How to Increase YouTube RPM With Retention: $4.63 to $19.59

The RPM hack: how max-retention storytelling stopped the biggest NBA documentary channel from dying

Out of Bounds almost died "I might have to quit" Success From Failure Out of Bounds · NBA By Andrew Mackay · Frame 117

After becoming a full time YouTuber in August of 2024, I was beginning to face a serious dilemma that reached its peak in January of 2025.

I had just moved into a new apartment, the first time in my life living without roommates, meaning my monthly expenses were higher.

However, my channel, although externally things seemed fine, behind the scenes it looked like I was going to have to literally quit Out Of Bounds.

My videos, while still generating hundreds of thousands of views, were getting stale, and the audience I had captured was growing tired of them, which resulted in my Average View Duration plummeting, and with it, my Revenue Per Milli's (RPM's - how much you earn per 1000 views).

So much so that for the month of January in 2025, I was on the way to only generating ~$3000, plenty to cover my living costs, but I was quite literally one flop away from LOSING $ creating content.

Now, you might be thinking, didn't your largest upload go live in January?

You're 100% correct, it did.

But, with a Average View Duration (AVD) of just ~20%, I was missing out on literally ten's of thousands of dollars, and keep this number in mind. (Article 1)

$4.63. (Article 2)

That's the RPM of my most viewed video of all time.

Now of course, if you know the basics of YouTube, the wider your audience, the lower all your statistics generally go, but this was a persistent issue on the channel.

Article 1

Article 2

People simply weren't watching my videos for long enough, this video, although the AVD has risen slowly, actually started even WORSE than the Jason Williams video. I remember it was roughly ~18%, which is horrible when you understand YouTube serves your content to your returning audience first, meaning people who previously enjoyed my content were telling me one thing. (Article 3)

I'm bored.

So, something had to change.

Coupling this AVD issue with the overall flooding of the NBA content market, which significantly reduced the Total Addressable Market (TAM), even having recorded what will soon be a 4 Million view video, I was quite literally one flop away from having to quit YouTube.

Article 3 — Video right after Jason Williams

So, I made a huge change in my research process and script writing, resulting in this insane graph.

Article 4 — 40% of views, same revenue. $10.81 RPM

Article 5 — $19.59 RPM · 46.1% AVD

Article 6 — 50.2% AVD · $18.87

Article 7

Notice how now my returning audience LOVES the content. This video was almost solely served to true fans, and they stayed for an average of 21 minutes, listening to my monotone Kiwi accent!

Now of course these videos are outliers, but the system which I learnt before posting my Kyrie video quite literally saved my YouTube career, and I can't wait to teach it to you here at Frame 117!

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