Faceless YouTube Channel Ideas: 72 Niches I'd Pick From (and the Ones I'd Skip)

Here are 72 faceless YouTube channel ideas from the list I posted on X, sorted into the niche categories I've run channels in and graded with my tier list. Basketball is the S tier pick for a complete beginner, history, travel, celebrity, health, fitness, video games and horror are A tier, true crime and public records can pay the most and fail the most, and meditation, music and compilation channels are the ones I'd skip. I've run over 50 faceless channels and made over $2 million with them, and the rule under every idea here is the same: pick the one where channels are already making money, not the one you'd be most creative with.

The 72 Ideas at a Glance

I posted this list on X as 72 faceless YouTube niches. Here it is sorted into the categories from my full niche guide and graded with my tier list. S means pick it if you want the highest likelihood of making money. A is pretty hard to go wrong with. B is good, with some specialized knowledge or more work. C is going to take real work. F is stay away.

The old version of this page opened with eight finance ideas and a CPM next to each. I pulled them: finance is the worst faceless niche to get into (the skip section says why), and the ad rates live on YouTube RPM by niche.

History and War Channel Ideas

Ancient Rome stories, Vikings daily life, samurai battles explained, medieval times, dark Victorian history, Egyptian pharaoh scandals, lost civilizations myths, WW2 forgotten battles, wild west outlaws, ancient war tactics, Great Depression survival, historic famine stories, pirate legends, Roman gladiator fights, Spartan daily life, military survival stories, famous assassinations untold.

History is an A on my tier list, and honestly I'd probably give it a B if I weren't biased. The trick is that you have to make history exciting when it's usually a pretty boring subject, and the trends change.

The upside is that it's evergreen. I had a World War II channel, Netflix made a World War II documentary, and all of a sudden we had trending content. When the trend passed, those videos still got views.

The Great Depression and famine ideas lean toward storytelling, the coolest category out there and one of the hardest to produce.

Disaster, Survival and Exploration Channel Ideas

Natural disasters explained, tsunami survival tales, volcano eruptions history, earthquake worst moments, tornado outbreak stories, hurricane survival footage, shipwreck mysteries, plane crash investigations, explorer lost expeditions, arctic survival stories, Amazon jungle mysteries, shark attack survivor stories, apocalypse survival plans, prepper mistakes, global disaster scenarios, forbidden islands, ghost towns abandoned.

Most of these sit inside travel and geography, A tier and one of my favorite niches. It takes longer to build because older viewers are hesitant to trust a new channel, and once it gets going it's super stable. One of the most stable 20 grand a month channels I have is a geography channel.

Two cautions. Anything with "footage" in the name raises the question of who owns the footage. Public records are fair use. Storm footage someone else shot is not, so you get the rights or edit around it. And survival stories can drift into blood and gore, so PG-13 it or you'll be dealing with age gating and limited ads.

Crime, Heist and Public Records Channel Ideas

Mafia rise and fall, cartels untold stories, police interrogation, famous heists explained, bank robberies gone wrong, prison escape stories, true crime cults, unexplained disappearances, cold case mysteries, serial killer psychology.

This is where the most money and the most failure sit next to each other. Police interrogation is the public records niche: body cam, courtroom and interrogation footage, all fair use. I've had students get to $50,000 to $80,000 a month with it, and it's also the niche with the highest likelihood of failing. You can upload the best video out there and get 10 views because you got shadowbanned for R-rated content, and YouTube won't tell you what counted. You typically need an aged or monetized channel.

True crime (cults, disappearances, cold cases, the psychology ideas) is a B and possibly a C. There are channels making $100,000 a month in it, and it's insanely difficult to get into because the videos are typically against YouTube's community guidelines. More violent, heavier subject matter. For a beginner it's one of the harder ones, and the heist, mafia and cartel ideas carry the same guideline risk.

Sports Channel Ideas

Sports scandals hidden, NBA beef explained, boxing greatest fights, soccer insane moments, NFL controversies, WWE biggest betrayals, MMA fighter downfalls, esports cheating scandals.

Basketball is S tier all day, and even if I weren't into basketball I would start a basketball channel. I have one student who made around $60,000 in a month in the basketball niche, friends making 30, 40, $50,000 a month in sports, and students who started within six months and were making 50 grand a month.

Sports is easy because of parallel niches. If "basketball players you won't believe exist" is working, you can do soccer players, hockey players and baseball players you won't believe exist. What works in one sport will probably work in another. Just don't put them on one channel: even Non-Stop Sports, which does basketball and football, keeps going back to basketball.

A lot of leagues now treat creators as part of their marketing and will leave your clips alone or offer a partnership where they take 30 or 40 percent. The rest you edit around. WWE and MMA are B tier, and golf, hockey and tennis are the sports with less competition if you want a quieter start.

Celebrity, Entertainment and Recap Channel Ideas

Celebrity ruined careers, Hollywood cult rumors, music industry dark side, comic book explainer, anime movie recaps, BTS movie productions, poker stories.

Celebrity is A tier and top five easiest for a beginner. There's always somebody in the news for misbehaving, and I have friends who made a couple hundred grand in a month off the rap drama when it was happening. The downside is the dry time between news cycles, and you have to watch the industry pretty closely.

The rumor ideas carry legal risk: defamation cases and cease and desist letters are a real possibility. I'd do celebrity for a couple of years, make money with it, and move on.

Anime movie recaps and comic book explainers are the recap niche, which I think is great for beginners. Anime is B tier because the audience is picky and you have to work around copyright. The Japanese publishers in particular will tell YouTube to take your channel down, so cover the shows other recap channels already cover.

Paranormal, Horror and Space Channel Ideas

UFO whistleblower stories, alien abductions explained, space race conspiracies, NASA coverups, haunted places history, scary folklore creatures, demonic possessions real cases, paranormal investigations, urban legends explained, famous haunted ships.

Horror is A tier. People are super into that stuff, and you can get really niche with it, which is where the haunted places, folklore and urban legends ideas fit.

Space is a C. There are space channels making a ton of money, and they work really hard for it. The common thread across the C tier is that the more intelligent the audience, the harder the niche is to crack.

For the UFO and coverup ideas, my caution from the geography side applies: be careful of sensationalism, because YouTube has policy issues with it.

The Ideas I'd Skip

Two ideas on my own list come with a warning. Animals are a C tier for me: a super big audience, hard to find an angle, and I've never had success with one personally. Immigration updates and geopolitical explainers are political news. You can talk about geopolitics, but you have to be wary about sensationalizing it, and political content faces issues with YouTube policy.

Here's what's not on the list at all.

That's the low RPM problem. Five million views in the music niche at 50 cents per thousand is twenty five hundred dollars. Five million views on a space channel at eight dollars per thousand is forty thousand. Music, comedy, drama and Reddit channels are in the first bucket. If you have a product or a membership behind the channel, a low RPM niche can still work. On ad revenue alone, I wouldn't.

How to Pick One From the List

Make money first and build around your passion second. If nothing on the list is your passion, pick something you're somewhat interested in, get to where you're making money, and pivot from there.

Then get real about your resources. Some of these are super easy to get into (basketball, celebrity, recaps) and some are maximum difficulty (STEM, storytelling, public records). First channel, go easy.

Give the idea 20 to 30 videos. Sometimes I just can't figure a niche out, and that doesn't mean it doesn't work. If you can't find success by then, pivot to a different one and go crush it there. The method for checking a niche before you start is on how to pick a YouTube niche, and every category above gets its own breakdown in the full guide to faceless YouTube niches.

If you want my team to look at your shortlist, book a free strategy call with an FCA advisor. They'll go over your niche and your situation and give you a straight answer on whether Faceless Channel Academy fits. Book a call.

Video Chapters

• 0:0050 channels and how this list works
• 0:30What S, A, B, C and F tier mean
• 0:55Anime and basketball
• 1:32Cars
• 2:02History and MMA
• 3:05Movies, space, tech and business
• 3:37Travel and WWE
• 4:09Meditation (F tier)
• 4:40Religion
• 5:43Celebrity and streamers
• 6:45Fitness and health
• 8:18Earning potential and philosophy
• 8:48Video games, animals and horror

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