Transcription
Most people think that in order to make money on YouTube, you need to be tech-savvy. You need to have fancy gear. And they definitely think you need thousands of subscribers before earning anything. And it's only a game that's good for young people.
Well, I'm here to tell you that that is all complete nonsense. I'm going to show you how people over 50 are making money on YouTube quickly. We're talking real money sometimes from day one without waiting for YouTube to monetize them. And also without expensive cameras or being a tech expert or anything like that. Just regular people using their phones and their life experience to win.
Now, if you like me doing this type of content and you want to see me make more of it, go ahead and gently tap that like button and let's jump into it right now.
Okay, first thing is you need to start with your voice, not fancy tech. You're over 50 years old. You have a massive amount of life experience and wisdom and there have been so many problems that you've had in your life that you've been able to solve. That is what you should be leveraging and that's your secret to making money. Not expensive gear. Your phone camera is more than good enough to get started today. Even a cheap webcam will do the job just fine. Now, most modern phones shoot better video than cameras from 5 years ago. So, there's no excuse about not having the right equipment.
And here's something most people don't know. You don't even have to show your face on camera. You can create faceless videos using slides or stock footage. And you can just do voiceovers with images in the background. And many people, including myself, have started on YouTube this way. And then you can literally just record your screen and talk over it. So, the options are endless and none of them require you to have fancy equipment. In fact, I personally think that that will slow you down and it will likely cause you to not get results.
And let me show you proof that gear doesn't matter. There's this older guy with a channel called M&J Metal. He recorded a video about making Pickle Pepsi at home and he used his phone to film the entire thing and this does not look like a new iPhone. If anything, this might be a Nokia flip phone from 10 years ago, maybe even longer than that. Now, if you watch it all the way, you can tell it's definitely not professional quality. There's zero edits. The thumbnail is incredibly simple. He doesn't even move the camera or the phone when he's demonstrating making the pickle Pepsi. And of course, it looks like it was shot on a potato phone. But people loved it anyways because the content was interesting. And within 3 weeks, that video got over 2.8 million views, and he earned an estimated $14,000. And that's just from AdSense alone. Plus, he went from almost no subscribers all the way up to 148,000 subscribers in just a few weeks. That is the power of just starting with what you have. You don't need fancy cameras or professional lighting to make money. You can literally use your phone and talk about anything.
And if you're over 50, you actually have an advantage here. You have life experience that younger creators simply don't have yet. And people want to learn from someone who's been there and done that because most general information, let's be honest, can just be looked up on ChatGPT. However, wisdom is something that can't.
All right, section two. Pick a beginner-friendly niche. Now, let's talk about what you should actually make videos about. Think about what you already know or what you're curious to learn. You don't need to be an expert to start teaching people. You just need to know a little bit more than your audience. And almost all the successful YouTubers I know basically were just teaching the younger version of themselves how they can overcome problems that they had, including myself. I started off teaching people how to evaluate different college degrees, different careers, and other types of alternative education. Why? Because when I graduated high school and I was trying to figure out what to do with my life, there were almost no good resources online. So, I wanted to be that resource.
Now, here are some easy niches for beginners at 50 years old. First option is teaching what you already know from life. Maybe you have trade skills from years of working with your hands. Maybe you know do-it-yourself projects or small business experience. And maybe you have career tips from decades in the workplace. By the way, those are literally all examples of people that I've actually worked with and I've seen become successful. But the point is, your life experience itself is valuable content that people will watch.
The second option is evergreen content that always stays relevant. Top 10 lists are simple to make and they get consistent views. How-to guides solve problems that people are always searching for online. And commentary videos where you give your take on trending topics like the news.
Now, the third option is lifestyle content specifically for people over 50. So, we're talking health and fitness tips for aging bodies that younger creators can't give, finance advice for retirement planning or getting out of debt later in life, or tech tips for older adults who didn't grow up with smartphones. And by the way, these are also all niches from people that I know that are successful YouTubers or I've worked with.
Now, just as a quick side note here, if you are a 50-over creator, you have a massive advantage. Why? Because first of all, there's tons of young creators creating content, but there's not that many older creators. So supply and demand is automatically in your favor. Additionally, there's lots of people that want to consume content from older creators because again, there's not that many older creators. So younger people want to see the wisdom of older people. Then older people are going to appreciate the relatability of listening to somebody else that's in their age bracket. So again, supply and demand is in your favor.
And additionally, YouTube loves 50 and over creators. Why? Well, because of supply and demand for one. But they have a secret reason as well. Advertisers will pay significantly more to get in front of 50 and over creators. Because 50 and over owns about 80% of the wealth in the United States, aka disposable income. And so when ads are shown to them, they're much more likely to be able to buy stuff.
And this is why when my 50-year-old brother, who's been in the trades for over 30 years, came to me and said, "Hey Shane, my body is starting to deteriorate. You're really good with side hustles, remote jobs, different ways of making money, etc. What do you think I should do so I don't have to break my back every day?" And of course, I told him YouTube. And he was very skeptical at first. He wasn't tech-savvy. He'd never made a video in his life. He barely even watched YouTube. But his very first video blew up. 30 days after posting that first video, he had a $214 day. That's a $70,000 year run rate. And around 3 months after posting that video, he had a $440 day. That's a $160,000 year run rate. Oh, and he's also getting a lot of sales from affiliate marketing as well. And each sale is hundreds of dollars.
Now, if you want to know exactly how I help my 50-year-old brother grow, I am going to be having a live training this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Check it out in the description in the pen comment below.
All right, quick break. This Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, I'm hosting a free live workshop called The New Way to Make Money with YouTube and AI. It's happening on November 4th, 2025. So, make sure to mark that down. Now, if you're struggling to find your niche or you don't want to commit months or even years to a niche that ends up not being profitable, then this is for you. Because at this workshop, I'll be giving away the Niche Validator 2.1. This is the newest version of my GPT powered niche validation tool designed to help you instantly test and uncover profitable YouTube niches. Before you waste time creating content that doesn't convert, it's been updated and improved based on thousands of data points from real channels. And I'll be giving it away completely free only at this live workshop. And just so you know, I'm planning to turn this into a full software product sometime in the future. So, it might not stay free forever, but you'll lock it in if you get it at this workshop, but that's something to keep in mind just in case you've been wanting to grab it. So, attend the free live workshop by clicking the link down in the description in the pin comment below. Oh, and by the way, you'll also be able to ask me questions live. So, I look forward to meeting you. See you this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern time.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Okay, let me give you another real example of this working. There's a guy who recorded his experience as a 51-year-old man. He doesn't have a spouse or kids or even a permanent home and he just shared his honest story using a basic camera and he didn't add special effects or fancy editing to the video. He just cut out some silences and kept it very simple and he crushed it and blew up. So, even if your niche is just you being broke and talking about it, that's okay. You can document your journey on YouTube and a lot of other people are going to relate to it because that video he uploaded months ago got over 600,000 views and he earned thousands of dollars. Plus, he blew up his channel.
All right, section three, monetize from day one. Now, there's two different ways you can do this. There's the easy way and then there's the really good way, but it's quite a bit harder. So, the easy way is to simply recommend products and services via affiliate links, right? Products and services that you think are good and you would have recommended anyways, you recommend them from your affiliate links. This is exactly what my brother's doing on his channel right now. He's recommending a really good company called Course Careers that's helped tens of thousands of people get jobs without having to go to college and spend $100,000 on a college degree. And like I said the other day, he got several sales in a single day. And each sale is hundreds of dollars. So that's the easy way. All you got to do is just basically say, "Hey, there's a link in the description in the pin comment below for this thing. Go ahead and check it out." And if they click on the link, they end up buying it, you get a percentage of the sale. But most people think they have to wait until they hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours to get monetized to make money. And you definitely don't. So yeah, that is one of the most highly recommended ways of making money, affiliate links.
However, there is a second way that is actually much more effective. However, it is quite a bit harder to do. And that second way is selling your own products and services. So, just as an example, when I launched my second channel, Shane Hummus Content Growth Engine, I actually offered one-on-one coaching for the first month when I launched the channel. And in the first month after launching the channel, I made $30,000. Now, this is a channel that targets business owners, right? So, these are people that definitely have money. So, I don't need to get that many views in order to make money on that channel. So, what you can do with this method to keep it as simple as possible is to just set up a Calendly link and then charge people for one-on-one coaching. And you can easily charge $100 an hour or more. Additionally, if you want to get a little more fancy, what you can do is set up a funnel with something like GoHighLevel and then you can get people on sales calls and charge them for larger packages of coaching. So, for instance, 6 months of coaching. And this is how you can make a significant amount of money before you even reach 1,000 subscribers.
Now, additionally, there's one other way of making money. I don't typically recommend it for small channels unless it's a very niche type of channel and that is getting sponsorships and brand deals before you even get to a thousand subscribers. This is exactly what my client Guy did. Now Guy owns the hearing care channel and his channel basically does reviews for hearing aids and gives tinnitus advice. Tinnitus is constant ringing in the ears and Guy suffers from it himself and he gives really good advice to other people on how they can manage it. And he actually got a $1,500 a month brand deal before he even hit 500 subscribers. Now, companies are targeting what's known as micro-influencers more and more because although micro-influencers don't get a lot of views, they're usually very niche and targeted and they can make a lot of sales. Now, Guy was pretty close to retirement and his goal before joining the program was to make a few thousand a month so he could have some extra money in retirement. And that's exactly what we helped him do. He now makes thousands of dollars a month and he has extra money in retirement and it's a really nice little side hustle to keep him busy and help a bunch of other people out and make money.
All right, section four is keep it simple with content creation. So, let's talk about how to actually create your videos without getting overwhelmed. First of all, you don't need to write out every single word that you're going to say. Just write out simple bullet points and what you want to cover or have AI help you to write the scripts. Now, there's a very good chance that if you show up to my live training, links in the description of the pin comment below and you stay until the very end, I will give you an opportunity to actually access our free script writer that we've worked thousands of hours on that makes incredibly good scripts. So, it might be a good idea to check that out. But, like I said, I'll only offer it at the very end of the training. So, click that link, sign up for the live training, and I look forward to seeing you there.
So, like I said, the two methods that are really good is just simple bullet points where you kind of just remind yourself of what you're going to say and in what order. And then the second way is you can read from a script, but you need to make sure you have a really good script writer. And then what I highly recommend doing is batching your content. That means you're going to record a bunch of videos at once. This is a much more efficient way of doing it rather than trying to do all of the steps of one video at a time. So you might come up with three video ideas, write three scripts, then record three videos, etc., etc.
And then for editing, what I want you to do is keep the editing dead simple when you first start. So, either don't edit at all, and that's good if you're kind of good at talking off the cuff and kind of talking off the top of your head. Typically, bullet points makes that a lot more easy, or if you make mistakes and you need to edit them out, I highly recommend using a tool like Descript because it has an AI editing software built in. And it'll basically take out all the silences, all the mistakes, all the ums or the a's automatically for you. And it's super easy to edit. You can actually just edit sentences out just by deleting the sentence itself in text form. So, you really don't need to know how to edit at all. CapCut is also another free software that works really well, too, and you can definitely check that out. But the whole point here is you want to do minimalist editing. So, either no editing at all or edit very quickly. It shouldn't take you any more than maybe 20 minutes to edit a video.
And by the way, when my brother first started, he literally looked like an AI reading his scripts. You can go watch his first video and you'll see exactly what I mean. He literally looked like an AI. And yet, that video still blew up and got 800,000 plus views. Because this brings me to the very last point, which is the thing that actually matters is the idea of the video. And this is something I'm going to absolutely hammer in the live training. So, I highly recommend that you attend that this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Check it out in the description and the pin comment below.
Now, I know that 99% of people watching this are just going to enjoy my free content, maybe attend my live trainings, which are also completely free, and you're never going to work with myself or my team one-on-one. And I'm completely okay with that. I always want to give at least 10 times more value than I ever receive. With that being said, if you do want one-on-one coaching and you really want a lot of handholding to make the whole process easier, faster, and just do it better in general, then go ahead and apply for a call down in the description in the pin comment below. It will be the second link down there. Only apply for a call if you're very serious about growing and making money on YouTube and you want to start fast. On this call, we'll figure out where you are right now, where you want to be. We'll make a plan to get there and we'll see if we're a good fit to work together or not. But we are very limited in the amount of people that we work with. We only accept about 18% of the people who want to join the program. So make sure that you're very serious if you apply for a call. Like I said, links in the description and the pin comment below. You can click down there. It will be the second link. But if you want a little test drive, go ahead and attend my live training. That'll be the first link in the description. You can click that as well.
Now, if you want to see an extreme example of someone who we helped grow on YouTube, Sean was stuck on YouTube for a very long time, and we actually helped him scale all the way up to over $500,000. And you can check out a video interview that I did with him by clicking right here.