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Why? Why not post less often? Is YouTube more of a grind than any job?

15 million views will give you around 20,000 dollars. Just on the verge of being livable but not yet. If you stop now it's very hard to regain the momentum.

You're assuming CPM ads. I assume sponsorship tie-ins, affiliates, promos, etc. is where the real money is at, which you can negotiate directly for at that scale.

Depending on the content, that's not always available. And while it's a more stable source of income with only 15 million views it's unlikely to be a major income stream

Used to depend on the content you created. My coding channel with 30k subs made about 10-15k since 2014. That's on less than 5m views.

The ecosystem used to favor high demand niches by offering much higher CPM. It is all homogenized now and YouTube is saving the highest CPM ads for the most popular / connected creators. $1-3CPM I've heard is average. Coding videos now get around $4-$6 down from $15-$20 when I started.

Not producing frequently also reduces your CPM. Same with short length videos. Many factors go into the CPM rate now that are not great for creators.

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