Transcription
I tried face this YouTube automation for 200 days, and I think it's about time somebody tells you the truth. Let's go back to day one.
I sat at my computer. I was looking at ways to earn a bag. I tried Drop Shipping, realized it's e-commerce for lazy people. I tried affiliate marketing, realized it's littered with false expectations. I tried Forex Trading, even paid the guru to trade for me, but then I realized my dog performed better.
Then I saw a YouTube automation pop up on my homepage. The word "automation" caught my eye. It screamed easy, no work, make money in your sleep. I checked out some videos about it. I saw these guys claiming to be making hundreds of thousands of dollars with these faceless channels, channels where you don't need to be on camera, and apparently, you outsource all of the work. You have a team that does everything for you. That's enough for me. I was in. If only I knew what I was getting myself into.
This is an unfiltered story of what happened for the next 200 days, and we're not hiding anything here. How much money we've spent, how much money we've made, and our biggest mistakes.
I made a list of YouTube channel ideas, then I picked one I liked. 5 minutes later, I had my channel idea. A mistake we'll get to that later. I asked my friend John if he wanted to do this with me. Together. Not a mistake. "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." He said yes.
We put up a job post on Upwork for an editor. This was the job post. We narrowed it down to one experienced guy who had loads of clients, and another guy who had barely any experience but was very bought into our vision. I never bet against a motivated underdog with a point of proof. We went with the underdog.
We made our first video. We expected it to take a week. It took four. Notice: make video guidelines for the editor before we start our next channel. Between video ideas, scripting, editing, and packaging, I realized this was far from automated. Not like software, anyway. The gurus pitched this as a well-oiled machine that required barely any input. In reality, I realized that in this job, you're just a glorified project manager. Damn.
We went ahead and launched our first video. Got no views. Damn. Launched our second video. Got eight views. Damn, damn again. But we weren't worried. From experience, I knew that YouTube growth took a long time, so I was prepared to strap in for a long ride of earning my stripes. That was my next mistake.
2 weeks later, both videos blew up. We got monetized in the space of 10 days, brought in millions of views, and started making some decent money. These were our total costs at the time, so we were already on track to make good profit. Here's a tip: when you do faceless YouTube, think in profit, not revenue. Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity.
With this extra profit, I made space in my wall for my gold play button. I also started looking up how much a Bugatti cost. Then everything fell apart. We launched another video. It got no views. Then we launched six more. Again, they got no views. Not in comparison to the first two videos that went viral. We couldn't replicate the success, and I didn't understand. The new videos were higher quality. How could they be getting less views? I didn't know why, but what I did know was that I had to cancel my Bugatti order.
We were feeling pretty dejected, so I went to the one place that always makes me feel better: Twitter. Anyway, I was scrolling through my home feed, found Wano's page, read his tweets. My mind was blown. Turns out, I learned more from one tweetstorm from this guy than I did hours of watching so-called YouTube gurus on YouTube.
I consumed all of his content and realized why we stopped getting views. There were two reasons. Reason number one: instead of nurturing the audience of 10,000 subs we had just built, we chased new ones. As a result, we ended up losing our initial audience. Targeting everyone is the same as targeting no one. Reason number two: we didn't understand market dynamics. Our channel chased viral hits, which is like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. There was no long-term value in going viral. The value is in recurring viewers. And after understanding this, we realized this channel we started was nothing more than a cash grab, one that used trends, face-jacking, and shock to get views. Great for going viral, terrible for building an audience. What a shame. I like that channel. Maybe we'll come back to it someday.
It was time to reassess. Equipped with some industry credit, we were now taking this very seriously. More seriously because faceless YouTube turned out to be a much bigger opportunity than we thought. Bigger than the gurus were letting on with their sneaky tricks to make money earned on YouTube, much greater than what it actually is. I fell for it too, don't worry. Turns out they were actually thinking about faceless YouTube all wrong. The opportunity does not lie in AdSense. It lies in something else, but we'll get to that later.
Now, it's important to note that these results that we got for the first two videos are quite unrealistic for beginners. Between all of us working on the team, we had about five years of YouTube between us. So we already had some industry credit built up. The more you work in an industry, the more credits you get. You understand what actually works and what to avoid. So if you're starting this with zero industry credit, you're either going to take a lot of time and a lot of sacrifice to earn those credits, or you can pay somebody to teach you and help you get up to speed. I recommend the latter. It's much quicker and more effective.
Anyway, let's get back to my Quinton Tarantino-esque montage. We began looking for markets on YouTube that we could launch a channel in. We call it a "white space," a segment on YouTube with lots of demand and little supply. Launching a channel in a white space is like teaching a duck to quack. It's easy. We developed a system for identifying these white spaces. We did this by benchmarking ratios of various channel figures, looking for outliers, and focusing on its economic viability. If we found a white space that aligned with our end goal, like converting this audience to a product we wanted to sell, we were in business. We even launched a newsletter telling other people about these ideas we're finding. If you're one of the first 100 people to subscribe to this newsletter down below, you'll get 10 ideas instantly.
We eventually found an idea we liked. It very much aligned with our end goal. It also passed our YouTube scorecard test. So we went about to finding our avatar. Our theory was that if every video was made specifically for our avatar, we would build a long-term audience. We made a list of 100 video ideas. We compiled a strategy and decided to execute on a plan. We were ready to go.
But unfortunately, I got diagnosed with something called "shiny object syndrome." I got distracted. You see, I saw a trend that was taking over YouTube: Pro-Gamer. It was definitely a white space, but it failed my scorecard test against my principles. We did it anyway. That was a mistake. We launched our competitor called "False Faces." It worked quite well, actually. But inevitably, we completely lost interest. We lost interest because it had no long-term economic viability. Ironically, competition gave the channel away to this nice guy called Gareth. Not to self-avoid shiny object syndrome. Focus on one thing you like, stick to your plan, and do it well.
But we did learn something. Something the videos we created for this channel were, for a better word, bad. But the idea was good, and it still performed really well. It hammered home that a great idea and poor execution will do better than a poor idea with great execution. Remember this for later.
Back to our original idea. We had a strategy. We now needed to execute. We went back to Upwork to find a suitable editor. We made a video guidelines doc that I promised myself I would. Before we got a bit of a shock when we realized how much animation cost. Eventually, we found a suitable candidate. It took 1 month and €350 to develop a prototype video. It took some time to get it right, but eventually, we made it perfect. When we asked her to send the high-quality version, she didn't reply. Ever. That was the last time we heard from her. She disappeared, like completely. Anya, if you're out there, I hope you're okay. She had all the video assets, so no one else could replicate the work that she did. Our perfect video was rendered useless.
So now we were back to square one, and a few months down the line with no progress. Frustration ensued. Listen, if you're testing something, it doesn't have to be perfect. It has to be done. We spent 1 month making a video perfect instead of making something good enough to test, releasing it, and seeing how the market reacts. Time to learn from that lesson. Time to go hell for leather.
We needed a reliable editor. Luckily, we were still talking to the same guy we worked with on our first channel. He was talented, he was reliable, and now he was in. Take care of your editors, and they'll take care of you. Recruiting is the hardest part of faceless YouTube. When you find someone you like, and they like you, make sure you hold on. The team set deadlines. We put ourselves under pressure and held each other accountable. Everybody on the team was incentivized for the channel to do well, and we managed to push things out quickly. Eventually, we released one video, then two videos, and then three videos. And now we're at today. No virality yet, no four-figure earning days, just slowly picking up impressions on our videos. The channel is picking up, and I will continue to give you updates on that channel. But truth be told, given this amazing start we had to face this YouTube automation, I thought we'd be a lot further along now than we actually are. But this is the truth. It's the reality. A reality that a lot of people don't show you.
Here are six things I wish I knew when I started faceless YouTube.
Number one: I wish we moved faster and broke things. I wouldn't be afraid to put out subpar content in the spirit of testing the market. If anything, if you post subpar content and it performs well, it's more of a signal that there is demand for it. Lesson number two: I wish we picked one thing to focus on and just focused on that from the very start. Because in any game I've ever played, in the realm of business, YouTube is the easiest to get distracted. Number three: I wish we were stricter on ourselves with regard to deadlines. You were too lenient, and deadlines are really effective. Number four: I wish we spent more money earlier. Up until this point, we've spent upwards of $7 to $10K and made back less than a fifth of that. And initially, we barely spent at all. And in this game, you really do get what you pay for. If you are very stingy with your money from the start, you will spend way more time hiring, dealing with subpar freelancers, and worrying about the wrong things. Hire once and hire well. Number five: I wish we were more focused on building an audience from the start, not chasing one-time views. And finally, I wish I didn't go into YouTube with stupid false expectations.
Here are the expectations I recommend you going into faceless YouTube with: It's going to require lots of investment, either time, money, or likely both. Regardless of how much money you have, it's going to take a lot of failing until you figure out what works and what doesn't. Definitely going to test your resilience. And finally, it's going to be worth it. Let me tell you why it's going to be worth it. And it's not AdSense revenue, which is what all the YouTube gurus are talking about. It's much bigger and it would last much longer.
100 years ago, we had a gold rush. 50 years ago, we had an oil rush. 10 years ago, we had a data rush. And today, there is an attention rush. And that's not changing anytime soon. With the recent advancements in AI, industries are only going to become more and more commoditized, meaning tasks that require 10 people today might only require one person in 5 years' time. And that means distribution is going to become everything. And by distribution, I'm talking about getting a product into the hands of a customer via communication. It's marketing, it's sales. And by far the most effective way to do this in the modern day is through an audience. And an audience can't be bought, it can only be earned. And those that put in the hard graft now to build their audiences will have all of the power later.
The plan over the coming years is to create a multitude of brands that an audience can value and trust. That's why faceless YouTube automation is going to be worth it. If you're looking to do it, from my experience, the hardest step in this entire process is finding the right idea. It's pivotal towards success. That's why subscribing to my newsletter, "White Space," is going to be probably the best thing you're going to do today. I hope that's all for me. We'll see you in the next one. Salam.