Babish Culinary Universe YouTube Channel Case Study ($2,400 Per Day)

This is going to be an interesting case study into the YouTube Channel Babish Culinary Universe. While not a completely faceless channel, most of their videos are faceless so let’s look at how the creator has done so well without showing his face in most videos.

What Does Babish Culinary Universe Do?

Babish Culinary Universe also know as Binging with Babish, is a semi faceless YouTube channel in the food YouTube niche. (see channel here)

We say semi faceless channel because the creator Andrew Rea does reveal his face in several videos. However, the vast majority of the videos on the channel show only the torso of Andrew.

The main premise of this faceless YouTube channel is that the creator recreates food that has been featured in films and on television shows.

This is a unique twist on channels that are in the YouTube niche of food.

Why Do A Case Study?

Even though this is not a totally faceless channel, we wanted to feature it in our case studies because it’s a great example of how you can create videos that succeed and never show your face.

For example, look at the most popular video on this channel and you will see that an easy to create video, with no face shown, can generate millions of views. This video has over 29 million views and growing.

Plus, the channel has over 2 billion views showing that these types of videos really work with viewers!

How This Channel Started

Early on, this channel got a slow start. In fact, only two videos were uploaded in 2007 and only one in 2010. It was not until 2016 that Andrew started the Binging with Babish channel as it is today.

The first video uploaded in 2016 was the video “Binging with Babish: Parks & Rec Burger Cookoff“.

From there the creator started to upload videos on a regular basis and has created an amazing brand since that time. You can watch an interview with Andrew here.

Babish Culinary Universe Stats

Since the first video was uploaded in 2016, on average, this channel has upload 7 videos per month. Currently there are 569 videos and this grows weekly.

This is a channel that has had tremendous growth with their subscriber base at just over 9.9 million subscribers at the time of this case study.

How Babish Makes Their Videos

The great thing about a channel like this is that creating videos is not really that difficult. You will need a good microphone and a high quality camera.

The Babish channel uses a Sony a7S II for recording video and the Blue Yeti for recording audio.

For video editing they use Adobe Premiere and Adobe After Effects.

How Much Does Babish Make?

Many people are wondering “how much does Babish Culinary Universe make?” This is an exciting channel to feature as it’s a channel that is using many of the monetization methods available.

We often see YouTube channels that leave a tremendous amount of money on the table by only focusing on ad revenue. Babish is not one of those channels.

Ad Revenue

The first way that Babish Culinary Universe makes money is through ad revenue. This is revenue generated from ads displayed on the videos.

According to Social Blade at the time of this writing, Babish Culinary Universe is making $890,500 per year on their higher estimate. This could even be more but Social Blade looks at CPMs from $0.25 to $4.00.

This means that Babish Culinary Universe may be making around $2,400 per day in ad revenue alone!

Affiliate Marketing

Many YouTube channels either don’t know about affiliate marketing or forget to use it as a monetization method. This is not the case for this channel.

Affiliate marketing is when you promote or mention another brand product or service and get paid a commission when someone buys through your affiliate link,

Babish is using affiliate marketing extremely well. They not only place affiliate links in the description of their videos, they also place featured spots in videos.

A great example of this is their video “Binging with Babish: Meatballs from 30 Rock” in which they promote Native Deodorant in the first part of the video. They also link to this in the description of the video.

We don’t know how much revenue is generated with affiliate marketing, but it’s safe to say that it’s a significant number with the number of viewers on the channel.

Remember, the affiliate revenue is on top of the ad revenue and is not part of the income we mentioned above.

Sponsorships

Another way that Binging with Babish could be making revenue is to develop partnerships and sponsorships with brands.

We have no way of knowing exactly what they may earn with this monetization method but according to noxinfluencer, they may be able to get $18,978 per video for sponsors.

This could add a considerable amount of income to their bottom line.

Babish Line of Products

The great thing about creating a successful YouTube channel is that it can allow you to build a brand off of YouTube as well.

Babish is a great example of a channel that has done this and had done it quite well.

As this channel grew in popularity, the creator was able to spin this into a culinary product line of cookware products.

Since the viewers of this channel are into cooking, this is the perfect type of product line to develop and sell to your viewers.

The creator private labeled his own cookware line called Babish and now sells them on Amazon as well as sam’s club.

These products are promoted in the description of the videos with a link to the Amazon and sam’s club shops.

Babish Cookbook

Here’s yet another way that the creator of Babish Culinary Universe has been able to monetize his following on YouTube.

He has created a cookbook that is sold on Amazon and many other outlets.

We’re not exactly sure how many of these books but from using a tool that shows an estimate, it’s safe to say that this book sells as much as 2,169 copies a month! This is just from Amazon alone.

Merch

The creator of Binging with Babish has also set up a small shop on Shopify to sell merchandise. This includes t-shirts and hoodies.

Patreon

The last way that we found this channel is able to make money from YouTube is the creator has set up a Patreon account as an additional revenue stream.

At the time of this study, there were 1,041 people paying $1 to $20 a month to subscribe to the Babish Patreon account.

This is an extra $1,041 to $20,000 per month in revenue.

What Can Babish Culinary Universe Do Better?

Usually as we analyze YouTube channels we can find a few things they could do better. That’s not the case here.

This is a YouTube channel which has done everything right from what we can tell.

They have used just about every monetization method to make revenue and also created a brand from using YouTube. It’s a perfect example of what to do to build a channel and then a brand.

How To Create A Channel Like Babish

If you think you need to be an expert to create a channel like Babish, nothing could be further from the truth.

Choose Your Niche

Usually you need to take time to think of the perfect niche before you can start your YouTube channel.

If you want a channel like Babish, you already know it’s going to be related to food. Of course, you can take what you learn from this case study and apply it to any niche, but if you want a channel like Binging with Babish, it’s going to be food related.

The main thing you need to have to start within the food niche is a passion for food. Either eating, cooking, or talking about food.

If you want to enter the food niche, try to think of a new twist just like Andrew Rea did with this channel. He doesn’t just show cooking, he recreates dishes seen in movies and on television.

So use your creativity and if possible, come up with something that’s a bit different. However, you could still just do cooking without ever showing your face and it could still work.

Choose a Channel Name

Next, you will need to choose a channel name. Make sure that the name reflects what you’re trying to convey.

It can be a fun name or it can be a food related name. Whatever you choose make sure it conveys the image you want people to think of when they hear it.

“Binging with Babish” is a fun name but it easy to see it’s about binging with food.

Set Up Your YouTube Account

Once you have your niche and name, set up your YouTube account. Be sure that you optimize your channel and get it ready to upload videos.

If you’re channel is not optimized correctly you may not get your videos seen.

Come Up With Topics

Before you start creating videos, come up with a list of at least 30 topics you can use for the first set of videos.

You can find these topics by going to the Babish channel and seeing what their most popular videos are and then recreating something similar.

Or, you can come up with other food cooking topics used by other food channels and even use a tool like VidIQ to find topics.

Get the Right Tools

Before you can start shooting videos you will need to have the right tools. For these types of videos you will need a great camera and very high quality microphone.

As stated above, to record videos the Babish channel uses a Sony a7S II and for audio they use the Blue Yeti mic.

Create Videos

Now it’s time to actually shoot your videos. Make sure you have your kitchen or area you’re using for cooking set up with all of your ingredients and cooking tools within reach.

Once ready, shoot the video. You can do your own talking or your can just do the cooking and add voice over later. You can even hire a voice over artist on Fiverr to do the talking.

Once the recording is done, it’s time to edit the video. Our recommended video editors are Camtasia or the online editor wevideo.

Make sure the length of the video after editing is between 9 to 15 minutes in length. You don’t want videos shorter than this.

Upload Videos

You want to upload at least 30 videos to YouTube as fast as possible.

When each video is ready, upload each to YouTube and be sure to optimize them properly. If you’re not sure how to do this consider our getting our course seen at the end of this study.

Monetize Channel

You need to eventually make money from your channel. You can’t make ad revenue until your channel has 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours.

However, you can start earning immediately from day one by using some of the monetization techniques used by Babish such as affiliate marketing.

To see more monetization methods please enroll in our course.

Conclusion

This is one of the most fun case studies we have done here on Faceless Channels.

It’s great to see a YouTube channel that has used their presence on YouTube to not only create an amazing channel but also a worldwide brand.

Like this case study? You can see many more on our site. Check out The Infographics Show study making $5 million per year!