2 YouTube stars break down how much money they made from videos with 4 million views

Shelby Church

Shelby Church has 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube.

• YouTube's Partner Program allows influencers to earn money off their channels by placing ads within videos.
• Google filters these ads and pays a creator based on factors like a video's watch time, length, and viewer demographic.
• Business Insider spoke to two YouTube creators, Shelby Church and Alyssa Kulani, about what each earned from videos with 4 million views.
• Sign up for Business Insider's influencer newsletter, Influencer Dashboard, to get more stories like this in your inbox.
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How much money a creator earns from a YouTube video varies depending on a number of factors, from where the viewers are located to which advertisers the video attracts.

Some top YouTube creators have specific strategies for earning the most money from a single video, including looking at the back end of their channels to determine where the best ad placements are for them. Others simply get lucky, with videos promoted by YouTube's algorithm and recommended to viewers.

But generally, when a video goes viral, the creator is in for a serious payday. Business Insider spoke to two YouTube influencers, Shelby Church and Alyssa Kulani, who broke down how much they earned from videos with 4 million views.

Shelby Church

YouTube star Shelby Church.

Shelby Church - $15,000

YouTube star Shelby Church, who has 1.3 million subscribers, told Business Insider that she recently earned $15,000 from a YouTube video with 4.1 million views - the most she's ever made from a single video in nine years as a creator.

Her video, titled, "This Is How Much YouTube Paid Me For My 1,000,000 Viewed Video (not clickbait)," is about how much YouTube paid her for a previous video with 1 million views.

"I really thought the video would get 100,000 views, not 4 million," she said. "Once I saw that it hit a million, it honestly scared me."

Her ad placement strategy:

Church said she usually includes one pre-roll ad before the video, which she said is the default on YouTube, and two ads within the video, three or four minutes apart. Her videos are typically about 10 to 12 minutes long.

The key to earning the most from these ads is to place them before your viewers will typically "drop off," or click off from your video, she said, and she's noticed viewers will often drop off early if there's a long intro.

Read the full post here: YouTube star Shelby Church breaks down how much money a video with 4 million views made her

Alyssa Kulani

Alyssa Kulani lives in Canada and is a full-time YouTube influencer.

Alyssa Kulani - $23,000

The Canadian YouTube creator Alyssa Kulani, who has 676,000 subscribers, broke down for Business Insider how she made $23,000 in ad revenue from a single YouTube video.

Kulani's video, titled, "Telling my best friend I like him...*PRANK*," was picked up and recommended by YouTube's algorithm, which prompted the video to go viral and gain 4 million views.

"I posted that video, and I think it was around January when my first paycheck came," she told Business Insider. "My jaw dropped because of how much money I made off just AdSense."

Why she earned so much:

Kulani has a relatively high CPM (cost per 1,000 views) rate - usually between $5 and $10, she said - because she doesn't use profanity or songs that are copyrighted.

She also said she optimized her ad revenue by sometimes placing an ad break before something suspenseful is about to happen.

Read the full post here: How a 20-year-old YouTube creator earned $23,000 in ad revenue from a single video

For more on the economics of an influencer career, according to YouTube and Instagram stars, check out these Business Insider Prime posts: