I noticed something interesting while I was doing research for my previous video, Top 10 Dumbest Side Hustles on YouTube (which I’ve since renamed Top 10 Worst Side Hustles 2023).
The “Make Money Online” channels were trying to convince viewers that a certain channel that posts nothing but YouTube Shorts was earning long-form money. Of course, this is definitely not the case.
Social Blade is a revenue estimation tool that uses publicly available data about video views and applies a low-end RPM range to predict how much any given channel is earning.
BUT … as of right now, Social Blade does not distinguish between long-form revenue and short-form revenue.
This is important because revenue on YouTube Shorts is literally PENNIES per 1,000 views. Long-form content, on the other hand, tends to pay dollars.
Regardless of content type, RPMs can range pretty widely, but there’s no way that a Shorts channel is earning even the low end of long-form money.