I have written many Medium stories about YouTube. Today, let’s talk about the money side of things.

YouTube is such a grinding game. Filming and editing are very time-consuming, let alone the research time before filming, the money invested in gears and products, and the emotional rollercoasters after publishing each new video.

As much I love to express my creativity in video content, the monetary return has to be somewhat legit to make it worth the effort, right?

How Much Does YouTube Pay Me for 1 Million Views?

Recently, on June 30th, 2022, my channel finally hit 1,000,000 views! It is rewarding to put progress into perspectives. Even though I don’t have 1 million subscribers or even a silver plate button, it is rewarding to see my hard work was rewarded with views and watch time from the community.

How much was I paid? Let’s take a look at the revenue.

My channel made an accumulative of $7,543 for 1,021,024 views. To know the exact earnings for 1 million views, I substracted this number with my July earnings (so far), the total earnings for 1 million views was $7,422.

Is it worth it?

Of course it would have been awesome if ONE of my videos get 1 million views. However, that is not the case here. My 1 million view count was an accumulated number across all my videos on the platform.

How Long Did It Take to Get 1 Million Views on YouTube?

I have been on YouTube consistently since 2019. To be specific, I started my channel towards to end of 2018 (October). So it took me 3.5 years to gain my first 1 million views!

That means, it took me 3.5 years to earn $7,422!

The number suddenly sounds so small for the effort, right?

Well, in my first year of YouTube (2019), my channel was not monetized. It was just a labor of love until I hit my first 1,000…