Methodology
How we calculate creator earnings
Every earnings figure on this site is a model, not a measurement. This page documents exactly what goes into that model so you can judge how much weight to put on the output — and disagree with us where you have better data.
Last updated: 2026-08-06
The core principle
Most creator income calculators multiply views by a single hard-coded rate. That produces a number that is confidently wrong for almost everyone, because the two variables that actually drive creator revenue — content niche and audience geography — can move the result by more than an order of magnitude between two accounts with identical view counts.
Our model therefore starts from a per-platform baseline range, then applies those two multipliers, then adds the income streams that platform payouts leave out: brand deals and affiliate commissions. It reports a low-to-high band rather than a single figure, because a single figure implies a precision that does not exist in this data.
Where the numbers come from
The baseline ranges are assembled from four kinds of public information:
- Published platform terms. Revenue splits that platforms state publicly — YouTube's 55/45 long-form split, the 45% Shorts pool share, Twitch's 50/50 subscription split, Vimeo's 10% OTT revenue share, and the $0.01 value of a Twitch Bit. These are facts, not estimates, and they anchor the model.
- Published eligibility thresholds. Follower, view, and watch-hour minimums for each monetisation program, taken from platform documentation.
- Creator-reported RPMs. Aggregated from creators who publish their analytics screenshots and revenue breakdowns publicly. This is the softest input and the reason the bands are wide.
- Influencer rate cards. Publicly quoted sponsorship pricing, which clusters tightly enough around a per-1,000-follower or per-1,000-view figure to model.
The formulas
Platform ad revenue
(monthly views / 1,000) x baseline RPM x niche multiplier x country multiplier
Brand deals (follower-priced platforms)
(followers / 1,000) x rate per 1k followers x engagement multiplier x posts per month
Brand deals (view-priced platforms)
(avg views per video / 1,000) x rate per 1k views x posts per month
Affiliate income
monthly views x click-through rate x conversion rate x $15 average commission
Vimeo OTT
subscribers x price x 0.87 (after Vimeo's 10% share and ~3% payment processing)
The engagement multiplier is deliberately gentle and clamped between 0.6x and 2.2x, so a mistyped engagement rate cannot produce an absurd result. Affiliate income is modelled conservatively — creators who have never set up affiliate links earn nothing here, and the model does not know whether you have.
Baseline rates by platform
| Platform | Baseline RPM (per 1k views) | Sponsorship baseline |
|---|---|---|
| YouTube | $1.20 – $8.00 | $12 – $45 per 1k views |
| YouTube Shorts | $0.02 – $0.15 | $4 – $20 per 1k views |
| TikTok | $0.40 – $1.20 | $10 – $50 per 1k followers |
| No ad revenue share | $6 – $30 per 1k followers | |
| $0.30 – $4.00 | $4 – $18 per 1k followers | |
| Vimeo | No ad revenue share | Not modelled |
| Twitch | $1.50 – $6.00 | $8 – $40 per 1k followers |
These baselines assume a mixed global audience in a mid-value niche. The multipliers below move them up or down.
The multipliers
Niche
Advertiser willingness to pay tracks customer lifetime value. A mortgage lead is worth hundreds of dollars; a mobile game install is worth cents. That difference flows straight through to your RPM.
| Niche | Multiplier |
|---|---|
| Finance, investing & crypto | 2.00x |
| Business, marketing & SaaS | 1.75x |
| Real estate & insurance | 1.60x |
| Tech & software reviews | 1.50x |
| Health, fitness & wellness | 1.20x |
| Education & how-to | 1.15x |
| Beauty & fashion | 1.10x |
| Food & cooking | 1.00x |
| Travel & outdoors | 0.95x |
| Lifestyle & vlogs | 0.85x |
| Gaming | 0.70x |
| Entertainment & comedy | 0.65x |
| Music & dance | 0.60x |
| Kids & family | 0.55x |
Audience country
Ad rates follow advertising spend per capita. The same video watched in Oslo and in Manila earns very different amounts.
| Tier | Examples | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 — highest ad rates | US, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, Norway, Switzerland | 1.60x |
| Tier 2 — strong ad rates | Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, UAE | 1.15x |
| Mixed / global audience | A spread across every region | 1.00x |
| Tier 3 — moderate ad rates | Eastern Europe, Latin America, Turkey, South Africa, Malaysia | 0.60x |
| Tier 4 — lowest ad rates | India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam | 0.35x |
What these calculators cannot tell you
An honest list, because the omissions matter more than the formulas:
- Seasonality. CPMs spike through Q4 and collapse in January, routinely by 30–40%. The model reports an annual average.
- Watch time and ad fill. Two channels with the same views but different retention will earn differently, and we cannot see retention.
- Your actual negotiating position. Sponsorship rates are set by what a brand will pay you specifically, not by a formula. A creator with a strong track record of driving sales charges multiples of the market rate.
- Policy changes. Platforms rewrite monetisation terms regularly. Anything published here reflects the terms as of the last-updated date above.
- Taxes, fees, and expenses. All figures are gross revenue before tax, equipment, software, and any team you pay.
Corrections
If you have analytics data showing that one of these ranges is wrong for your platform, niche, or region, we want to see it. Send it through the contact page and we will update the model and note the change here.
Not financial advice. These calculators are informational tools for planning and benchmarking. They are not a projection of your income, and they should not be the sole basis for any financial decision.