When starting out a new YouTube channel, a lot of questions arise quickly. The biggest conundrum is what kinds of videos to post on our own YouTube channel. This is something that we’ve discussed before in brief, but strap yourselves in, because today, we’re going to do a deep dive into what kind of content you could make and what are CPM and RPM!
Should I post what I like, or what people want?
This is an eternal dilemma of every creator, not only on YouTube, but all over the world. People have a perception of the world where you can’t make money off of something that you like, and that you have to sell out in order to start making serious money. It’s not an uncommon sight to see comments under popular songs or videos, where viewers complain of their former favorite artist selling out, betraying what they loved, etc. There is also another unique phenomenon, called the starving artist syndrome. Negative thinking, in addition to a lack of soft business skills, makes a creator feel like his content is the best in the world, but everyone misunderstands it. This is not an incurable “condition, but it can’t be treated by whining and pessimism.
What are CPM and RPM?
While we’re on the topic of determining our type of content, it’s a good idea to get familiarized with some average CPM values. So what is CPM? It’s an abbreviation of “cost per mille” and it determines how much advertisers are willing to pay per 1000 views. I assume that you know that advertisers are the ones that pay for ads on YouTube and these are the ads that show up in your videos. CPM can vary throughout the year, and because of this, you can expect your CPM can rise during the holiday season. Depending on the country your views are coming from, advertisers can control i.e. target which countries they want their ads to be shown, and this leads to the natural conclusion that some target countries will have a higher or lower CPM. Some countries with the biggest CPM are Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Austria, Germany, Switzerland etc.
Another thing to take into account is at what point in the video the ads will be shown. You have pre-roll ads, mid-roll ads, sidebar ads, skippable ads and others, but this is something that is mostly out of your control. Also, if you’re a popular channel, there might be a lot of competition between the advertisers themselves, and they would need to pay more to get their ads displayed on your videos, which is a huge plus for you. CPM also depends on the niche that you will be covering, and some of the highest paid niches are real estate videos, tech videos, finance videos, car videos and life hacks, for obvious reasons. But unfortunately, that’s not the end of the story. You only get a percentage of the total amount, since YouTube takes a 45% chunk of your profits. Everything that remains is the RPM (revenue per mille), and that is the net profit that you are left with after YouTube takes their cut. Please keep in mind that the cut that YouTube takes is subject to change.
How to determine what kind of content to make?
The first thing you need to do is to put yourself in the mindset of always learning new things. Even the biggest YouTubers, in fact particularly the biggest YouTubers, are constantly in the process of bettering themselves and the way they do things. Next up, find out what you’re best at and what sorts of topics you can talk about or show to people for days on end. Put it all down on paper. Then, ask yourself whether this is something that can help people or not. This is not to say that there isn’t a bunch of off-color content on YouTube for whatever reason, be it due to coincidence or just the meme status, but the odds of you breaking through by posting videos of playing with marbles is quite low. Of course, this doesn’t hold true if you have a very entertaining personality that can make anything seem fun, but that is a unique talent in and of itself. As we have mentioned before, following your passion is what you should do first and foremost. It should be something that you like to do and something you know your way around. This last past is really important because if you don’t know your way around a topic, getting ideas for new videos might be an issue that could come up in the future. If you still want to have a YouTube channel, but are unsure of what you could do, you could talk to a friend, brother, sister or even your partner and discuss whether they would like to have a channel where they discuss something they’re good at and would like to show to the world. Start a real business together and don’t back down! In the end, the most important thing is that you shouldn’t drop YouTube since it is a long campaign, and not just a brief effort, and it takes a couple of months to start analysing your first results. Once you’ve analysed your data, you will start to get a feel for what your audience likes, and what it doesn’t. Once you’ve got that figured out, you can ramp up your production and really get going. This will also help you make evergreen content, ie content that is always trending, and content that people always look for, regardless of what might be happening out there. If you do make such content, users will keep returning to your channel and you will save a lot of time and effort since the videos you post will keep being relevant even after a few years.
If you need help with your channel feel free to contact us. On our home page you can get free channel audit , after which we can give you a few suggestions on how you could improve your YouTube channel.
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