“Just get a high CTR & AVD”
“Just pick an evergreen niche and copy the biggest channel bro”
“You just need to get into the algorithm, it takes 6 months of daily uploads to do it”
Advice like this is why 90% of Automation Channels shut down within 6 months & never reach monetization, let alone their first $1,000.
I’ve been running faceless channels since 2019, and there are 6 specific, non-mainstream lessons I had to learn the hard way.
Today’s email will be dedicated to the first one.
Do NOT Copy Hyper-Successful Channels
The standard advice for picking a niche has always been “find a big channel that’s getting millions of views & just copy their videos, titles, thumbnails…”
But this is simply WRONG.
The big, successful channel started 4 years ago. You are starting today.
The market dynamics are changing so quickly that just reverse-engineering its success & then applying it to your tiny channel will see you fail.
Even though you are entering the same niche, the niche dynamics have changed drastically in the past 4 years.
Here’s what you need to do instead:
Find small channels that started within the past 12 months, ideally 1-6.
These channels were built in today’s niche dynamics, they didn’t rely on “brand” to gain millions of views, they are successful because there is a hunger for this type of content. Right. Now.
Let’s apply it to a real-life example. The “crime niche”.
A rookie would find a channel such as “Beyond Evil” making videos on true crime cases, they would then take their thumbnail style, their title style, and probably even pick the same crime cases, assuming that “If it worked for them, it will work for me.”
But out of their 10 most viral videos, only 1 is less than 12 months old. The owner built this channel in yesterday’s market dynamics, and his current success says more about the strength of his brand than today’s crime niche dynamics.
A pro would ask himself “What are people watching RIGHT NOW?” Knowing that he doesn’t have a brand to rely on yet & therefore needs the content itself to carry his channel.
Upon some basic research, he would have stumbled upon a newly emerging trend within the crime niche. Police bodycam moments.
He would find a channel like “Police Notes” which started just 3 months ago and has already amassed 4.1M views through spotting the bodycam trend within the crime niche.
The likelihood of hitting it big in the “bodycam niche” instead of the “true crime niche” is much greater, simply because it is what YouTube viewers are watching right now, there is such high demand for these videos that YouTube will push new channels quite aggressively to satisfy this “bodycam hunger”.
So go where the demand is right now. The big channels have brand as their competitive advantage, you have flexibility as your competitive advantage. Be water, my friend.
If I had to summarize this lesson in one sentence, it would be this:
Enter niches based on today’s niche dynamics & emerging trends, NOT based on success that has already expired.
As a result, you’ll have momentum working for you, NOT against you.
I’ll be sending out these value emails every Sunday at 2 PM EST.
Youtube lessons I had to learn the hard way (like this email)
Monthly wrap-up on hot niches to get into right now
Reverse-engineering successful faceless channels
Would love to hear your feedback on the first email, leave a comment with your thoughts under my last Twitter post,
Jan
