube niches. How much are they earning? If you’re Joshua Mayo and make over $613,000 in a single year, it’s a lot more.
In today’s world, YouTube creates credibility and trust for viewers and allows creators to connect with audiences like never before.
But the smartest creators are turning their audiences into business leads and earning millions of dollars. Even without additional revenue, many are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars just off of AdSense.
However, for many new YouTubers, the biggest challenge is choosing a niche that’s profitable and has room for growth with content creation.
To help you on your journey to building a profitable channel, we’re going to share a list of the top niches and a few creators who have made life-changing money from their YouTube channels.
What are the Most Profitable YouTube Niches?
YouTube is a golden opportunity to get your voice heard and potentially make money. A lot of creators never find the success of someone like Mr. Beast, but there are countless others making great money.
Some creators make a full-time living, and others make enough to buy themselves a few cups of coffee from Starbucks per month.
And then there are creators making millions. A lot goes into your earnings, including engagement, sponsorship and views. However, if you’re killing it in one of the most profitable YouTube niches, you’ll earn a higher RPM because advertisers pay a lot of money to show their ads on related videos.
What are the highest-paying niches on YouTube? Let’s find out.
1. Finance and Investing 💵
Money makes money. If you’re in the finance or investing niche, you can make a ton of money. Business Insider ran a report in September 2023 covering the income from 1,000 views on long-form videos.
YouTube Shorts will not make you this kind of money.
Earnings for 1,000 views averaged between $1.61 and $29.30. And what was the top earning niche? Finance and investing.
YouTuber Joshua Mayo’s RPM went from $6 to $29.30 in October 2022, and he posted an entire video discussing his income streams and how he made $613,960 during his first year on YouTube.
Some of Mayo’s top videos are: If you have your own insights into the finance and investing niche, nothing is stopping you from replicating the success that Joshua claims. Business gurus and insiders overlap somewhat with investing and finance advertisers, so it’s no surprise that you’ll make great money in this niche. How much? An average RPM of $18, but all true entrepreneurs are putting their skills to work by using YouTube as a lead generator. Smart business YouTubers are: If you have the traffic and visibility of someone like Ali Abdaal, you can earn massive amounts of money. You can see Ali’s income breakdown from early 2023 here, where he shows his RPM over the past six years/ He started with $0.85 RPMs and now makes $18 RPM. However, if you want to generate income from multiple streams like Ali does, he earned a total of $4.6 million from 12 streams of income in 2022. Ali did have costs of $2.5 million in 2022. Health and fitness is an industry with so much potential. You can publish videos that people worldwide watch, and you can create content on: McKinsey & Company released a report on the future of the market in 2021, finding that the market is valued at $1.5 trillion. YouTubers like MattDoesFitness share their revenue online, where we can see first-hand how much they earn from YouTube. Based on his video (watch it here) of how much he made in 2021, you’ll learn he had: Reports suggest that RPMs in this niche can range from $4 to $10+, but if you sell supplements, like Coach Greg, you’ll earn more (you can see his $3 million house and absurd cars on his channel). No one knows for sure how much Greg earns, but he states that it’s millions of dollars per year. Leads from YouTube and social media funnel traffic to his training, cookbook and supplement products. Real estate investing is a top way to build wealth, and YouTube channels focused on this hot topic are also building wealth. Ad revenue for real estate channels is impressive. One of the top creators in this niche, Graham Stephan, has over 4.5 million subscribers and earns an estimated $6 million a year with his YouTube channel. The cost-per-click (CPC) for this niche ranges from $4-$84. One surprisingly profitable niche is auto reviews. This niche is continually ranked among the top money-makers on YouTube. A top YouTuber in this niche, Doug DeMuro, earns a reported $1 million a year in ad revenue from this channel. While RPMs can vary, many creators report earning about $10-$12.50 on average. Digital marketing is another highly profitable niche on YouTube, especially if you’re covering topics like social media marketing or search engine optimization (SEO). Why? Because marketing is the key to success in business. Brands invest a lot of money into digital marketing, and advertisers pay top dollar for ad views. YouTuber Adam Erhart’s video Digital Marketing 101 (A Beginner’s Guide To Marketing) has over 700K views and has earned at least $3K. CPMs for this niche range from $1.60-$5+, and creators can earn over $3K per month in ad revenue. Along with ad revenue, creators can also make money by creating their own products and brand deals. The tutorials niche can be very profitable – if you focus on the right topics. In Roberto Blake’s video on the 8 most profitable niches, he says revenue from tutorials will almost never be less than double digits. According to him, RPMs can even go over $60. But a more normal RPM range is $15-$25 RPMs. The great thing about the tutorials niche is that this type of content is considered evergreen, which means it will make you money for years to come. Ad revenue is just one way to make money with this niche on YouTube. You can also expand your income with: Education overlaps slightly with tutorials, but you can teach anything from history to explaining the galaxy to your audience. You’ll find the RPM range is between $4 and $10. Of course, some outliers are making far more or less than this range. You need to be in an education subset that pays well, which means advertisers must be willing to pay for ad placement on your videos. If you’ve mastered anything, you can teach others it on YouTube. In many cases, the content will be evergreen and something that will generate passive income for years to come. Additional income streams worth pursuing in the education niche are: For example, let’s assume that you’re teaching others your native language. You can create a course and sell it to them or promote products from language-related companies and receive a commission. People love watching others travel and explore the world. And if you’re in the midst of traveling anyway, you might as well document the experience and share it with the world. You might even be able to fund your adventures with your earnings. RPMs in the travel niche are often $9 – $20. BUT! You’ll find that these RPM rates are for people traveling in the U.S. and Mexico. If your audience is in a low ad cost part of the world, you may make $1 – $4 RPM. The good news? Travel channels can lure in multiple sponsors, allow you to sell itineraries, team up with travel agencies or even opt to open a Patreon. Many travel vloggers make great money on Patreon and are less reliant on YouTube as a result. Beauty and fashion gurus can make a ton of money, but most will not. Jeffree Star makes tens of millions of dollars, and while YouTube may have led to fame, product sales are leading to the millions of dollars earned. What do most beauty YouTubers make? Between $2 and $10 is a fair RPM range for these types of channels. But even if you think that these RPMs are too low, the industry offers: Food is a passion, and if this is true for you, then you won’t mind the low-paying cooking niche. You can showcase your latest lunch or dinner, and people will watch it. So, how much does the niche pay? The food and cooking niche pays around $1 – $2 per 1,000 views. You’ll have to add other streams of income or focus on boosting your views to offset the low RPMs. Selecting a profitable niche comes down to: But we recommend choosing a niche that you love because that’s where the real money comes from. If you love the niche, you won’t mind creating content in it. Making money will feel like a bonus. Multiple factors will impact earning potential in every niche: If the economy is down and advertisers are not paying well for advertisements, it will lead to lower RPMs. A niche is an industry that you stay in or a topic that you cover in every video. For example, if you post dog training videos and every video revolves around dogs and training, you’re in the dog training niche. You’ll come across two acronyms: CPM and RPM. Cost per mille (CPM) and Revenue per mille (RPM) refer to: Creators share a cut of the CPM with the platform, and what they earn is the RPM. As a creator, you’ll earn 55% of the ad revenue. The highest-paid YouTubers make millions of dollars a year. They include MrBeast ($500 million net worth), Nastya Radzinskaya ($20-$260 million net worth), Jeffree Star ($200 million net worth), and Jake and Logan Paul ($155 million net worth combined). The simplest way to check the competition in a YouTube niche is to use a tool like SocialInsider, vidIQ or Metricool. These tools can analyze channels in your niche to gauge their performance, engagement and other metrics. You can search for competitors and analyze their content’s performance manually, but this process will be time-intensive. General and specific niches can both work well. But it’s important not to go too extreme in either direction. If your niche is too narrow, then you limit your options for topics and content. If your niche is too broad, you may struggle with finding a direction for your channel. Find a good balance. A classic car channel is a great example. It’s niche enough to give the channel direction, but there’s still plenty of room for creativity when creating content. On the other hand, if you focus your channel on one specific make and model of a classic car, you’ll be really limited in the videos you can create. Saturated niches are some of the most competitive on YouTube. They include: If you want to enter these niches, make sure you have a strategy to stand out among a sea of competitors. These 11 YouTube niches are highly profitable. They have high average CPMs, but they also offer opportunities to earn money through other avenues, like brand deals and making your own products. While profitability should be a concern when choosing a YouTube niche, don’t discount the importance of interest and passion. Make sure you’re choosing a niche that you actually like, so it doesn’t become a chore to make videos.
2. Business👨💼
3. Health and Fitness👨⚕️
4. Real Estate 🏠
5. Auto Reviews
6. Digital Marketing 📢
7. Tutorials
8. Education 🎓
9. Travel ✈️
10. Fashion and Beauty 💅
11. Cooking 👩🍳
How To Choose a Profitable Niche for YouTube?
What Factors Affect Earnings in A YouTube Niche?
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a YouTube Niche?
What are CPM and RPM on YouTube?
Who are the highest-Paid YouTubers?
How Do You Check the Competition in a Niche on YouTube?
Should I Select a General Niche or a Specific Niche?
Which Niches are Saturated on YouTube?
Final Thoughts
