A faceless YouTube channel is exactly what it sounds like: a channel that makes money without ever showing a human face on camera. No selfie videos, no talking head, no personal brand. The videos are a script, a voiceover and edited footage (stock clips, images, screen recordings, motion graphics, some AI), and the channel is built around a topic instead of a person. I've made over $3 million with faceless channels. One geography channel of mine has generated over $700,000 and another channel over $800,000, and the whole thing comes down to three steps: pick a niche where channels are already making money, copy the video formats that are already working, and build a production system (yourself, with AI, or with hired writers, voice actors and editors) that puts out one to three long videos a week.
- A faceless channel is built around a topic, not a person. If there's no guy on camera and the videos are long format, that's a faceless channel, and some of them use AI faces.
- Viewers don't need a face, they need the content. Every video is made for one specific audience so each upload compounds into the next instead of wrecking the metrics.
- The money is AdSense first. You get monetized at 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, and in most niches $10K a month takes about 1.5 to 2 million views a month.
- The three steps behind my $3 million are niche, formats and production. The number one lesson is do not be creative. Find what's already working and do that.
- There are three ways to make the videos: AI, by hand, or outsourced. I outsource. When I built a channel live, the videos came out to around $80 to $130 each.
- You don't need a logo, a banner or gear. The logo on my $800,000 channel is the first transparent acorn image on Google.
- What Counts as a Faceless YouTube Channel
- Why Would Anyone Watch a Channel With No Face?
- How Big Is Faceless YouTube?
- How Do Faceless Channels Actually Make Money?
- The Three Ways to Make the Videos
- What Does It Take to Start?
- What Making One Video Looks Like
- Ready to Build Your Channel?
- Video chapters
- FAQ
What Counts as a Faceless YouTube Channel
A faceless YouTube channel is a channel where nobody appears on camera. The video is a voice over footage: stock clips, images, screen recordings, maps, text, motion graphics, sometimes AI visuals. The channel is about a topic (geography, senior health, true crime, history) rather than a personality, so the person who wrote the script, the person who read it and the person who edited it never show up in the frame.
That's how I spot one when I'm researching a niche. On the live training where I built a channel from scratch, I scrolled a health search and said it out loud: there's no guy on camera, so this is a faceless channel. It had 385,000 subscribers and 400 videos. The best channel I found that day used AI faces (obviously AI), posted only long format videos, had started four months earlier and already had million view videos. Still faceless.
The one thing people get wrong about the definition is thinking it means low effort. It doesn't. My geography channel runs on scripts, voice actors, editors and thumbnail designers managed on a Trello board by a channel manager. It just doesn't have me in it.
For the record, I also run a channel with my face on it. I make money off faceless YouTube and off being on camera. This page is about the first kind, and it's the kind I teach, because it's the kind you can build without becoming a YouTuber.
Here's the whole model in one table. The rest of the page is each row in detail.
| The three steps | What it means | Where I check |
|---|---|---|
| Niche | A topic where other channels are already making the money you want. For the geography channel I found channels making $200,000 a month before I started | YouTube search, ViewStats, vidIQ, and subscribing to every channel in the niche so the home page starts recommending more |
| Formats | The kinds of videos already working in that niche: top 10 and listicles, explainers, storytelling, news, documentaries | The most popular videos tab on one recent channel that's making money |
| Production | Script, voiceover, edit, thumbnail, upload, repeated one to three times a week with 10 to 20 minute videos | Do it yourself, use AI, or hire it on Upwork and run it on a Trello board |
Why Would Anyone Watch a Channel With No Face?
Because when you search "how to invest $10,000" or "scariest unsolved mysteries," you don't care who's talking. You care about the content, the information, the story. That's the insight that made faceless YouTube a multi-million dollar category. Viewers don't need a personality, they need value, and value can be delivered without ever turning on a webcam.
The way I'd put it from the inside: all of YouTube, and social media to be honest, is about making content for a specific audience. If you make a video the people already subscribed to you aren't interested in, it wrecks the metrics and the analytics. If every video is made for the same people, each one builds on the last. That's the snowball. One video compounds into the next, the audience grows, and it starts attracting more people just like the ones already watching.
A face can be part of that, but it isn't required. What's required is a topic people keep coming back for and a format they recognize. These are the formats I see working across faceless channels, with what we actually do on mine.
| Format | What it is | Example from my channels |
|---|---|---|
| Top 10 and listicles | A numbered list on one subject | We do 50 instead of 10: "50 absurd facts about the Florida Keys," "unexplored places in every US state" |
| Explainer | Teaching a subject or topic | The geography of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My business channels are explainers too |
| Storytelling | Telling a story, often someone's experience | A channel of mine (with my face on it, actually) where the content is built on storytelling |
| News style | The news or updates on one topic | Big in sports niches like Formula 1, and in celebrity drama |
| Documentary | Research a subject deeply, then tell it | Deadliest mountains on the geography channel |
You don't want to be inventive. You want to find what's already working and turn it into videos. Take "50 absurd facts about the Florida Keys," plug in a different keyword, and you've got "50 absurd facts about the Rocky Mountains." That sounds fake, but that's it. The format is the thing the audience shows up for.
How Big Is Faceless YouTube?
Here are some numbers from our portfolio and student base:
- 1,200+ students in Faceless Channel Academy, who have generated over 42 million dollars in revenue across their channels
- Channels in 20+ niches: finance, history, tech, sports, true crime, health, travel, and more
- Students monetizing in as fast as 30 days
And my own: over $3 million with faceless channels. The geography channel has generated over $700,000. The one with the acorn logo has generated over $800,000. When I picked that geography niche, other channels were already doing $200,000 a month. When I started a history channel, there were channels doing 50 to $100,000 a month. That's the point of the niche step: I did not want to be the first person making a thing that might make money. I wanted to be in a market where people were already getting paid.
This isn't a trend. It's an entire business model.
The question I get on every live training is "isn't YouTube oversaturated?" usually from someone who hasn't uploaded a video yet. The honest answer is that a specific niche can be, and YouTube as a whole can't. I wrote the test I run for that on is faceless YouTube saturated.
How Do Faceless Channels Actually Make Money?
The primary revenue source is YouTube AdSense, the ads that play before, during and after videos. Beyond AdSense, channels also earn from affiliate marketing, sponsorships and digital products. But AdSense is where a new channel's first dollar comes from, so here's how that works.
To get monetized you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. In practice that's one video that works. Get a video to 50,000 views or so and you'll be monetized. One of my students did it on her fifth video, an art channel. That video got 55,000 views, she was monetized, and she'd already generated about 300 bucks in her first five videos. She'd never done this before.
From there it's a views game. In most niches, $10K a month means about 1.5 to 2 million views a month. The rate you get per thousand views depends on the niche and on who's advertising to your viewers, which is why the niche step comes before anything else. I keep the per-niche numbers from my own channels on YouTube RPM by niche, and the advertiser's side on YouTube CPM rates by niche. Short version: finance, tech and health content pays several times what sports does per view.
Here's how I think about what a video is worth before I make it. On the live build I came up with 12 video ideas off the emulation channel. If the average one gets 200,000 views at around seven dollars per thousand, that's 17 grand across the 12, which makes the average video worth about $1,300 to $1,500 to the channel. Now the only job is making a video good enough to earn it.
Shorts don't pay. I saw a guy get a billion views on shorts and make $200,000. If I got a billion views on long form videos I'd make at least $5 million. Every faceless channel I build posts 10 to 20 minute videos, and the ones that get views go longer.
If you want to see the full revenue math on real channels, how much do faceless YouTube channels make walks through it.
The Three Ways to Make the Videos
There are three ways to make a faceless video: with AI, by hand, or by outsourcing it. I outsource. My students do a mix of AI and outsourcing. Here's what each one actually looks like.
| Way | What it looks like | My take |
|---|---|---|
| By hand | You write the script, record the voice on your phone's voice memos app, edit in iMovie or a free editor, make the thumbnail | The 2021 version of my process. It works, and it costs nothing but time. The problem is you have to learn four skill sets before you make any serious money |
| AI | AI tools write, voice or illustrate parts of the video, and you assemble | What my students mix with outsourcing. The best channel I found on the live build used AI to make its videos. What YouTube does and doesn't allow here is on why YouTube terminates AI channels |
| Outsourced | A scriptwriter, a voice actor, a video editor and a thumbnail designer on Upwork, managed on a Trello board | What I do and what I teach. On the live build the videos came out to around $80 to $130 each |
If you make everything yourself, you have to learn script writing, voiceovers, editing and thumbnails. It's a lot of work to make one YouTube video, and it takes forever to make money that way. Instead you can jump on a freelancer site and hire people who already know how to do each piece.
My production board for the geography channel has columns for ideas, script, voiceover, editing and thumbnails. The cards move left to right, and then I hire a channel manager who hires, fires and manages the videos in production, including scheduling and posting. The full breakdown of who I hire and what each role costs is in how I made $3 million with faceless channels and how to make $30K a month with a faceless channel.
Don't use Fiverr for this. And don't wait to hire until the channel is paying. You want someone who already knows how to do what you're trying to do. Otherwise you spend a year learning to write scripts when you could pay somebody who does it full time.
What Does It Take to Start?
Less than people think. You need a system and the discipline to follow it. You don't need to be a tech expert and you don't need expensive equipment. I built a channel from zero live on a training call, and these were the steps.
| Step | What I did | What it took |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Create the channel | youtube.com/channel, name it, done. Logo was the first transparent lettuce image on Google | A couple of minutes. No banner, no description needed |
| 2. Pick a niche | Searched one health keyword, subscribed to every channel that came up, checked earnings on ViewStats until I found one making 10K a month | About 10 minutes and five or six channels |
| 3. Find the emulation channel | One recent channel, started 5 months earlier, 31 videos, 9 million views, at least $20,000 in two months | The channel you copy the strategy from |
| 4. Write 5 to 10 video ideas | Took its most popular videos and swapped the keyword: "6 movements Japanese elders do every day" became Italian elders | Ended up with 12 ideas |
| 5. Decide how to make them | Fully outsource, or do part of the work yourself | If you have at least $1,000 to put into videos, outsource |
| 6. Hire on Upwork | Three job posts: scriptwriter, voice actor, video editor. Five applicants on the first post before the call ended | Three posts in about 5 minutes |
| 7. Post | One to three times a week, 10 to 20 minute videos, managed on a Trello board | Vetting the freelancers is the only real work left |
| 8. Get monetized, then to $10K a month | 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours, then 1.5 to 2 million views a month | One viral video gets you monetized |
The written version of that call is how to build a 6-figure faceless YouTube channel, and the niche step on its own is on how to pick a YouTube niche.
Two of those steps carry the whole thing. The niche decides the ceiling, which is why I spend most of the time there. The trick is to find channels that are already making 10K a month. If you can find them, that's the foundation, and the keyword search plus ViewStats plus clicking into a video so the sidebar recommends more channels like it is how I find them. The emulation channel decides the videos, because you don't come up with your own ideas. I don't. MrBeast doesn't. You take the videos that already did well on a recent channel and change the wording.
On that call people were asking about banners, about whether YouTube would punish them for copying a channel, and about how they'd get paid, before a single video existed. One of my students has 75 videos and 30,000 subscribers, no banner, and made $25,000 in his first month of monetization. Make the videos first. Worry about getting paid after you've put something into the marketplace.
What Making One Video Looks Like
Whether you do it yourself or hand it to a team, every faceless video goes through the same loop. I drew it out in a 2021 video on getting a play button without recording anything, and it hasn't changed.
- Content strategy. One to three proven ideas you can make 10 plus videos from. "What if" applied to basketball instead of science. "Banned touchdown celebrations" turned into banned celebrations in the PGA. This is the step that matters most. If it's bad, nothing else saves the video.
- Titles. Write 10 or so from the strategy, pick the best one to three.
- Thumbnail. Keep it simple, one to three things max, readable when it's small on a phone. If I can't make a good thumbnail for a title, I pick another title.
- Script. Fulfill the title in the intro, only cover the most interesting things, and write for the ear, not the page. I read every sentence out loud.
- Voiceover. On your phone in the voice memos app is enough. Match the tone to the topic, creepy for scary, playful for funny.
- Edit. Clips, b-roll and memes in iMovie or whatever you have. Be intentional with every cut. Watch it back, and if you get bored, fix the part that bored you.
- Upload and repeat. Paste the title into the description, five to ten keywords that repeat the title, and move on to the next one.
I recommend about 30 videos through that loop before you judge anything. Throw up the content, look at what the results tell you, change the content around that, and get as much feedback as humanly possible from people in the niche. When I hire it out, the writer, the voice actor and the editor each own one of those steps and the Trello board is the loop.
Ready to Build Your Channel?
If you want to make 10 to 30K a month with a faceless YouTube channel, this is the process: a good topic, good formats and a good production system. Book a free strategy call with an FCA advisor. They'll look at your niche, go over your situation and give you a straight answer on whether Faceless Channel Academy is right for you. Book a call.
Video Chapters
- 0:00Over $3 million with faceless channels
- 0:31Why this channel is a Q&A channel
- 1:01The $700,000 and $800,000 channels
- 1:33The three steps: niche, formats, production
- 2:04Pick a niche where channels already make money
- 3:35Formats: do what's already working
- 4:06Listicles and explainers on the geography channel
- 5:08Storytelling, news and documentaries
- 5:40Plug a new keyword into a proven video
- 6:12Three ways to make the videos
- 6:42Hiring writers, voice actors and editors
- 7:12The Trello board and the channel manager
- 7:44The entire process
- 8:15Why I'm giving this away
FAQ
What is a faceless YouTube channel?
A faceless YouTube channel is one where nobody appears on camera. The videos are a script read over stock footage, images, screen recordings or AI visuals, and the channel is built around a topic rather than a person. Devon Canup has made over $3 million with faceless channels, including a geography channel that has generated over $700,000.
Do faceless YouTube channels actually make money?
Yes. Devon Canup's geography channel has generated over $700,000 and another of his channels over $800,000, and he says the channels he studied before starting them were already making $200,000 a month in geography and 50 to $100,000 a month in history. Revenue comes mainly from AdSense, with sponsorships, affiliates and digital products on top.
How many views does a faceless channel need to make $10K a month?
In most niches, about 1.5 to 2 million views a month, according to Devon Canup. Monetization itself needs 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, which one video with around 50,000 views can get you.
Do I need to make the videos myself?
No. Devon Canup outsources every video to a scriptwriter, voice actor, video editor and thumbnail designer hired on Upwork and managed on a Trello board. When he built a channel live, the videos cost around $80 to $130 each. Making them yourself works too, it just means learning four skills first.
Are faceless YouTube channels the same as YouTube automation?
Mostly, yes. "YouTube automation" usually means a faceless channel where the production is outsourced to freelancers and a manager, which is how Devon Canup runs his. He also counts channels made by hand or with AI help as faceless, as long as there's no one on camera.
What's the first step to starting a faceless YouTube channel?
Create the channel, then find a niche where channels are already making $10K a month. Devon Canup searches one keyword, subscribes to every channel that comes up, and checks their earnings on ViewStats until he finds a recent faceless channel making money. That channel becomes the emulation channel the first 5 to 10 video ideas come from.
Want This Built With You?
Faceless Channel Academy is the coaching program I run for people building faceless YouTube channels: niche, formats, team, packaging, with an advisor and live calls. Book a free strategy call and we'll look at where you are and whether it's a fit.
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