- This video cost me, I think, $250 to produce
and it ended up producing 20,000 US.
In the last year, it's close to seven figures.
In Q4 alone, I did 400,000,
nearly a half a million dollars in AdSense revenue.
- The question is how?
How does Noah Morris earn up to $200,000 per month
on YouTube working just one day a week?
The answer may trigger you. Faceless channels.
Welcome to the world of YouTube automation.
From humble beginnings as a Minecraft creator
earning no more than $100 per month of AdSense revenue,
Noah now runs over 20 faceless channels
and he's barely out of his teens.
Now, when it comes to YouTube automation
and faceless channels, I will be the first to confess
I am a complete noob.
And in my humble opinion, of course,
faceless channels have somewhat
of a controversial reputation.
So I spent an hour talking to Noah about his business model
and the thing I wanted to know most was could it be done
by complete beginners like me and you?
Let me spoiler answer for you now, yes.
And especially after this video
because Noah told me everything.
A step-by-step approach on how to find the right niche,
the right people, not to spend too much money,
but earn tons from it.
So let's just jump right in.
- [Noah] Originally, I found this niche.
The channel is called Court Cases.
The second video got 5 million views.
Can also show the earnings.
This video cost me, I think $250 to produce
and it ended up producing 20,000 US.
- Okay, Noah, based on that information,
I might just quit my job and start a faceless channel,
but I'm gonna need a niche, right?
Which are the best paying niches?
- For me, it's sports, celebrity content,
crime related content,
and essentially everything that American people watch.
And American audiences just have higher RPMs.
So some of these channels, especially in Q4,
can get insanely high RPMs.
I'm talking sometimes 14 to $15 RPMs.
- So are there any standard techniques that you can teach us
that will help us find niches like that?
- It's a very consistent process you have to get a hang of.
So I would be every day going on YouTube incognito
and refreshing my homepage.
And then pressing on the YouTube cash cow content.
So YouTube would recommend me more YouTube cash cow content
and I would be able to find those new channels
getting recommended, so that's one way I teach.
Another way would be the keyword method
where I would input random keywords,
like let's say basketball.
I would go to most viewed and this month
and I would scroll through all the channels.
I would actually use VidIQ
to essentially look at the subscriber count
and I would look at the amount of views
a channel would essentially have.
And then when I found a channel that has a bunch of views,
small amounts of subscribers,
that would probably be a channel that started recently.
And if I find multiple channels like that,
I'm talking if they're getting above 200,000 views a video
and very, very consistently as well,
and there's maybe two or three of these types of channels
that started recently,
that's when you find a gap in the market.
- Wow, Noah, what you've just told me right there
is what other people might charge $5,000 for in a course.
This is essentially a blueprint, right?
For faceless channels.
So let's say I found a bunch of channels like this,
what do I do next?
- So after you found that niche,
you wanna think about, okay, is it not too saturated?
You know, you have two sides you can choose
on YouTube automation.
Either you make really, really high quality content
and you can basically get into every niche,
or you just make sure you have that first mover's advantage
and you produce less quality,
but you make sure you're first to a niche.
So that's step one always.
- And then step two would be?
- Obviously, you come up with the topics.
I would suggest for your first few topics
try to emulate what the existing channels are doing.
So for example, for the Court Cases channel, right?
What I was doing is, obviously,
I first looked at Courtroom
which is the channel I was emulating,
but then I was thinking, okay,
other than these topics from Courtroom,
see if there's any other older related channels.
So in this case, I was researching
and I found out he was taking the topics,
original topics from the A&E YouTube channel.
So I started studying what videos did well in the past
on the A&E YouTube channel,
and which of those topics haven't been done
by my competitors before.
And I'll take those topics and put them on my own channels.
Well, we see, if you look at the Court Cases,
I even integrated the trend of Jeffrey Dahmer at the time.
So you can get very creative with it
as long as your decisions on your channel
are always backed by data.
Normal YouTubers, they would usually create topics
based on feelings.
A lot of the times I see that happening,
but you really want to make decisions
based on data and what did well in the past.
- So I'm guessing at this point we're getting really close
to the actual production of videos, is that right?
- So a lot of people always say, "Okay,
go straight away to the hiring script writer."
This is not the case.
You can definitely just start a YouTube channel
and then eventually turn it into YouTube automation channel.
That's very, very doable.
When someone's never done YouTube
I suggest they just start as a regular creator.
The downside is very small. You get experience firsthand.
I know very well how to video edit.
I know very well how to script write.
But if you've never done that before
and you immediately start hiring,
you're very disconnected with your team, right?
So script the videos yourself, get an AI voiceover.
They're getting really, really good now.
And do the video editing yourself until you break even
or you're making a profit and then start outsourcing it.
- Okay, so this is encouraging, Noah.
You're essentially saying
that anyone can start out with zero budget,
and it might actually be the right way to do it,
to learn the craft.
But what if I wanted to build out a team like you?
What do I do?
- You want to find the team
that carries the passion for you.
Essentially, you don't only outsource the work,
you also outsource the passion.
Once you've identified your niche market, your topic,
that's when you know who to hire.
For script writers, I highly recommend finding someone
who is passionate about the subject.
I would rather hire a script writer who knows nothing
about YouTube retention and who is very, very passionate
than a script writer who is a retention nerd,
but knows nothing about, for example,
crime documentaries or tennis.
You need a script writer that matches the target audience
before you focus on retention.
'cause retention is something you're able to teach someone
and passion you can't teach.
So when I search someone for a specific sport,
I'll go into a Discord channel that has people
who play that sport and I'll ask,
"Is there anyone interested
in earning a little bit of money on the side?"
Or I'll contact people who run a blog
about a specific sport.
These are really good places
to get those script writers from.
- Do you have any specific advice
on hiring voiceover artists and video editors?
- Voiceover actor doesn't really matter.
Just try to find someone again, that matches
or appeals to your target audience.
So if it's crime, find deep male voice.
If it's gossip content, try to find a high pitch girl voice.
But your video editing doesn't necessarily have to have
any affiliation with the niche or content itself.
Just make sure they understand
retention based editing very, very well.
That they're able to tell stories very well
through finding the right clips to use online.
- What about thumbnails?
Because we know a lot of creators struggle with this,
faceless channel or not.
- The thumbnails, at the start,
I usually like to design myself
simply because a lot of thumbnail designers
are great designers, but they're not good at understanding
what makes an audience click.
If you look at the Court Cases YouTube channel
and you look at the thumbnails,
they're not very complicated, but they got results.
You first want to teach yourself, okay,
what type of thumbnails do work here?
Then once your channel does well
you wanna start outsourcing that process.
So now you teach the thumb designer
and you give him inspiration for the thumbnail.
He simply does the designing
of putting the thumbnail together
and the concept you still do.
And after a while of working together, maybe a few months,
that's when you say, okay, now you do the full process.
Now you're in full charge
of making sure these videos get views.
- Noah, you've already mentioned a lot at this point,
but what are we missing right now?
You mentioned retention hacks. Tell us more about that.
- What I usually teach the script writer essentially
is I send 'em all the channels of our competitors.
I say, "Okay, have a look what people are mentioning
in the comments,
and also look at the relative YouTube retention."
If you hover about the YouTube play bar
you see these transparent up and down mountains
above the YouTube play bar.
That's relative retention.
Look at the relative retention
and see what the points of interest are in the video.
And same thing for the comments.
It's like a library of understanding
what people are interested in, right?
The retention comes from understanding your audience mainly.
It's not about secret editing hacks, not so much.
It's about understanding what moves your audience
to take action or to comment,
to engage, to watch more videos.
Studying the target audience in that way
would be my biggest retention hack.
- Alright, I feel like I'm subtly pumped
for faceless channels.
And now thanks to you,
I have all of the strategies to start.
So what's the best case scenario?
How much can you make from YouTube automation
with faceless channels?
- In November of last year,
I think I did around $200,000 in a month
in YouTube AdSense revenue.
- And how much would you say on average it costs
to start a faceless channel?
- Beginners, I would say
it would probably take up to a month
for them to get started, but for me personally,
it takes about two weeks to start up a channel
to get that first video running.
And maybe to get to that first 1,000 to 10,000 views.
I would start seeing a return at video number 12.
Now, let's say the average video cost would be $100.
That would cost me a $1,200 to break even.
For beginners, I would say 3,000, $3,500 of videos
that are $100.
So 35 videos, I think.
- What would you say is the hardest thing
about YouTube automation?
- The hardest part would be a good thumbnail designer
and a good editor.
- I mean, talking about lifting the lid
on an entire YouTube industry.
You've just got it all right there.
And if you do wanna learn more about faceless channels
and YouTube automation, then follow Noah on Twitter.
Link is in a description.
Now, Noah mentioned that one of the key components
of a faceless channel or any video for that matter
is the editing of it.
And it turns out there are four editing secrets
that will help you hack retention
and this is how you do them.