How to build your own RPM baseline before you negotiate anything

How to build your own RPM baseline before you negotiate anything

Thesis: most creators quote a CPM or RPM they half-remember from a good month. Negotiation built on that anchor underprices or overpromises. Build a defensible baseline first.

Procedure:
— Pull 12 months of revenue, not 30 days. Variance in creator earnings is high; a single quarter over-weights seasonal spikes (Q4 ad demand alone can lift RPM 30-50%).
— Separate revenue streams. Platform ad RPM, affiliate RPM, and sponsorship RPM are not comparable and must never be averaged together.
— Compute median, not mean. Income distributions are right-skewed; the mean flatters you.
— Report the interquartile range alongside it. "My RPM is between X and Y, median Z" is more credible than a single figure.

Caveat: platform analytics define RPM inconsistently (some net of revenue share, some gross). Document which you used.

What we still don't know: whether self-built baselines correlate with the rates buyers actually offer, since no public dataset matches creator-reported RPM to closed deals.