How Much Does a Viral Video Make?

A successful viral video can increase your brand’s recognition and boost traffic to your website while increasing conversions in the short-term, but how much does a viral video make and is all the effort actually worth it? That’s a question we get a lot, and while it’s not the easiest question to answer, we’ve got a few key points that we think are important to chime in on.

You don’t always make a ton of money on viral videos. In fact, many brands seek to produce viral video content not so much for the sake of the ROI but for the additional value that comes from producing the content.

Viral videos often result in increased brand recognition, greater consumer interest, and other values for the brand beyond the return on investment. However, let’s take a look at just how much a viral video might make in various scenarios.

A Viral Video with 10 Million Views on YouTube

First, we take a look at a viral video that has 10 million views on YouTube. Perhaps you’ve seen videos that have this number of views and wondered, “how much money did this brand or individual make with this video?”

Since YouTube video views dictate revenue on a cost-per-thousand basis, you may be able to determine an approximate dollar amount for each 1K video views of the viral video.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple because:

-1 view is not always equal to 1 view on YouTube. Some views are more valuable than others.

-Not all video views are monetized.

-The location of the viewer plays a role in the value. Views outside the U.S. are worth less in most cases because advertisers are not trying to reach consumers in other parts of the world so much.

-The device that is used plays a role in the value of the view.

So, just how much does a viral video make on YouTube with 10M views? The answer is, it really depends!

A Viral Video with 1.7M Views

In our next scenario, we look at a viral video that was produced by a company that had a series called, Expert in a Year challenge. They took that series, and produced a video that included a one-second-a-day video clip compiled of all 365 one second clips from each day of their series.

The video went viral and ultimately gathered more than 1.5M views in just a few hours. By the time the video fizzled out a bit, the total views were over 1.7M and the brand had been featured on Huffington Post, Digg, Reddit and many other sites and television shows.

So, how much does a viral video make with 1.7M views? Well, for their first 220K views they didn’t have any monetization so they essentially made nothing.

Once they licensed the music that was included in the video and monetized via YouTube, they accounted for spending some money with the brand they hired to manage the video for them and essentially earned the remaining 30% of the revenue from the viral content. The total earnings were about $1350.

However, in addition to the earnings they also saw:

-A spike in traffic to their landing page for an item they offered for sale (however they had no noticeable increase in sales)

-A spike in their blog views.

-A small increase in email newsletter sign ups.

What Will Your Viral Video Earn?

Like they say, “easy come, easy go.” Don’t expect a viral video to earn you millions. What you can expect from a viral video is increased brand awareness, increased recognition and a growing reputation.

Even with all the cards in line, and just the right content in place, virality is something that really just happens.

While you can take steps to achieve success, and you may even find that the right perspective leads to an increase in viral potential, in the end, what you make is largely dependent on many things aside from going viral.

Want to learn more about viral video production? Give Beverly Boy Productions a call today!