How easy is it to estimate a youtube channels revenue?

[u/markusseibert115]

Hey, I got a question about monetization on YouTube and I thought you guys might be able to answer it. Does anybody know as to how easy it really is to estimate a channels earnings and what you'd need for that? It's just that sometimes I watch channels and I am curious as to what they earn, which they don't share most of the time for obvious reasons. But what would you need to try to give an educated guess as to what the monthly earnings for a YouTube channel are? After all, most channels monthly views are just public knowledge anyway.

Total layman on this one. I know what "RPM" is and I vaguely know that there are certain genres of videos that generally pay better per 1000 clicks than other ones. For example comedy / gaming does worse than finance because I suppose there's more money in the latter category. I know that RPM can vary from $3-$7, sometimes below that to maybe $1.50, sometimes a lot more than that to i-don't-know-where. I know that the YouTube money isn't just AdSense, I know that there are memberships and Super Thanks. I know that not every view is monetized.

Do you think there is a somewhat reliable way to estimate this kind of stuff? Just curious!

[u/ForeverInBlackJeans]

Niche is a big factor, but so is the channels audience demographics. Presuming a predominantly North American audience, a channel in a higher paying niche like video essays/finance/education will be making approx $800-1200 for 100k engaged views. A gaming channel or something similar would make roughly 25-30% of that.

It’s not hard to figure out a ballpark if you undertake the metrics, but the new way of counting views will make it more complicated because only the creator knows how many are engaged.