How to Pick $100K YouTube Niches: The Questions I Ask Before Starting a Channel

To pick a YouTube niche that can grow into a real business, I ask about 10 questions before I start a channel. The main ones are whether someone else already has success in the niche, what the biggest channel earns, whether anyone has gone viral in it within the last six months, whether the content fits my budget and a script, voiceover and editing team, and what competitive advantage I can bring. When I recorded this I had owned and managed over 40 channels, and these are the questions I used to choose between niches.

Why I Ask These Questions First

I see a lot of people try to get into YouTube and pick a niche without thinking it through. This is how I pick a niche that I can automate, build a team around and turn into a cash flowing business. If you're a beginner asking what to pick, you can use the same list.

When I recorded this I had looked over hundreds of channels. I had owned and managed over 40, I was running 15 at the time, and I'd had to cancel a lot of the channel ideas I tried in the past. These questions are what came out of that.

You can skip some of them. But if you're a beginner, I'd keep all of them in the back of your mind, because you don't know what you don't know.

Has Someone Already Had Success, and What's the Financial Cap?

The first thing I always ask is whether someone else has had success with this. I hate recreating the wheel, and I hate being the first person to market. I want success stories I can replicate for my channel.

Then I ask what the current financial cap is. Is the biggest channel in the niche making five thousand dollars a month? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A million?

Here is how I find out:

1. Type your niche into YouTube and find some channels. Spend 10 minutes researching.
2. Look those channels up on Social Blade to see what kind of results they're getting.
3. Social Blade gives you a rough estimate with a huge range, something like $22,000 to $370,000 a month. To narrow it, you need to know the RPM for that niche.

The example I used was a big general channel that does everything and anything type content. That kind of content was probably getting $2 to $3 RPMs when I recorded this, sometimes maybe $4. So I averaged it at about $3 and estimated the channel at about $200,000 a month. That's an estimate from experience.

For more on rates, see YouTube RPM by niche.

How Old Is the Niche?

The next question is whether other people have gone viral in this niche within the last six months. I hate getting into a niche that's super old or saturated and trying to be the most recent channel to have success there.

I've done it. I went into a niche that was super old, where I was going up against a lot of big companies. I asked around and everybody told me it takes about two to three years to get results. I thought they were exaggerating, or that it was a lack of experience on their end.

Lesson learned the hard way. So I look for channels that have had success recently. The last six months is a really good sign. The last eight months to a year still counts.

If you're asking how to make ten thousand dollars a month in three months, this is the question that matters. Find other people who have had success really recently.

When I recorded this, that was how I picked about half the channels I started. The other half were long haul channels, like educational ones, that aren't profitable in the short term but can be big brands in the future. If I go into a niche with no recent success, it's because I believe in the long-term value and don't care about short-term results.

How Hard Is the Content to Make, and What's Your Budget?

Watch the videos in the niche and ask how hard they are to make. If you don't know, ask an editor, or a friend who does content production. How much time would it take? What experience level does the editor or scriptwriter need?

Then ask whether that is within your budget. There are animation channels that spend about $50,000 per video. At that point, what competitive advantage can you go in with?

If you're at $50 or less a video, the question becomes whether your skills are better than your competition. Maybe you write some of the scripts yourself, or spend a lot of time revising things. Or you have to be an amazing manager. Sometimes you can make up for budget with good management and good hiring, but that's a tough one.

Does It Fit a Script, Voiceover and Editing?

I'm focused on automated YouTube channels, where we have a full content production team. So I always ask whether the content uses a scriptwriter, a voiceover and video editing. If it doesn't, can I transform the niche into that format, and will it still work?

The compilation and re-upload side of this is in niches to avoid.

Can You Hire an Expert Within Your Budget?

This mostly applies to the scriptwriter. I ask whether I can hire someone who is an expert in the niche, or at least passionate about it, so I don't have to be the expert. I don't like being the operator in my channels anymore.

Take a crypto channel. If I want it fully automated, with content good enough to be around for the next 5 to 10 years, I need someone really good. The issue is that someone who actually knows crypto is going to want three to five hundred dollars a script, maybe even $1,000, or sizable equity in the channel. I don't like giving out lots of equity to someone producing the content, so I usually stay away from niches like that.

Compare that to a channel about the economics of businesses. I can hire an economist to write for it, because someone who's good at economics is more affordable than someone who's good at trading. A historian for a history channel is another good example.

And in a lot of niches there are people who are very passionate and do it for fun. Formula 1, baseball, football, basketball, space.

If you're just playing off a trend and hoping one video goes viral, you can skip this question.

Is It Profitable for the Next 5 to 10 Years?

Is this content profitable for the next 5 to 10 years, or is it a quick cash grab that won't be around for long? It's good to know which one you're getting into.

I aim for the ones that are going to be around for a very long time. My philosophy is probably different from yours if you're trying to make your first five or ten thousand dollars a month. I'm trying to build brands that are worth tens of millions of dollars.

I see too many people get way too bullish on a niche that's only going to be around for the next six months. They create a lifestyle around it and spend a ton of money, and they don't realize it won't last. I've done that myself.

What Competitive Advantage Can You Bring?

My last slide was this one. There are four ways to win.

• Quantity. You find niches where channels only produce one video a month. Can you do five videos a week?
• Quality. Can you produce better quality than everybody else?
• Video ideas. Are your ideas better?
• Speed to produce. If an idea comes up today, is your video out today or in the morning?

Quality is how I got my first results on YouTube. I was joining niches where the quality was awful and the channels were still getting millions of views every month, if not in days. I went in and made videos that were better than theirs. I wasn't even that good of an editor.

I matched everyone on quantity, and my quality, video ideas and speed were substantially better. Other people would take three days to put out the same video.

Speed matters a lot in anything news related, like celebrity drama or very trendy content. That's why I mostly avoid those niches. Speed is very hard to combine with quality, and quality is what makes people always come back and watch your videos. I'd rather do evergreen content, where it doesn't matter when the video comes out.

For a faster, more recent version of this research, see how I pick a faceless YouTube niche.

Video Chapters

• 0:00Intro
• 0:54Has someone else had success with this?
• 1:32What's the financial cap (Social Blade and RPM)
• 2:51How old is the niche
• 4:35How hard is the content to make
• 5:07What's your budget per video
• 6:28Is there a scriptwriter, voiceover and editing
• 7:32Can I hire an expert within my budget
• 10:13Is this content profitable long term
• 10:50What competitive advantage can you bring
• 13:30How many channels I've run and why to ask every question

FAQ