How to Make $100K With Faceless YouTube Channels

To make $100,000 with a faceless YouTube channel, I break it into three steps: come up with video ideas by modeling the top videos in a niche that already works, hire a production team (scriptwriter, voice actor, video editor, thumbnail designer) to make them, then improve and monetize the channel over time. YouTube pays the creator 55% of what advertisers pay on your videos, which came out to about $4 to $8 per 1,000 views when I recorded this, so at the low end 10 million views is $40,000. At that point one of my channels had made $144,000 in the past year, and one single video of mine had made $22,000 from 5 million views.

What Is a Faceless YouTube Channel?

Very simply, it's a YouTube channel you run without being on camera.

The typical YouTube production process looks like this:

1. You have an idea
2. You research the idea
3. You write a script on it
4. You record a video
5. You edit the video
6. You make a thumbnail
7. You upload the video

Pretty straightforward. With a faceless channel, the one part that changes is the recording. Instead of filming yourself, you use videos you find online, a hired voice actor, and images.

Because you don't have to be on camera, you can outsource everything on that list eventually. It takes a good amount of work up front. Once you get it going, it runs very much on autopilot. We do it with systems, freelancer websites, and Trello (we use Trello very heavily at my company).

The channels we build and work with are in all sorts of industries: fitness, engineering, history, space, logistics, architecture, psychology, business. There are so many little niches where channels are pulling $10,000 to $100,000 a month.

The Results This Is Based On

When I recorded this I had started YouTube in 2018, run over 40 faceless YouTube channels, and made over $2 million from YouTube. I also had over 300 students in one of my programs.

These are the results I showed in the video, as I stated them at the time:

Now the disclaimer, because it matters more than the table.

I'm not going to show you how to get something from nothing. Those are results from people who watched a training just like this one, and in no way does that mean you'll be able to have success. This takes dedicated work and financial investment.

How Do Faceless YouTube Channels Make Money?

If you watch these channels, you'll see they have ads. YouTube pays the creator 55% of what it makes from the advertisers on your videos, to incentivize you, the creator.

So you come up with video ideas, you make videos, you get views, ads play on the videos, and you can make $4 to $8 per 1,000 views from your content.

If you do the math on the low end:

Here's a real one. One video I posted got 5 million views over the span of a couple of years, and it made $22,000 off that one single video. I think that video cost me like $100 to $150 to make. I have many occasions like this.

For a wider look at the numbers, read how much faceless YouTube channels make.

Step 1: Come Up With Video Ideas

There are three steps to building a six-figure faceless YouTube channel. First, come up with video ideas. Second, hire people to make them for you. Third, improve and monetize.

To keep the first step simple: pick a niche. In the video I told people on Twitter to DM me the words "niche list" and I'd send my list of channels over. That list is linked in the description of the video on YouTube.

Click on any one of the channels on the list and you can see what's working inside that niche pretty quick. Then find the top videos in the niche and model them.

Here's a quick example. Say a top video in the niche is "Creepy things that were considered normal 100 years ago." From that one idea you could do:

• Creepy things that were normal in the Ottoman Empire
• Creepy things that were normal for Vikings

Very simple. You can plug in a ton of ideas. Thousands of ideas have been created off this one content strategy.

If you want to go further on this part, I have a full post on how to pick a faceless YouTube niche.

Step 2: Hire a Production Team

Take the production process from the top of this post and group it up by who does what.

It helps when the scriptwriter and the editor both go find the videos and images. It speeds up the process.

A couple of the steps I would keep doing yourself at first. The video idea is the big one. You can eventually delegate those parts too, but if you understand Pareto's principle (the 80/20 rule), this is the 20% of the work that gets 80% of the results. Holding onto it also helps with quality control.

Where to find freelancers

• Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer (great websites that I like)
• Twitter (I'd been using it a lot to find video production freelancers)
• Job boards
• Social media like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram
• Referrals
• Forums

What the people who crush it do on Upwork

I'll be honest. The people I see crush it just go on Upwork and throw up at least two or three job posts a week, and they do that for a month or two.

The thing with Upwork is that every time you throw up a job post, you get new candidates.

I've done over 250 job posts on Upwork, and I've looked at 1,500 applications for different production roles. It's my favorite platform by far for hiring people.

I go deeper on the process in how to outsource faceless YouTube videos.

Step 3: Improve and Monetize the Channel Over Time

Once videos are going out, the job is making the channel better over time. A few tips:

• Do more of what's working. Pretty common sense, but it's the first one.
• Emulate what's already successful. Model what those channels are doing. There's a great book on this called Steal Like an Artist. Go read it. It talks about how to actually model what's working.
• Raise your baseline over time. Quit uploading bad videos. Keep lifting what the bottom looks like on your channel.
• Increase your average view duration. You do that by making the videos more engaging.
• Make your thumbnails more clickable.

One warning. You're going to be a complete dumbass if you just go rip the video ideas I gave you above. Instead, figure out how to emulate what's already working on the market, and then apply that to your channel.

The Two Jobs That Matter Most

Hiring people and coming up with video ideas. Those are the two that move everything else.

Here's what I've noticed about who does well at each one:

• If you've already tried other business models (e-commerce, dropshipping, high ticket sales, building an agency), you're going to be really good at the video ideas part.
• If you've had any sort of management experience, you're set up for the hiring part. People with that background crush it with hiring a production team.

For the view math behind a goal like this, read how to make 6 figures on YouTube.

Why I Teach This Business Model

This business model changed my life.

I grew up in a trailer in the middle of a farm in Colorado, in the middle of nowhere. Before I went to college my parents moved to Minnesota. The first car I ever got, I bought myself.

After discovering faceless YouTube channels, I've been able to travel all over the world (Barcelona, Paris, Belgium for Tomorrowland, and Colombia, where I recorded this). I bought my dream watch. I get to hang out with my family and actually spend personal time with them. I even bought my dream car and a house, all through YouTube automation.

Video Chapters

• 0:00Intro
• 1:24Disclaimer
• 2:02Who I am
• 3:37What faceless YouTube channels are
• 5:01How YouTube channels make money
• 5:35One video: 5 million views and $22,000
• 6:03Step 1: come up with video ideas
• 7:14Step 2: hire a production team
• 8:04Thumbnail designer and where to find freelancers
• 8:44Step 3: improve and monetize
• 9:56Upwork hiring tips
• 10:40The two jobs that matter most
• 11:24My story
• 12:09Outro

FAQ