YouTube Shorts for faceless channels are not worth it long term, in my experience, because they don't pay. When I estimate what a channel makes I count Shorts views at about 10 cents per 1,000 and long form views at $5 to $10 per 1,000, so I ignore the Shorts views. I saw a guy get a billion views on Shorts and make $200,000. If I got a billion views with long form videos I would make at least $5 million. Every faceless channel I build posts 10 to 20 minute videos, one to three a week. The one job Shorts can do is get a new channel monetized faster, and some of my students have used clipped Shorts for exactly that and then stopped posting them.
- Shorts pay about 10 cents per 1,000 views on my math, which is why I ignore them when I estimate a channel's revenue.
- To make $6,000 with a Short you'd need about 100 million views. A long form video can get there at about a million views. That is 100 times more views for the same money.
- Short form viewers are a different type of viewer. A TikTok page that did 400,000 views in two months sent one of my YouTube channels about 50,000 views and $300 or so.
- The six figure channel I found live on a training call posts long form only, no Shorts, with videos that average 20 minutes.
- Shorts have a different algorithm. Students of mine have clipped their long videos into Shorts to get monetized and build a seed audience, then taken them down.
- My answer has moved from "I haven't formed an opinion" in 2023 to "you never want to do short form" in 2026, and the money is why.
- Are YouTube Shorts worth it long term for a faceless channel?
- How much do Shorts actually pay compared to long form videos?
- Will Shorts bring viewers over to my long form videos?
- What do the faceless channels that make money actually post?
- Should a new faceless channel start with Shorts or long form?
- When do Shorts make sense for a faceless channel?
- How my answer on Shorts has changed since 2023
- Video chapters
- FAQ
Are YouTube Shorts worth it long term for a faceless channel?
No. Not as the thing the channel is built on.
When I built a channel live on a training call (May 2026) and somebody in the chat asked if we do long format videos, my answer was yes, you always do long format videos. You never want to do short form. Shorts just don't pay money, unless you get something like a billion views.
That billion views line is not a figure of speech. I saw a guy who got a billion views on Shorts and only made $200,000. That is a lot of work to get a billion views. If I got a billion views with long form videos I would make at least $5 million.
So the long term question answers itself for me. Every channel I build posts 10 to 20 minute videos, and when I reset Across the Globe we went longer, not shorter. I make all my money from long format content, and I have said that on camera every year since 2023.
That said, I'm not going to pretend Shorts have no use. They have a different algorithm, and there is one job they can do for a faceless channel, which I cover further down. The rest of this page is the math and the tests behind the answer, so you can check it against your own numbers.
How much do Shorts actually pay compared to long form videos?
When I estimate what any channel is making I use ViewStats, because it breaks the views down into Shorts views and long views. I always ignore the Shorts views, because those are basically worth nothing. If you want to count them, take the Shorts views, divide by 1,000 and multiply by about 10 cents. That is a little bit conservative (there are ways to get it up), but it's the rate I use.
Long form views on the same channel I count at $5 per 1,000 on a 10 to 15 minute video, and at $8 to $10 per 1,000 when the videos run 20 to 40 minutes. The full method, with a worked example, is in how to calculate faceless YouTube channel earnings.
Here is what that gap looks like in the numbers I've actually used on camera.
| What I compared | Shorts | Long form |
|---|---|---|
| Per 1,000 views (my estimating rate) | About 10 cents | $5, rising to $8 to $10 on 20 to 40 minute videos |
| Views needed to make $6,000 | About 100 million | About a million |
| A billion views | A guy I saw made $200,000 | I would make at least $5 million |
| The Shorts on a channel I estimated (April 2025) | About 200 bucks in three months | Hundreds of thousands of dollars from the long form views |
The 100 times more views line comes from a question I get constantly: can we do Shorts? You can make money with Shorts, but I found it's way easier to just do long format videos. Yes, it's a longer video to make. But getting a video to 100 million views is, I feel, way harder than getting a slightly longer video to a million views.
Even a short long form video loses most of the money. Reviewing a channel in 2023, I told the owner a two minute video at a million views might make 1500 dollars, where a 10 minute video on the same views could make three, four, five grand. The per-niche rates are on YouTube RPM by niche.
Will Shorts bring viewers over to my long form videos?
This is the real question behind "should I use Shorts to advertise my long videos," and I tested it with money.
I had a guy who was super famous on TikTok build a TikTok page for one of my YouTube channels. We got about 400,000 views on TikTok in the span of about two months. Do you want to know how much that converted into on the YouTube channel? We got to about 50,000 views from it, and we made something like $300 or $500 worth of views. A massive amount of short form views, and it did not convert.
The reason is the viewer. Someone who likes to watch Reels or TikToks, or scroll through X, is a different type of viewer than someone who watches long form YouTube videos. They're not the best audience for a 20 minute video.
If you're a personal brand it works a lot better, because people feel they get to spend more time with you and get closer to you as a friend. When you're a faceless channel, I found it's honestly not that good. (The difference between the two models is on faceless YouTube vs a personal brand.)
That is the whole lesson from the test. Genuinely, all of your attention and resources go into the long videos.
What do the faceless channels that make money actually post?
I don't ask people to take my word on this. On the live training I built a health channel from nothing and went looking for a channel to model, and I showed the chat what I check before I copy anybody.
| What I checked | The channel we found |
|---|---|
| How old | Started 4 months earlier |
| Views | Million view videos, about 2.9 million views in the last 3 months |
| Faceless | Yes (the faces on screen were AI) |
| Format | All long format videos, not short form |
| Video length | On average 20 minutes |
That channel was making six figures a year. Every box had to be ticked before I'd model it, and "all long format, not Shorts" was one of the boxes.
The Shorts channels get in the way of the estimate, too. Earlier in the same search ViewStats looked broken on a well known doctor's clips channel, and then I saw why: he did short form videos, so the revenue estimate meant nothing. That is the same reason I ignore Shorts views on every channel I look at.
Length pays in the other direction. When a channel's videos run 20 to 40 minutes I bump my per-thousand estimate to 1.5 to 2 times the base rate. On my own channel Across the Globe, going from roughly 10 minute videos to 20 to 40 minutes was part of the reset that took it from a couple thousand a month back to $16,000 (the breakdown is in how I grew a dead YouTube channel to $16K a month).
Should a new faceless channel start with Shorts or long form?
Long form, from the first video. This is the one piece of my answer that hasn't moved.
Two things decide it for a new channel. The first is money, covered above. The second is monetization, and it's the part people get backwards. To get monetized you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, which is about 40,000 views. It's not that much. If you make one video that blows up, you get monetized. A lot of times you just need one video.
Once you're monetized, if you get a million views you'll make anywhere between $4,000 and $20,000 depending on the niche and the length of the content.
So the first channel I'd build looks like this:
- 10 to 20 minute videos, one to three a week, on the schedule your production can hold.
- Model the recent faceless channel in your niche that is already making money with long form.
- No Shorts until the long form is working. The step by step is on how to start a faceless YouTube channel.
Reviewing a channel that did 7 million views in 30 days with a good amount of Shorts and three to five minute videos, I put it at five to eight thousand dollars a month. The same channel could do fifteen or twenty thousand a month if it just did longer format videos. My advice was to figure out how to make each video 10 minutes long.
When do Shorts make sense for a faceless channel?
Three cases, and all of them come after the long form is in place.
Getting monetized faster. Shorts have a different algorithm. I've had students use one of the softwares that clips a long form video into Shorts, post the Shorts just to get monetized and build a bigger seed audience, and then take them down and quit posting. It got them eyeballs a lot faster, and it's a good approach there. The Shorts were never the product. The long videos were.
Branding. Back when I hadn't formed an opinion yet (2023), the one thing I would say for Shorts was that they're good for branding and for getting a little more traffic. I still think that's where they sit.
A brand on top of a working channel. On Across the Globe my plan is to turn the channel into a full brand, with a website, a blog, a Facebook page and maybe pages like TikTok and Instagram with short form content. That's the bigger picture for a channel that already works, not the way I'd start one.
Do what my students did. Clip the long videos you already made with one of the clipping softwares, post the Shorts to get monetized and seed the audience, and take them down once they've done that job.
What I would not do is run a Shorts strategy and a long form strategy at the same time on a new channel. One of the biggest beginner mistakes I see is trying to do seven different content strategies at once, and the channel ends up a Frankenstein of ideas that is made for nobody.
How my answer on Shorts has changed since 2023
I'd rather show you the dates than pretend I always said this. Here is every time I've answered the Shorts question on camera.
| When I said it | What I said |
|---|---|
| June 2023, reviewing channels | I hadn't formed an opinion on Shorts yet. Good for branding, and I make all my money from long format. Go feel it, try it. |
| June 2024, beginner mistakes | Shorts were paying a lot better right then, but you still have to get a ton of views to make money, and long format is significantly better. |
| August 2024, the views training | I'm not a big fan of Shorts. Students use clipped Shorts to get monetized and seed an audience, then take them down. |
| April 2025, estimating earnings | Shorts views are worth about 10 cents per 1,000. I ignore them. |
| May 2026, the live channel build | You always do long format. You never want to do short form. A billion Shorts views made a guy $200,000. |
The direction is one way. Every year I've looked at it, Shorts have moved further down the list. This page carries the date of the video it's written from, so you can see when I said it.
Video Chapters
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:54Step 1: Create a YouTube Channel
- 3:12Step 2: Pick a Niche
- 16:48Step 3: Find Your Emulation Channel
- 17:30Step 4: Come Up With 5-10 Video Ideas
- 26:16Step 5: Make the Videos (Outsourcing)
- 32:52Step 6: Hire Freelancers on Upwork
- 39:52Step 7: Fully Outsource & Post
- 41:18Step 8: Get Monetized
- 42:18Get to $10K/Month
FAQ
Are YouTube Shorts worth it for a faceless channel?
Not as the main format, in Devon Canup's experience. He counts Shorts views at about 10 cents per 1,000 against $5 to $10 per 1,000 for long form, and every faceless channel he builds posts 10 to 20 minute videos. He saw a channel get a billion Shorts views and make $200,000, where he says a billion long form views would make him at least $5 million.
How much do YouTube Shorts pay per 1,000 views?
Devon estimates about 10 cents per 1,000 Shorts views, which he calls a little conservative. On one channel he estimated in April 2025, the Shorts views came to about 200 bucks over three months while the long form views came to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Do Shorts help you get monetized faster?
They can. Devon has had students clip their long form videos into Shorts, post them to reach monetization and build a seed audience faster, then take the Shorts down. His own route is one long video that gets views: monetization takes 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, about 40,000 views, and one video that blows up can get there.
Should I use Shorts to advertise my long form videos?
Devon tested it with a TikTok page built by a creator who was famous on TikTok. It did about 400,000 views in two months and sent his YouTube channel about 50,000 views and roughly $300. Short form viewers are a different type of viewer, he says, and the crossover works better for a personal brand than for a faceless channel.
Should a new faceless YouTube channel start with Shorts or long form?
Long form. Devon's rule on his May 2026 live channel build was that you always do long format videos and never short form. He posts 10 to 20 minute videos one to three times a week and models a recent faceless channel that is already making money with long form.
Is it worth continuing if my Shorts only get about 1,000 views each?
On Devon's math 1,000 Shorts views is about 10 cents, so as a revenue plan it isn't. He recommends long format instead: a long form video at a million views makes anywhere between $4,000 and $20,000 depending on the niche and the length, by his numbers.
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