The formula
earnings = (monetised views ÷ 1,000) × RPM
What it means
RPM and CPM get confused constantly and are not the same. CPM is what the advertiser pays per thousand impressions; RPM is what the creator keeps per thousand views, after the platform's share and counting the views that carried no ad at all. RPM is always considerably lower, and it is the only one that estimates earnings.
How to work it out by hand
- Take the RPM shown in your analytics dashboard
- Apply the share of views that get monetised
- Divide those views by a thousand
- Multiply by the RPM
What is worth knowing
RPM is a field because everything moves it: the viewer's country — a US view can pay ten times what another market pays — the niche, the length of the video and the month, because advertisers pay more in December and the floor drops in January. Any figure published as «YouTube's RPM» is an average of averages that describes nobody. And advertising is usually the small part of a working channel's income: sponsorships, affiliate links and own products bring in more.