how much Youtube paid me | first month monetized as a small creator

I'm a baby YouTuber I've been posting videos for a little over 5 months now and around month four is when I got monetized on this platform yes that is a stain we're just going to we're just going to ignore that for now can't help it I'm a little messy but I have been so excited to make this video for you guys because to be honest I myself have watched maybe one maybe two maybe maybe 20 monetization Journey videos and I've been so looking forward today that I got to create my own so today wanted to

walk you through how I got monetized on the platform touch on my monetization journey I've made extensive videos from each month of creating for the YouTube platform so honestly you can go back and get more in-depth details in each of those videos but today just going to do a highle overview of how I got here my process things I've learned along the way and then diving into the YouTube analytics to go over my CPM RPM and all that good stuff but before we get into it my name is Kate Cassidy and do not follow me

I mean that if you want to support this channel do not follow me if this is the video that had you discover this channel like check out my other content see if you like it I talk about intentional living I talk about tech commentary about social psychology that sort of stuff if you're into that go ahead and follow if you're not into it and you want to support this channel just throw it a like and move on and have a good day well watch this video continue watching the video but then then you know just

move on and have a good day after that to get into my monetization journey the requirements for being monetized on the YouTube platform are say it with me now 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours so when I heard that I was like I don't know if I will ever meet that requirement and I'm really just still it blows my mind to this day the fact that I have been able to meet that in a substantially what seems like a short amount of time around four months and so thank you all I have so much gratitude

for everyone who has helped made make this channel what it is today in this community that we're building here to go over where I was at at each month of the journey until I was monetized I started posting on September 15th 2024 and so in the first month from September 15th to October 15th I had hit 12 subscribers 769 views and then 400 400 40 watch hours I don't know why I read that wrong it's obviously 40 watch hours 400 would be insane for the first month then by November 15th so my second month posting

I was at around 354 subscribers 944 watch hours and then 14,000 views by December 15th I had amassed 650 subscribers 1700 watch hours and 27,000 views and then by January 15th is when it all started to change in month four that is when I jumped from 650 subscribers in January or December to to 2,196 subscribers in January with over 7,000 watch hours and over 73,000 views what changed the game was a video that I posted two and a half months prior that eventually just took off hit the algorithm and started getting pushed out to everyone

don't know why it happened don't know why two and a half months later it decided to start to pick up but it's definitely a testament to the fact that you could be posting into the void for a while and you never know what video is eventually going to hit so definitely think about YouTube as the long game there as that video started to explode I was checking in every single day being like did I hit it did I hit it did I hit the different requirements and then of course once you hit the actual requirements

you have to wait a couple days for YouTube to verify all of the watch hours and subscribers so I was like ready and waiting to hit apply to the partner program so I could start to make some money I hit rep the second it opened up to me it was actually the second that I hit the lower rate of around like 500 subscribers and 3,000 watch hours and then by the time I got accepted I had hit the higher tier as well and the verification process took a couple days for me I applied on a

Saturday I want to say and I don't think I got accepted until Monday or Tuesday of the next week so two or three days completely normal when it comes to my process and the things I've learned along the way I've had a couple people ask in videos past about what sort of equipment I use what my process is and here I'm going to address it all at once when it comes to my equipment I am using my phone which makes it a little challenging sometimes because I can't be looking at like my notes on my

phone at the same time as filming but I just didn't want to have like that barrier of entry for me to be oh I need to buy a fancy camera iPhones have perfectly good quality cameras built into them now so I am talking to my phone right now how you doing phone and then the two things that I did want to make sure I got for starting to make videos just because I wanted to personally get over this mental barrier that I had built wanted to make sure I got a decent quality microphone I don't

even know if it's decent quality honestly but picked a microphone pretty cheap on Amazon it connects right to my computer so it's pretty easy to like sync it up afterwards and then I did want to make sure that my lighting was decent I've had to play around with it a little bit honestly but I do have a twoof soft box lighting kit and I'll show you how it all looks from afar and then I have a tiny little tripod that I've been carrying around for years it is tried and true and it gets me through

anything so very much a small little Boutique home studio that I have built here but hey it works and it's simple and I think simple is really great especially as you're starting out you want to make it as easy as possible for you to start getting over those like whatever limiting narratives that you have about yourself and creating to make sure that you actually get the courage up to start doing it so if you have a simple setup I think that that is amazing to start you don't need a fancy camera you don't need a

fancy mic maybe if you're a tech guy and you're like into that go for it but for me if you're just kind of wanting to start experimenting with creating this is all you really need when it comes to editing I've tried out two different things now I initially started with descript or descript it's an AI editing tool and it is great I was using a lot especially when I was leveraging b-roll that they had when I was doing um AI to essentially cut out all of the different pauses and ums and likes that you say

there's I made a whole tutorial on it I actually like that product that much you can watch the tutorial video I now have started to simplify my process even more because I just personally have realized I don't know if I want to make that sort of like jumpy editing style like you know b-roll and pop sounds and all of that like I don't think I really need that level of retention editing for the type of content that I'm making so now I've simplified and I'm just using Da Vinci resolve it's free it's easy it's worthwhile

to try especially as you're starting out because hey it's free just to go over some things that I've learned and some Reflections along the way do not get discouraged when you are first posting my first 12 videos all got 0 to 20 views it was in that zero to 20 view range so I wasn't seeing any sort of early success I was definitely just posting out into the void but building up that catalog is so important for whenever people do stumble on your channel and then they might like you for some whatever reason and they

want to go back and watch other videos it's important to have that built out and I think people also like to see the innocence and the kind of like fear and just nervousness of your early videos as compared to where you get a little bit more comfortable with your talking to the camera and just your overall editing Style so it's nice to have that contrast to look back on for me at least I look back on the first video I posted I'm like oh yikes that is not very good but I'm sure I will think

the exact same thing three years from now when I look back on this video today so that's always something that helps put it into perspective for me so I had to post it was around my 13th video where I finally broke a 100 views for the first time and that was insane I definitely encourage to keep posting even if no one is watching because like I'm mentioned before you never know what video is going to be the one that took off takes off because for me it was a video that I created in mid October

and it took off in the first week of January so this is a long game you never know what video you post people are going to come back to later on you never know what sort of content is going to get more popular and the AL algorithm is going to favor later down the line keep posting just keep posting and there's also so much you get out of even starting to post post when you don't have an audience yet you learn to experiment you learn what style you like you learn how to talk to the

camera and get comfortable just like on camera presence and then by the time that my video that started to take off and like boosted my channel got posted I had already built up a catalog of 40 other around 40 other videos that viewers who had come to my channel and been introduced to it through that one that had a semi viral moment they then went back and were able to watch the other ones as well they were able to watch the other ones and so it created a bit of a Snowball Effect where someone was

introduced to me from one video but then they were like oh like let me go check out if she's made any other videos on this topic and people just got to know me a little bit more that way so build up your catalog even if you don't have an audience even if you're getting zero views you never know when you're going to get that one viral video to pop off and when the snowball is going to start snowballing I think there's a ever ongoing debate between consistency and quality of videos and I think for me

what helped me in my early days was leaning in on the consistency side because I knew when I posted my first videos I was like they're not going to be good they're just going to be bad and you have to embrace the fact that my early videos are going to kind of stink and it's kind of it's crazy to get that courage up to put yourself out there even before you know you're going to be good I have been in different areas of my life more of a perfectionist where I would have held myself back

in order to wait for the right camera wait for what I think I thought I had like a perfect quality video to post out into the world but I'm so glad that for this YouTube journey I didn't do that I just wanted to get better and I knew the quickest way for me to get better at starting to make videos and get better on camera and figure out what sort of topics I wanted to talk about was by actually iterating and doing the thing and then doing the thing over and over and over over again

until I started to figure out my own process my own patterns and just get more comfortable overall so for me early on I would try and be as consistent as you can I had a phase where I was posting three videos a week it was unsustainable because I moved across the country started a new job all these different things but I'm still trying to post at least one to two videos a week now just because again I'm going to keep getting better at this if I keep doing it and that's something important to remember you're

just not going to be good at first it's going to take time it's going to take iteration and that is all a part of the process try and get consistent try and figure out a schedule that works for you don't burn out in the process but I think that consistency also really breeds fans like people like the fact that you're putting something out there like it's a little scary to create and put yourself out there on the internet and if you're doing that you're already like a lot of the population will never do this it's

kind of crazy to think about it when you I don't know like that is mindboggling to me so I think that people appreciate the fact that even though you're not perfect even though you're bad even though you sometimes stter on your words and get a little goofy on camera whatever it is like whatever insecurities you have that you're trying to get over to make the video I think people actually respond to that and people like it so keep keep posting keep posting consistently keep posting before you have an audience iterate and you'll figure it out

with time there's common advice that you should Niche down early on and just like figure out your Niche and just keep posting keep posting keep posting I actually think for me again starting out that was not good advice I needed to have the free range to experiment with different content Styles experiment with talking about different topics and see what actually felt natural to me for example I actually in my first like two weeks on the platform actually I want to the first week I posted this little like Snappy mini podcast of news headlines that I

thought were interesting it didn't work it didn't work it was poor presentation it was like just felt very unnatural and I realized through the process of making that video hey that's not my topic that's not that's not the type of content that I'm going to be making and that's okay so give yourself that Grace to try different things experiment you don't have to figure figure out a niche maybe start to like cultivate a theme that you like to talk about once it'll I think it'll come to you naturally once you start to figure out what

sort of things feel like easy to talk about what you get excited to talk about all of that will naturally lead you to your theme for your channel but I think that niching down it's too much pressure early on especially when all you really need to do is start to create and iterate I made a whole other video on actual specific mistakes that I made in my first month or two on the platform so you can go watch that if you want like mistakes to avoid as an early Creator but those are just some general

highlevel like things that I learned and things that I've reflected on since starting to create and now the moment we've been waiting for let's get into the analytics so here I am in the analytics section of YouTube studio and as you can see from this highle look at the lifetime of my account it's definitely been a crazy Journey along the way here's I was getting Z to 20 views this was my most exciting I popped I I had a video pop off I think it got like 100 views yeah got 100 views in late September

that was huge for me but then you can see the clear increase in momentum was around early January when I started to get around 5,000 views a day it's tapered off since then but still it's just been higher volume than it was in those earlier days so that's exciting to see that all of this can happen and around four five six months of posting on the platform you can also see that views watch time and subscribers all follow similar Trends here overall and then here you can see in the revenue section that there were those

four months where I was making videos and putting it out there before getting any little Pennies from AdSense to come back to me and YouTube had actually already started putting ads in my videos I found out people left comments telling me that so that was crazy when I found out that YouTube was already starting to monetize my videos without actually giving me a cut of it that just motivated me even more I was like I want to get a little piece of the pie so this is what it has looked like you'll see just nothing

and then it popped off the first day that I was monetized was what is this January 13th where I made $852 cents hell yeah I was excited about that but to focus in on just that first month of being monetized so from January 13th to February 13th applying that we can see that in my first month of being monetized my first full month of being monetized on YouTube I made $34.92 and I extremely grateful for this this was really mind-blowing this is about where I feel like I expected if not a little higher than what

I expected I knew that my I just kind of figured I wasn't going to be bringing in the dough I wasn't going to be rolling in it okay let's pause right there Hi it's editing Kate here I just wanted to click into this a little bit more I am also intentionally not trying to over monetize my YouTube channel through YouTube ads YouTube will try and place mid roll ads automatically throughout your videos and in a normal like 16-minute video they'll try and throw four mid-roll ads in there so every single time they try and automatically

place ads I actually decline it that's my current approach I'm not trying to optimize my channel to make money through YouTube AdSense I want to do it in a more ethical way and I'm trying to not bombard you guys with ads that would be an awful consumer experience so that's kind of my that's just my take that's probably also why these numbers are a little bit lower than you might see from other creators is I am intentionally not trying to monetized too much this way so just wanted to let you all that know that too

that's probably why these numbers are deflated as to what you might see from someone who's allowing YouTube to constantly Place mid roll ads automatically throughout their videos but you can now also see that I will not be quitting my day job anytime soon this is not a uh that much of an amount to be living and thriving off of I think the highest day I made what is this I made $16.50 in the day and then my my lowest day of the month I made $4.90 but then if we look at the actual like through

this entire thing the lifetime you'll see actually yesterday was my lowest day yet uh around $34 46 cents that I made on March 2nd so it can fluctuate quite a bit and I feel like this couple dollars range is where I'm actually going to sit that's my more sustainable place where I'm going to be seeing it if we go into the revenue tab this is where we can start to see my CPM and RPM so scrolling down a little bit I'm hiding nothing you can see my you can see all my transparent money that I

made here oh wait actually let me change this to just since when I was monetized I think that that will make a little bit of an impact so from January 13th to March 2nd okay here we go you can see my first official paycheck for January was just shy of 200 bucks for February I'll be coming in around 240 bucks and then uh you'll see also here that my RPM or the revenue that actually comes back to me for every thousand views that I get on this channel is around $463 which I think is actually

kind of low people in different niches get different RPMs it's all based on the CPM which is the cost per Mill that the th an Advertiser is willing to pay for a th000 views on the platform so I think this is kind of a low RPM but this is a little bit too be expected because my topics might not be the most monetizable I talk about like intentional living and how social media is a bit of a dangerous place to be and all that sort of stuff so I'm not surprised that advertisers are not like

really looking for me the most or looking to monetize in my videos the most but you never know this is just the beginning I've just been making videos for again around five months now five and a half months and I'm so excited this has been such an amazing journey along the way I've learned so much candidly like it's been such a cool experience really interesting strategy work really interesting to get back into like the process of creativity and if you want to watch any videos that I have made on my other each monthly breakdown since

I started posting you literally can go back and watch month one when I had 10 views I made a whole Deep dive into my analytics check that out also you can check out my YouTube mistakes videos all of those are available to you thanks so much for tuning in I hope you got something good from this and we'll talk again soon bye