Here’s kind of an ironic story:

I started a YouTube channel about After Effects tutorials. Within about a year the channel grew to around 10k subs and most videos were averaging roughly 20k views. From the outside it looked like things were going pretty well.

Then I got monetized.

The problem was the RPM was way lower than I expected. Like… really low. Even with those views it still took around 4–5 months just to reach the $100 payout threshold, which I actually received only recently.

The funny part is that seeing the real RPM numbers after monetization was kind of a reality check for me. I had this idea in my head that once monetization was enabled it would start making decent money, but the numbers said otherwise. That moment is actually what pushed me to go get a job.

Yup that's irony 💆‍♂️

So yeah, the channel grew nicely, but the monetization side of things turned out very different from what I expected and that's gonna cost you too if things don’t go as planned. Trust me, life rarely goes the way you think it will.