What I Learned From 1 Billion Views on Faceless YouTube Channels

I got over 1 billion views on YouTube without showing my face, editing a video or doing the production myself. The biggest lesson is that success leaves clues: model what already works (the million-view videos, not the average ones) until you have your own foundation. The rest is making videos people are craving that don't exist yet, treating the algorithm as your audience, building every channel on a 5 to 10 year horizon, scaling through a team, and watching an obsessive amount of YouTube. When I recorded this I was watching around 45 hours a week.

How I Got to a Billion Views Without Being on Camera

The cool thing about getting over a billion views is how I did it. I didn't show my face. I didn't edit any videos myself. I didn't personally do the production. I've been heavily involved in the process, but the work was outsourced and delegated to teams on niche YouTube channels.

Here's where things stood when I recorded this, about four years into doing YouTube.

Those 400 videos of me on camera are how I got into YouTube. They're a marginal slice of the total. At one point we were putting out something like eight videos a day across everything. We slowed down, and when I recorded this we were scaling back up.

Success Leaves Clues

I think this is the most important point of all of them. Anybody who's successful leaves a trail behind them, and you can see how they got there.

Take MrBeast. When I recorded this he was the biggest YouTuber on the platform, with around 70 million subscribers on his main channel. Pretty much every video he's ever uploaded is still on his channel. You can go back and watch his phases and the epiphanies he had. It took him a very long time to get his first thousand subscribers, then 100,000, then a million, and all of those levels are sitting right there for anyone to study.

So don't try to recreate the wheel. If someone has already invested millions of dollars into learning something, why should you (probably without a million dollars to invest) try to be fancy and come up with something new?

When I say steal, I mean model. There's a good little book on this called Steal Like an Artist. I recommend it.

The example I think about is cars. I've seen Lamborghini owners debate whether to swap the suspension, lower the car or put it on bags. Lamborghini has invested millions of dollars over the years into testing that suspension. Why would you trust a company that maybe spent a hundred thousand dollars testing their springs over that? There's a reason things are the way they are.

Until you're the same size as the person getting the result you want, don't do anything fancy. See what they're doing and apply it to your stuff.

Model the Million-View Videos, Not the Average Ones

On one of my channels, every video we put out was getting 100,000 views. The competitor we modeled when we started was also getting 100,000 views a video, and a lot of their videos went on to get millions.

We don't look at their 100,000 view videos and copy those. We look at their million-view videos and model that success.

The issue I see with new people is they get way too fancy and way too creative, way too soon. They show me some tactic and I ask where the idea came from. "I thought it was a good idea."

My uncle is a good example. I got him to quit his job and start on YouTube, and within a few months he'd passed a thousand subscribers. His content got drastically better from his first video. But his thumbnails were creative, and creative isn't the same as clickable.

So I gave him the same policy. I don't want to look at a thumbnail again unless someone inspired it. He runs a business-type channel, so I told him to look at other business channels outside his exact niche and apply what they're doing to his.

Wouldn't you be much more likely to get a 100,000 view video by copying a million-view one?

I've worked with thousands of people getting into YouTube, and I see this far too often: someone shows me their inspiration channel, and they're copying that channel's 10,000 view videos because the channel has a million subscribers.

Sometimes a video gets 10,000 views only because the channel already has a large audience. Look at their best performing videos, or the ones that changed things for them, and apply those.

I'm not saying never do anything new. I'm all for that. You need a solid foundation in how YouTube works first.

Make the Video People Are Craving That Isn't Out There Yet

When I say copy, I don't mean make the same video. If someone made "How Elon Musk spends a billion dollars," that's been done. Make it about anybody else who has a lot of money.

People aren't going to watch the same video twice to get one extra tidbit. Fill a gap that hasn't been tapped.

Another example. There was a video that got something like 10 million views about hiring people on Fiverr to make a commercial. Instead of remaking that, I could do "hiring people on Fiverr to run a YouTube channel." Or hiring people off Craigslist to mow my lawn, a $5 an hour person against a $50 an hour person, and show the difference. Same strategy, tweaked, applied to your content.

That's honestly the strategy behind my own content. My most viral video wasn't original or fancy, other than being a video nobody had made before. There were videos already getting tens of millions of views in one niche. I used the same strategy and talked about a different industry, and I got similar results. I copied everything they did except what the video was about. (I walk through a case like that in 2 million views in 8 days.)

When I make something "new" now, around 90% of it is bits and pieces from videos I've watched and results I've gotten. I'm taking inspiration from hundreds of people.

Check Who You're Getting Your Inspiration From

The day I recorded this I'd talked to a 15 year old who was doing really well on YouTube. He was a sophomore in high school making more than a lot of adults make. But he had all sorts of issues: channels terminated, monetization problems. I used to be in the same boat.

As soon as he described it, I knew his inspiration was the problem. He had friends on YouTube with millions of subscribers, and when he showed me their channels it was about the most gray-area content you could make. Super clickbaity, borderline R-rated. YouTube isn't a platform for that. You have to make PG, PG-13 type content.

He was having those issues because the people he was modeling were having those issues.

If you model people who have 5 and 10 year plans on YouTube and make videos people want to watch, you're not going to have those problems.

The same goes for where you get information. I'm always skeptical of new information from anybody. They need to be extremely credible, or I'll take one or two things and leave the rest. I've met people running all sorts of shady operations who ended up in the news about a year later. If I'd applied everything they did, I'd have been headed down the same path. Be conscious of what your inputs are.

Treat the Algorithm as Your Audience

The best piece of advice I've gotten about the algorithm, from someone who works on it at YouTube, was this: stop viewing it as an algorithm and view it as your audience.

If you make videos for the audience instead of for the algorithm's sake, you're going to get results. Put out the best videos you possibly can and they'll eventually catch on.

We've had videos that were really high quality and got nothing for a decent amount of time. One was in a new niche we were getting into. Short term we were thinking, this kind of sucks, why isn't this happening? Six months down the road that video got 3 million views. Sometimes it just takes a little time.

There's one channel I'm genuinely proud of. We'd been running it a little over a year when I recorded this, trying to improve it day in and day out, against a competitor that's a hundred million dollar company. We spent so much time making those videos good that a lot of the people I show the channel to become fans.

A rule I took from Steve Jobs: if you're not willing to put your name on it and say "I made this," you probably shouldn't put it out on the internet.

You know you have a good video when you can't stop watching it yourself. I know I have a viral video when I can watch it over and over and I'm showing it to my family and friends.

For more on how recommendations work, see the YouTube algorithm explained.

Build for 5 to 10 Years and Keep the Risk Low

There are little arbitrage opportunities out there where you can make a quick buck or grab a huge amount of views. If you want to get to a billion, you have to build a brand and build trust with people.

I've started up and failed something like 20, 30, 40 projects. It's just part of business. The ones that have succeeded the most are the ones where I could see us still doing it 10 years from now.

I've had channels making $30,000 to $50,000 a month that could have been demonetized tomorrow. That was not a fun situation to be in, and we did have issues. Things changed when we switched to playing for longevity.

Every time I tell that story I get messages asking how to avoid copyright claims and demonetization. The answer is to make content people want to watch and make it for the platform. Ask yourself what YouTube wants you to make. If you don't know, you're not spending enough time on YouTube.

If you're a beginner, just get content out and improve over time. Keep the longevity in mind while you do it, and stay away from anything you think might be high risk.

Scale Depends on Your Team

I don't know a single person who's had massive success by themselves. Maybe you get a million views alone, maybe 10 million. You see those one-hit wonders. Anyone with longevity has mentors, a network of successful friends and an amazing team.

I can't say I'm the sole reason for my results. I got to a certain point by myself, then realized I could only go so far. I had to lose my ego and encourage the people around me.

I'm not the one editing the videos, writing the scripts or voice acting. I watch the videos, review them, critique them, and think about what's next. My job is creating the vision and figuring out where we're steering the ship.

A year and a half to two years before I recorded this, I had one person working for me. Most of my success on YouTube came in those two years. Along the way we went through a lot of people and kept the best ones, and some had been producing content with me for over a year.

They say the two keys to scaling are people and technology. Without them you'll be pulling your hair out. So hire good people, keep building systems, and deal with the scaling problems as they come. If you're at that stage, read how to outsource faceless YouTube videos and how to scale to multiple channels.

Become Obsessed With YouTube

I spend a stupid amount of time on YouTube, watching and studying videos. I pulled up my watch time in the video to show it.

That's close to a full-time job of watching YouTube every week. A lot of it runs in the background while I work. Fortnite videos, Roblox content, self development, MrBeast, Logan Paul, podcasts. All sorts of stuff.

It's the reason I can make solid decisions on production and come up with viral video ideas. I'll ask a student what their favorite channels are and sometimes they say, "I don't really watch that much YouTube." Why would you expect massive success on a platform you don't watch?

You have to be a fan of your own niche to understand what those viewers want. When I'm watching, I ask myself why I clicked this video and not the ones next to it. Why is this one boring? Why am I skipping through it? Then I apply the answers to the content we make.

Video Chapters

• 0:00Intro
• 1:02A billion views without showing my face
• 2:35Success leaves clues
• 6:51Model the million-view videos
• 8:46My uncle's thumbnails
• 12:03Make the video people are craving
• 15:29Look at who you take inspiration from
• 17:20Vet where your information comes from
• 18:21Treat the algorithm as your audience
• 20:38Only publish what you'd put your name on
• 23:10Long-term and low risk
• 24:29Scale depends on your team
• 27:42Become obsessed with YouTube
• 31:25Recap

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