The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to build a profitable Faceless YouTube Channel in 72 Hours
Wed, 17 Jul 2024
I’m joined by Jonathan Courtney, Co-Founder and CEO of AJ&Smart, to explore the growing trend of Faceless YouTube channels What are faceless YouTube channels? • No visible creator• Voiceover narration• Can be high-quality content or "absolute dog shit"• Huge opportunity for creators who don't want to be on cameraTools to get started• ChatGPT/Claude for scripts• Gummy Search for topic research• DALL-E 2 for image generation• Crayo for video creation• Eleven Labs for AI voiceovers• vidIQ/ViewStats for optimizationChoosing your niche is crucial• Target specific lifestyles or communities• Examples: anti-smartphone, keto diet, video game lore• Focus on high-impact, underserved areas• Build products/services for your audience later Examples of successful faceless channels• Lemmino (history & mysteries)• Internet Historian• The Infographics Show (14.3M subs!)• Daily Dose of InternetWhy start a faceless YouTube channel?•Build an audience without personal exposure• Learn about AI tools and audience building• Potential to quit your job if successful• Create valuable, shareable contentWant more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: gregisenberg.com/30startupideas🚀 My FREE 5 day email course to learn how to build a business of the future using the ACP funnel:https://www.communityempire.co/free-course🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited.https://www.communityempire.co/📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free:https://www.gregisenberg.com70,000+ people are already subscribed.FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/JicecreamLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/To improve your rankings your business on Google and using AI for SEO, sign up tohttp://boringmarketing.com/Links Mentioned: Faceless Channel Notion Board: https://becomeviral.notion.site/6-Figure-Channel-List-c9c95a3a06ff4ec891093c3fb06f11aeEpisode Timestamps: 00:00 Intro02:13 Faceless YouTube Channels Explained14:50 Framework and Tools for Creating Faceless YouTube Channels19:58 Choosing a Niche for Faceless YouTube Channels25:50 Examples of Successful Faceless YouTube Channels34:15 Benefits of Starting a Faceless YouTube Channel
If you don't know what a faceless YouTube channel is, it's a YouTube channel where there's no creator, you don't see any person, and it's somebody doing a voiceover. And what's interesting about these, I didn't know these were basically businesses, and they're just pumping out this content.
What most people are doing and what people are missing on faceless channels is they're not picking these niches. They're not really picking niches. They're just like, how do I get as much views as possible so I can monetize via ads? Whereas The move is to be like, what is the most high impact niche to go after? And then how do I create faceless content for that niche?
So if you want to do this, here's how I would do it using mostly AI tools. All right. Jonathan, Jice, Cream, Courtney, you're back.
I'm back. I can't get rid of you.
You're like the gecko of the Startup Ideas podcast.
I always come back. Yeah. You know, I've been watching the episodes of this podcast that do well. And you've also been messaging me. And generally people just want ideas. And as the name of the podcast is called, Podcast Ideas Podcast. What seems to do pretty well is things that one person can do that can make potentially a lot of money and doesn't require a whole team to set up.
That seems to be the vibe, right?
I think so. I think a lot of people listening to this probably have jobs and they just kind of want to set up something on the side. And then maybe it turns into something super big and maybe it doesn't need to. I mean, it could just be like... making $100,000 a year or whatever it is on the side.
And it's like, great, you know, and you can sell that you make $100,000 a year and you can sell that at five times ARR if you want.
So I, I ran with that and I found One or two things that I think could be pretty interesting. One, again, like a lot of the things that I find are not because I'm researching for this podcast. It's because I'm researching it for myself. And one of the things that, you know, I have a YouTube channel. Our YouTube channel is one of the best ways for us to get qualified leads for our business.
But I'm always looking to like, what else can you do at YouTube? And I stumbled across this notion board and I sent it to you. It's called Six Figure Channel List. And it's a notion board full of different channels on YouTube. And they're kind of ordered by six figure channels and seven figure channels.
And the idea here, or what's special about these channels, is that they're called faceless YouTube channels. And I want to give credit to facelesschannelacademy.com. Actually, it was a guy. Who's the guy? He looks like Cody Schneider a little bit.
You want to give credit to Cody Schneider.
I want to give credit to Cody Schneider, even though it isn't him. It's like the video, whatever the guy who runs the business faceless.
We'll link it. We'll link it.
Whatever his name is. So I came across his video. Then he had this whole notion board. And by the way, I'll give you my first impression of faceless YouTube channels. If you don't know what a faceless YouTube channel is, it's a YouTube channel where there's no creator, you don't see any person, and it's somebody doing a voiceover. The most famous ones that you know are Daily Dose of Internet.
Everyone, hello, this is your, what is it? Hello, welcome to your daily dose of internet. That guy, you know that guy?
That was actually pretty good.
What does he say? Is it that?
It's basically that. I mean, you got it.
welcome to your daily dose of internet. Uh, so that, then there's Kurzgesagt, the, I think German channel, uh, which does animations. And then there's a ton of fucking absolute dog shit, uh, out there, but they, in between, there's also like some like interesting ones like charisma on command. Um, You've seen tons of them.
If you go to this Notion board, I don't know if you'll share it, you're going to notice a lot of these. And what's interesting about these, I never even paid attention. I didn't even know what these things were. And I am obsessed with YouTube. I didn't know these were basically businesses where people are using people from Fiverr to write scripts, AI to write scripts, narrators from Fiverr.
So it's not even the same person narrating all the time. and they're just pumping out this content. Charisma on Command is a very good example. Not necessarily saying this person is using AI or anything, but it's just like, okay, here's a thing that people want to know about charisma and human interaction. Here's a celebrity interaction that we can break down.
And I'm going to narrate this celebrity interaction that gets unbelievable amounts of views. And of course, then it makes money. Charisma on Command in particular makes seven figures apparently per year. But there's a lot of other very niche things in there, like, for example, survival, how to survive. Yeah, there's just so many different things in there. It's really interesting.
History seems to be a big thing, like talking about the Black Plague, or I just watched one about the White Death, which is tuberculosis. There's daily dose of football. There's so many different things. There's body cam channels. You've probably come across them, but you might not have realized that they're part of this movement on YouTube called faceless YouTube channels.
Now, why I find this interesting, again, there's tons of crap out there, and I don't like the idea of polluting YouTube with absolute dog shit, like crappy, stupid AI generated scripts that are useless. But a couple of these are actually interesting to watch. A couple of these are entertaining. A couple of these are actually kind of cool. And those are the ones that stand out.
And those are the ones that get the most views. And what I love about it is I really think a lot of people would love to make content. So for example, I'd love to make some video game content, but I don't personally want to be in the content. Like I don't want to be, you know, trolled. I don't like actually to be a personality on the internet. I do it almost as like a...
a necessity, basically, because making content is a cool way to get clients and to sell products. But I love the idea of being able to make channels that are purely based on other footage, maybe animation, maybe just taking interviews from other people and commenting on them. And I've been spending the last four or five days looking at these channels and thinking, how can I apply this to myself?
And Yeah, I think there's a way to wade through the absolute bullshit of the 90% of these channels and make actually good versions of them. So yeah, that's my first idea is looking into this idea of faceless YouTube channels. And now that I've started going down the rabbit hole, my entire...
YouTube recommendations is full of different content creators talking about how to make faceless YouTube channels. So it's a super, yeah, super interesting concept. Didn't know about it.
Well, that's because the DTC bro is now the faceless YouTube bro who was previously the crypto bro.
right so like the next this is like the next gold rush and quick ad break let me tell you about a business i invested in it's called boringmarketing.com so a few years ago i met this group of people that were some of the best seo experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and ai
that could help you outrank your competition. So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg. I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO and that's why I use boringmarketing.com and that's why I invested in it.
They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30 day sprint with 100% money back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com. You know, when I say that a lot of people are going to listen to this and they're going to be like, oh, I don't want to be. I don't want to be a DTC bro or whatever.
But to your point, there's there's like a small subset of people who are doing faceless channels like so right. and actually adding value to the internet that, you know, this is just one of the, it's just one of the best ways to build an audience right now. Like just point blank.
It's so cool. Yeah. And again, like I see the DTC bro kind of thing and I'm not interested in being that. But for example, I've always wanted to start a video game channel. Again, I want to do this nostalgia hacking thing. I want to talk about Halo. I want to talk about Jet Set Radio. I want to talk about the Dreamcast.
I want to talk about Shenmue, but I've always been, what's really helped me back is being a personality is like, People get very attached to internet personalities and get very weird about that. I have no interest in that.
And now that I've learned about this faceless YouTube channel thing and found a couple of gaming faceless channels, I'm like, yeah, this would actually be a viable route for me to build a media empire around nostalgic gaming without having to be the face of it. maybe not even having to be the voice of it, just writing the scripts and coming up with the concepts and having someone else voice it.
I honestly just never thought about it, but it's so obvious now.
So here's what I think people are missing with faceless video channels is like traditional media, they're monetizing it basically only with ads. So a lot of these people are just, okay, I'm going to throw up a faceless YouTube channel. I'm going to clip You know what a lot of people are doing, by the way? I don't know if you've seen this. It's all over my TikTok feed.
They're taking Joe Rogan's voice and just telling interesting stories with Joe Rogan's voice. Have you seen this?
Using an AI Joe Rogan's voice?
Yeah, I've heard that. Quick story on this. Every night when I want to chill out and numb my brain a little bit, Your boy goes to TikTok. Okay? Your boy goes to TikTok. And I'm noticing that 10% of my feed is these... Joe Rogan telling these such interesting stories about like stuff that I would never expect Joe Rogan to talk about. Like how dolphins were, you know...
essentially aliens and just the craziest stuff. And it's entertaining. I'm not saying I believe that dolphins, you know, are, you know, I, I'm not saying I believe that, you know, dolphins are, you know, smarter than human beings and like colonized, you know, the planet and stuff like that. Anyways, point is I'm getting these videos left, right and center.
And I'm like, at a certain point I was like, there's no way that Joe Rogan said this. There's just absolutely zero chance that he's saying like thousands of these stories. And turns out it's a faceless TikTok YouTube channel. I don't remember the name. And people like that are making, you know, 10 to 100K a month on these channels. But I think the move is not to do it with ads.
It's to build your own products. Like I talk about always the ACP funnel, right? Build an audience, then convert to a community and then build a product for them. What most people are doing and what people are missing on faceless channels is they're not picking these niches. They're not really picking niches. They're just like, how do I get as much views as possible so I can monetize via ads?
Whereas The move is to be like, what is the most high-impact niche to go after? And then how do I create faceless content for that niche?
And there's some really interesting faceless channels that I've come across as well. This week, I came across a channel. I don't know if you know it called Wormwood. And they're doing something like what you were just talking about, except in the art space. It's like an absurdist art project thing almost, basically. Bee Jocko is the one that I just laugh my ass off.
It's a video that has 285,000 views. The voice is AI. I do think the script is a mixture of AI and written by the person. I don't know anything about this person, but the... Everything about it is just like mind bending and super interesting and super cool. And again, when I was looking at these things, I was like, yeah, I would never have put the label.
We on this podcast, me and you now are saying that this thing is called a faceless YouTube channel. The general public doesn't know anything about this stuff. I didn't know about it until like a couple of days ago. And I think there again, I don't think you should be joining the bros on a race to the bottom.
I think that if you have interesting concepts and especially if you can write, which is like a crazy thing, if you can write, then you can make a YouTube channel now because more and more people are expecting to not have to see the person who's actually talking. So I think writers are going to have a killer advantage here.
Um, the people who don't have to use AI to, to create, to generate the scripts. Um, but if you just have like great concepts and interesting ideas, take a look at that Wyrmwood channel, take a look at the Bijaco video. It's hilarious. It's really funny. It's really cool. And it's totally demented and insane. And it's in a completely different direction.
It couldn't be less like the crypto bro guys you're talking about. It's a completely different world.
So if you want to do this, here's how I would do it using mostly AI tools. So step one is you got to come up with ideas. You need a script and you want to optimize your script. I would probably use a mixture of ChatGPT, Cloud, Um, I'd probably use a tool like gummy search, um, which I'm actually going to create a whole search. Yeah.
I'm going to create, I'm actually going to create a whole separate video on how to mine for gold on Reddit and some of these platforms.
So I've never found this. I've never seen this before.
Yeah. Yeah. It's really, really key. It's really cool. I use it every day actually. So I'm going to, I'll do, um, I'll do a whole video on that, but I would use that to basically see like in different subreddits, um, What is being, you know, what's popular? What are people talking about? And then, yeah, I would use ChatGPT and Clo to create that script. You could also use Fiverr to supplement it.
Step two is you need to create the images. So, you know, before... If you want to create a viral YouTube video, it's all about title and thumbnail. So you want to optimize for the image. So I'd probably use Dally 2 or something like that for the image generation. Step three is you're going to have to create the video. So there's a bunch of tools like this. There's NVIDIA AI.
There's a new one called, let me pull it up. It's called Crayo. C-R-A-Y-O. Creo.ai.
I'm looking at this now.
These are like faceless YouTube guys who created this.
Why are all AI websites purple? Is it just me or are all of them purple? I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying, why is everything purple?
I don't know, man. But I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. These guys, I haven't used their product so I can't vouch for it, but But it's purple, so it's good. Exactly. Then you want to use 11 Labs for AI voiceovers. So you just put in the script. You get the voiceover. And then using something like vidIQ, which is a Chrome extension for keyword research and channel optimization.
You can also use MrBeast has a new one called... Viewstats, viewstats.com. So, and there you have it in a box. But I think what's missing from here is you got to pick a niche that's high value and because it's not just about the views, it's about converting those views into products and services and communities.
Should we do almost like, you know what I'd love to do actually at some time would be a video. Maybe this could be online or it could be live or whatever it is, but I'd love to do a video with you where we start on a Friday and we have to make X amount of dollars by like 72 hours later.
Or we explode.
Or we are just absolutely shitty entrepreneurs. But I'd love to also watch videos like that. I see people posting, oh, I helped a guy make blah, blah, blah in 72 hours. But whenever I watch the video, they don't actually make money. They always just ask their friends to give the money. But I'd want to have a video, me and you, where we actually try an idea like this.
And the idea would be to make... $10,000 from strangers. And it has to also not fall apart. Like the second the video ends, you know, it should run for a little bit, but just to prove the, prove the point. So you would, so I, I don't know most of these tools and that's a different, so the cool thing about this is like, For me, the idea and the concept part would be super exciting.
The actual execution, that's where I would want to have the actual execution and someone going in and doing these things. That's where I would probably pull someone from Fiverr to actually pull these tools together and give me the end result. How long do you think it would take from the idea to having a video on YouTube?
Less than 72 hours. Seriously? Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, dude, 72 hours is conservative. Like 7.2 hours is realistic. But just giving extra time, I think 72 hours, like the hardest part is going to be picking a niche that doesn't have a ton of competition that you think could stand out, that you think can go viral. I mean, writing a script is really not hard.
And I mean, with Fiverr, if you want to use Fiverr, like, okay, that just extends your time 24 hours probably. Um, but all the other tools, like they're quick.
Yeah. I think that, so choosing the niche, you would use this gummy search for it, or like, would you have a product in mind first that you would want to have at the end of the niche? Like, for example, I don't know this brick, we talked about it, the brick that bricks your phone, having a channel all about digital detox. And would you start with the product in mind or start with the niche in mind?
No, I always start with the niche in mind, like the audience. And I'm always like, okay, what's a lifestyle? I generally prefer targeting lifestyles because there's like stronger, there's a stronger community with a lifestyle than just like a random audience. So I usually start with that. And I always try to look at like, what's a, what's a new, interesting lifestyle.
And like, for example, with, with the brick one, it's like, there's this whole generation of people who are like anti-phones and
they're buying like dumb phones um and it's starting to get it's starting you just start to see it like the posts that are going viral are like i left my phone and went for a walk and and then i see who replies i'm like that's a dumb post like and i see who replies to it and it's at jice cream on twitter oh my god i never thought about taking a walk
Without my phone. Dude, I do get that phone anxiety. When I go climbing, like bouldering, I leave my phone in like a locker. And this sounds really weird. So I was taking my Apple Watch with me. So that if somebody calls me, they can get through to my Apple Watch. Now I don't. But I basically tell everyone, hey, call this climbing hall if you need me. And then I feel calm.
But yeah, there is something brain damaging about getting obsessive about always being contactable. I even got... a dumb phone for my apartment so that everybody who knows me can get through to me if my iPhone is just like somewhere in the apartment where I can't find it. So I feel more calm. It's a problem.
I just feel bad for the receptionist at the climbing place. That's what I feel.
No one's ever called, obviously. Yeah, they're like, hey, can you find a tall, skinny guy with glasses? Literally every other climber looks like that.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. I'm going to do. Yeah. But, but totally separate, uh, totally separate topic. So you would start with a lifestyle. So like how you would write this out is I am targeting people who do this thing or people who are interested in this thing. How, like, how would you phrase it?
I would say, uh, I'm targeting people of the XYZ community.
Of the climbing community.
Of the climbing community, of the anti-smartphone community, of the, you know...
keto diet diet community yeah i think those are the strongest and those unsocial just do the best because people people people see that content and you know half the people are more than half the people are like this doesn't pertain to me but the people who are into keto are like really into keto and then once you you know what once you
you build this faceless YouTube channel or it could be on other platforms too. It could be on Instagram, whatever. Once you have that audience and now you're like one of the de facto places where that community is getting content, then that's when you can build like a set of products and services for that audience.
And the reason like I love starting at audience first is now you understand that audience better than anyone. Because when you're optimizing scripts, And you're optimizing titles and you're optimizing thumbnails. And the difference between one word is the difference if your video pops that day or goes nowhere. And that's like the YouTube algorithm.
I've had videos that just changing a word to a number is the difference between 40,000 views and 400 views. And that's just the reality. That's just the reality. And especially if you're relying on this for income, if that's the difference between $40 a day or $4 a day, sorry, and $400 a day or $4,000 a day, like you're going to pay attention to what this audience clicks.
And it's not just like the clickbait. It's also the retention. What is going to retain these people? So that's why I think doing a faceless channel in a particular niche, great way to get started if you want to start a business.
another niche that I find really interesting so obviously I'm very into the video game niche I just want to give you another example just to also show you that they're not all the bros if you go to the channel and again I don't know anything about these people they might they might have videos that are like inappropriate or something I don't know but Zvoke Z-E-E-V-O-K-E he's like an Elden Ring lore content channel faceless again um
And dude, I watch this channel. And now I'm also realizing I watch a lot of faceless channels, especially around specific niches. I mean, video gaming is an entire niche, but Elden Ring is a niche by itself.
Yes.
Which is big enough for most individuals to take care of just one video game.
Oh, 100%. Do you feel, now that you know how the sausage is made, are you embarrassed to watch faceless video?
Um... something has happened in my brain where I'm like, now I'm kind of, now it all makes sense, I guess. But I personally, so for me, I think the faceless videos that are acceptable
when the person really writes the script themselves, when it's content that they're not stealing from other people, where they're actually coming up with their own interpretation of the thing, like when someone's talking about Elden Ring lore, and of course they're reading through the wikis and they're reading through the lore in the game, but they're giving their own take on it.
I'm not a fan of the purely AI generated voices and scripts that people are just using to pump out as much revenue as possible. But yeah, like the channels that I watch, I wouldn't have labeled them as faceless YouTube channels. I wasn't even thinking about it.
Yeah. It's YouTube channels.
I wasn't thinking about this. I didn't know about this niche at all.
Right. And I think that's the hallmark of a great video, right? I think like if you're creating faceless, you know, YouTube content, for example, Just create great YouTube content.
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the faceless thing is like I went to my my girlfriend's YouTube like on her TV. I opened up YouTube and like the almost every video that's recommend to her recommended to her. She likes, you know, she's into personal development, learning about consciousness, all of that kind of stuff. And I was like, wow, every one of these thumbnails is AI generated.
And when I click into it, it's always like some very distant voice. Oh, my God, I found a really good one as well. This sorry, I mean, I don't know how your team wants to edit this, but I want to show you an example of an amazing one. It has minimal personality, but really great kind of infographics, even though very, very simple. It's the guy, he does like one video a year.
I don't know if you know, he did this Pentagon puzzle thing. This is it, cracking the uncrackable code. What's it called? Jim Sanborn. I'm just realizing now that this is a faceless. Oh yeah, the channel is called Lemino, L-E-M-M-I-N-O. Check that channel out. So this is like the definition of a good faceless YouTube channel.
And I recently watched this one called The Unbreakable Cryptos Code has 4.1 million views. Kennedy Assassinations, 11 million views. his videos are great. I would never have put like a generic stamp on it saying, Oh yeah, this is just some crap to make money. Um, and he's, I guess making money with a combination of Patreon and YouTube, but yeah.
That's so lame. That is so lame, right? Like when I, that's the thing with faceless YouTube channels is they all are making money on Patreon and, um,
I don't know if it's lame. I mean, it's still like, I know your audience is here to make millions, but if I was making like 25 K a month from being able to make like videos that I think people will enjoy, like, I would be okay with that.
I would be okay with having it as... If you're saying, especially if some people are still working at a company, having a side hustle like that, I think is pretty cool. But of course, I also didn't know about this until this week. So you're so much more integrated into it. And the product approach is probably more... But if you're not good at selling stuff... It's not about selling stuff.
Would it be? Here's my take. Here's my take. Hit me. I'm about to hit you. You don't even know what's coming right now. Okay. All right. The amount of work it takes to create a faceless YouTube channel in a lower quality niche is And a faceless YouTube channel with a higher quality niche that has the potential to extend beyond ads to create something really simple.
I'm talking about you're selling a PDF, you know, on Gumroad. You're creating a paid community on school. You're like, I'm talking, you know, you're creating a pretty simple SaaS app. Like these are things that especially now, the tools are so easy and there's global talent. I just figure if I'm going to build any faceless YouTube channel, I'd much rather it be the latter, not the former.
Oh my God, Internet Historian is also a faceless YouTube channel.
That's true. By the way, you know what also is a faceless YouTube channel? Literally like every animation channel. The Infographics Show. Do you know that one? No, but that's on the list, actually. So they've got 14.3 million subscribers. So we're talking... This is a top YouTube channel. Like, period.
Holy crap.
Yeah. And they create a video every day. I'm almost certain that they use AI. Sorry. And they do... So I'll read you some of their videos. Like their latest video is how your pet is trying to warn you that you are going to die. And it's a four hour and six minute video. So these people are creating long videos, animation, AI enhanced. You know what?
I bet you on a video like that, just on ad revenue, they are making... you know, 10 grand, 15 grand easy. Because how long it is.
They're just taking also world events like, here's what happens to your body while you're having sex. Here's how the SEAL team took down Osama bin Laden minute by minute. How they caught Ted Bundy. What happens when you die, which is a seven minute video, which has 26 million views. The worst punishment in the history of mankind. The worst torture. What happens to your body when you smoke weed?
Evil punishments designed to be worse than death. I do want to watch that, actually. Oh, yeah. America's strangest serial killer. Man. Could two people repopulate the earth? I guess you're just looking at also Quora questions that get a lot of heat and just making a video of it.
Totally. I think that's the secret that no one's talking about is if you look on social, Quora, Reddit, TikTok, even other YouTube videos, you see which videos are being validated. So if you could basically create faceless versions of them, but also add value, you're not going to... Don't go on YouTube, find a non-faceless video and create a Facebook video because...
It's probably not going to work if it's just a copy. And it's just wrong, frankly.
Yeah, it's not going to work. I mean, obviously, a lot of people know about this kind of thing. So you need some creativity. You need some level of intelligence or something to make it work. You can't just be like, it's not like you could just say, hey, chat GTP, make me a faceless YouTube channel and make it successful. It's not going to work.
Not going to work.
All right. That was my, I mean, I don't know if it's a startup idea, but I'm thinking of adding elements of this to my, like, I do want to do a video game channel. I don't want to be the face of it. People in the comments are going to be like, yeah, Jonathan, you said that 10 times in this episode already. I don't want to be the face of it. I honestly could do an entire Elden Ring channel.
I could do an entire Elden Ring or general video game art channel. I want to kind of do that.
I don't know why you're not doing it.
Because I didn't know about this fucking shit. And now I do. Now I actually might.
And I think everyone should start a faceless YouTube channel. At the very least.
Don't do it, guys. Can we not post it? Don't do it. Let's not air this episode because I actually want to do it now. That's true. That is so true. Let's use a really crappy thumbnail and title so no one watches it.
So hopefully no one got to this point in the episode, but you should start a faceless YouTube channel. At the very least, you're going to learn about the audience and you're going to learn these AI tools, which is a win.
It's worth the experiment anyway.
I mean, worst case is this. You spend a couple hundred dollars on AI tools and you waste some time.
Yeah, that is the worst case.
And you now know more about how to use these AI tools and how to build audiences more than 99.9% of the population. Literally the worst case. No one's heard of Creo. No one's heard of some of these tools. So you will be more advantageous than most people.
I'm deeply appealed by this idea. I, there's a lot of appeal.
There's a lot of appeal and the, and you know, what does this look like if it, if it works out? Well, you've just created an audience that is, is worth millions, definitely. Uh, and might have millions of views per month, you know, building affinity, um, and, If you're working, you might be able to quit your job. You can double down. It is so much leverage in your life.
It's the same pitch around why start. Go back to 2007, 2008, 2009. Could have made the same pitch about starting an Instagram account or starting a YouTube channel or starting a Twitter account. It's like, what is the downside? You're going to lose some time and a few dollars.
Yeah, the downside of starting a real YouTube channel is that you then have to deal with... Like, with your own face on it is that you have to learn to deal with trolls, like, talking about you and all that kind of stuff. Whereas the downside of starting a faceless YouTube channel is... I like that I could be a bit more... uh, personally detached from the outcome.
And then I could just say, okay, this episode didn't work well. Okay. Like for example, when an episode of this podcast that I am on doesn't work out well, I'm like, fuck, like I didn't do a good job. And my, my, I am here doing like, it's me. Right. And in your comments, someone will write, don't put this guy on your podcast again.
And no matter how long I've been making content, I still don't like that. Right. And it's It's like you're putting yourself out there and you know someone's going to shit on you no matter what. But I enjoy the art of making content. And so it feels like a more personally separate way where I can just think about it as an art project and as something that I'm building, like designing a website.
There's something more mechanical about it that I actually enjoy.
Yeah. Well, I think there's, if you fail, the reality is this, here's what you're not saying. The reality is if it fails, it's not as personal.
Right.
Totally. You know what I mean? Or like my accent or all these things. I've been on the internet for so many years. I'm still not used to it. I still don't like it. And so that's what would hold me personally back from making more content online. But yeah, there are so many things I want to talk about. I just don't want to be there having to film myself.
I want to be able to do it in a more nerdy way, like making the visuals like, you know, I like to go into like a more nerdy, smelly mode to make things sometimes. That sounds perfect to me. But yeah, maybe we've dragged this on too long, but hopefully people. I don't think so.
I don't think this was a reminder of Start a faceless YouTube channel. Or start a faceless channel. Go. Do it.
First time you've heard of it, Greg. I messaged Greg. This is just some behind the scenes. I do want to bring something interesting to the podcast. And I messaged Greg this stuff. And I was like, please tell me you don't know about this already. But he did, of course. Greg already knows about all this stuff. There's no way to surprise him.
Anything else you want to say before we jump?
I have another idea.
Okay.
Totally separate to this.
Okay.
Um, or do you have an idea you want to put in or do you, or do you think we should just end it with this focused idea?
I think we, I think we, what do you think? Cause I think focus is, I don't know.
I think one topic is pretty good. I think one topic is pretty good. Yeah. That's cool, dude. I'm I let us know in the comments, if you're thinking of starting one of these, I really hope one thing I do want to say at the end is I really hope people, what people do not take away from this is,
I hope the lesson they do not take away is I'm going to fill up YouTube with absolute dog shit content, copy other people's stuff and just flood it with even with more crap and like hack the system and hack the SEO. And it's just all low quality stuff. I think there's.
That could work in the short term, but I think the long-term winners here are going to be the people who put a lot of love into it. And even though you're not in the videos and even though you're getting help, maybe with script writers and doing the visuals, I do think that people who can come up with really interesting concepts, find a really interesting niche and then write well.
And then I almost feel like it's just a replacement for writing blog articles. It's like people want to watch blog articles now. You are not maybe a videographer. You're maybe not a good presenter. And so instead of you now writing, what you're doing is making this type of faceless video work.
it's an audio version of what you would have written a hundred percent yeah you nailed it you nailed it you nailed it i think there's a lot of short-term minded people in the faceless youtube game but the long term yeah the long term the long term niche focus um eventually building products and services acp funnel as i always say audience community product um
should do well and at least you'll learn. So this has been real. And if you want to compliment Jonathan in the YouTube comments, he is accepting compliments. I got a haircut.
Did you notice?
It's the only way, I hate doing this, but it's the only way the video gets seen is if we get likes and comments. So if you enjoy this, just go and quick like, quick comment. And that's how we know we should continue making these videos. We do it for you. And we do love you.
We deeply love you. Deeply. Hey, look out for that Elden Ring channel. I'm going to do an Elden Ring channel, a Jet Set Radio channel, a Shenmue channel, a Choo Choo Rocket channel, a Crazy Taxi channel. It's going to be too much.
Crazy Taxi? Wow.
I love Crazy Taxi. So good. I was obsessively addicted to Crazy Taxi.
When was the last time you played Crazy Taxi?
Probably when I was 14. Yeah. You know there's a remake or there's a new version. An open world, massively multiplayer online version of Crazy Taxi is coming out.
I'm so out on that. Yeah. It's so glorious.
If they don't have the Offspring and Bad Religions music in there, I'm not playing it.
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to play it. But that is hot news. And that's actually smart to build the faceless Crazy Taxi YouTube channel before it comes out. So when it hits...
You got to race me. You got to race me to making that channel guys. All right.
Later everyone.