If you’re looking to learn how to make money on YouTube without showing your face, this is the most complete guide on this topic you will find. Learn everything you need to know to make money on YouTube with faceless YouTube channels.
Can You Really Make Money On YouTube Without Showing Your Face?
While there are some that feel that this whole strategy of building faceless YouTube channels doesn’t work, this simply is not true. There are countless examples of people making great income using faceless YouTube channels and making faceless YouTube videos. One great example is Matt Par. Matt has 9 faceless YouTube channels, one has over 1 million subscribers and others with over 100,00 subscribers. His faceless channels generate over $30,000 per month just in ad revenue!
We will show many other examples in this guide of the types of income that can be achieved with faceless channels and videos.
What Some People Do Wrong
This whole topic can be a bit controversial because there are some who are doing this whole concept wrong. You cannot take other people’s content and upload it to your channel. That’s 100% wrong and will get you in trouble. However, there are strategies where you can use ideas from other channels to create your own unique faceless videos.
How To Make Money On YouTube Without Showing Your Face – The Guide
So let’s get into the steps and methods of how to make money on YouTube without showing your face and without making videos.
Step 1: Niche Selection
The first step to making money with faceless YouTube channels is that you will need to choose a niche.
There are so many niches to build faceless YouTube channels. You can view our list of the 118 best faceless YouTube niches right here.
Niche Criteria
To choose a niche, make sure it fits these 4 criteria:
- Be sure it’s an evergreen niche. This means it’s not just a trend and will not die out.
- There should be many viral videos in the niche.
- The niche must allow you to monetize your channel and videos with multiple methods.
- Be sure that the CPM, what you’re paid per 1,000 views is high. (see our guide to the YouTube CPM rates by niche)
Best YouTube Niches
So now that we have looked at the criteria that a niche should meet, what are the best niches for faceless YouTube channels that meet these criteria? These are listed below:
- Psychology
- Technology
- Health
- Finance
- Pets
Now these are broad niches. There are literally hundreds of sub-niches within these five niche categories. Of course there are other niches not listed here that can also do well but we will list these top 5 because there is so much money in these YouTube niches.
What is the niche you would be most interested in creating a faceless YouTube channel in? If it’s not listed here you can always view our massive list of the best faceless YouTube niches.
Step 2: Research The Competition
The next step to making money on YouTube without showing your face is to research your competition.
To start, you will want to find other channels that have created successful faceless YouTube channels in your niche.
Search
Go to YouTube and search for your niche. So as an example, if you were interested in the pets niche, go to YouTube and search for pets.
Analyze Other Channels
Take a look at what other faceless channels in this niche are doing and if they are having success with their videos.
So in this pet niche example, we find a channel called AnimalWised. This YouTube channel has over 460,000 subscribers and has several viral videos. In fact, they have over 19 videos with over one million views and some over 5 million!
Their videos are simple and easy to create using a video editor, stock video clips and images and a voice over.
AnimalWised gets over 1.8 million views per month and can be making from $467 to $7,500 per month and this can be higher depending on how they monetize their channel. (see our AnimalWised case study to learn more)
Another example in the pets niche is a channel called Pets Town. They create funny video compilations of different pets. If you have access to funny pet clips, you could create a channel like this.
This faceless YouTube channel has over 877,000 subscribers and has over 39 videos over 1 million views, several over 20 million and one over 60 million!
All of their videos are done with simple video clips, music and voice over. They can be easily created using any video editor, music from YouTube’s free audio library and stock images from sites like Pexels.com or Pixabay.com. Take a look at all of our YouTube tools to create faceless YouTube videos here.
According to Social Blade, Pets Town gets over 7 million views a month and is making between $1,800 to $28,500 per month and this is in just add revenue alone.
You can find stats about any YouTube channel by using an easy to use website called Social Blade. Just enter the name of the channel and it will show you the stats. The stats that Social Blade uses are estimates and many times the revenue is higher than what it shows.
Let’s look at one more example. Let’s say you are interested in the psychology niche. Go to YouTube, search for psychology and you will see many examples of faceless YouTube channels making money on YouTube in this niche.
One such example is BRAINY DOSE. This channel has over 1.7 million subscribers and gets 6.7 million views per month. They have many viral videos with some over 10 million views.
They create simple videos using stock video clips, background music and voice over. They do simple image slideshows using stock images that you can get for free.
BRAINY DOSE makes between $1,700 to $27,000 per month in ad revenue alone according to Social Blade.
Step 3: Create Faceless Videos
The next step to make money on YouTube without showing your face is you will need to generate your videos.
We will look at three different ways to generate faceless videos for YouTube.
Method 1: Using Free Stock Footage
The first way to generate faceless YouTube videos is to use free stock photo and video footage and then use that within your video.
To do this you simply go to websites like Pexels.com or Pixabay.com to find 100% free stock video footage and pictures that you can use in your videos.
Simply search for what type of video or photo you’re looking for and then download it.
You then take these images and use them in the background of your videos much like you see on the example of Brainy Dose mentioned earlier. They simply use stock photos in the background of their videos, add voice over and music. They basically create easy to produce slideshows using free stock photos and video clips.
Another place for great stock video footage and images is Storyblocks. It does have a cost but it’s worth it because you will have so many more options.
You can also use Canva Pro to get access to many amazing stock elements that will help you to create faceless YouTube videos.
Editing
To edit your video you can use many of the online video editors such as wevideo or Clipchamp which we would suggest because they’re so easy to use. We also like them because they’re not being used on your computer and so will not be limited by your system’s resources which is an issue with some video editors.
You can also use free video editors that you download to your device such as OpenShot video editor.
The absolute easiest way to create these types of videos is with Pictory.ai.
With Pictory.ai, you simply upload your script, it creates the scenes, you then change the images for each scene using their stock photos and stock footage. Then, add your voice over. Everything is done quickly using Pictory.ai. You can even use their AI voice over which adds a robot voice to your video. While this technology is getting better, we still think a real voice over is better.
No matter which one you use they’re all pretty similar and will allow you to edit your videos like a pro.
If you are going to do video editing on your phone, then you may want to use an app called PowerDirector.
Creating The Video
Let’s walk through the steps to create one of these videos.
Whatever your niche happens to be, go to YouTube and search for that niche. Then find a channel that meets the criteria we discussed earlier and look at their most popular videos.
If you are interested in psychology, you may choose to look at a channel called Brainy Dose.
You can find their most popular videos by going to their channel’s page and clicking videos, then sort by most popular. This will sort their videos with the most popular videos first. Remember, if a topic worked well for another channel, it will probably work again.
Find the video that you would like to possibly recreate your own topic on, then watch the entire video and take notes.
Then reword in your own way and do other research by searching online to add additional material that they may not cover.
NOTE: Don’t copy a video. Be sure to recreate the video in your own way. Do not copy titles, thumbnails, or content. You’re getting ideas here but not copying.
Next, write a script that’s around 1,800 words long which when read, will make the video about 10 minutes in length.
Then, record a voice over using your phone audio app or you can use a better mic such as the affordable Blue Yeti.
Many videos use background music and if you wish to do that, you can get free music from YouTube’s Audio Library. Just be sure to sort the music by “no attribution required”. This way you will not need to give credit to the audio creator. All this is completely free to use in your videos.
Putting It All Together – Video Creation Example
Now, let’s look at an example of how to put one of these videos together from start to finish.
You will want to first find the topic and a video you may want to recreate in your own way.
Go to a channel you have found through the research we talked about earlier and find one of the most popular videos. Again, you do this by going to their channel page, clicking videos and sorting by most popular.
So let’s say you are into psychology and located the Brainy Dose channel. You decide that you’re going to create a video on the personality traits of people who like to be alone inspired by Brainy Dose’s video “People Who Like To Be Alone Have These 12 Special Personality Traits”. You are basically remaking this video in your own way. DO NOT COPY ANYTHING FROM THE VIDEO. Do everything in your own way.
Watch the video completely. Take notes on the video so you can use this to write the script. Do any additional research into the topic to look for other material you can add to make the video even more informative.
Once you have your notes and gathered any extra information, write an 1,800 word script. We suggest at least 1,800 words because you want your video to be 10 to 12 minutes long.
When the script is complete, record a voice over using your phone or a mic and computer. If you’re using Pictory, you can record right inside their program.
Now go to Pexels.com, Pixabay.com, Storyblocks, Canva, or whatever you are using to get free stock photos and video footage and start gathering your images for the video.
Simply go to Pexels.com and search for the topic and in this example we may search for “sitting alone” or “being alone”.
Download all the stock photos and videos you will use in the video.
Also, go to YouTube’s Audio Library to download background music that you want to use for the video. Take inspiration from the video you’re using as an example to look for something similar. Always be sure to choose “attribution not required” in the audio library.
Now that you have created your script, gathered all of the media you will use in the video, and then obtained your background music, it’s time to put all this together.
Go to the online video editor you have chosen to use such as wevideo or open the OpenShot video editor on your computer.
Now add your voice over onto your timeline in the editor. Also add the stock photos and videos on the timeline where they should appear based on your voice over.
Add the background music and you’re done!
You can add text to the video if you wish but it’s not necessary.
Now download or create your video in whatever editor you’re using in HD quality and then it will be ready to upload to YouTube.
There are many video tutorials on how to edit videos in these editors.
We will mention an even easier method to edit your video.
If you choose to use Pictory.ai, you can use their script to video option. This allows you to paste your script into their script editor, then it creates the scenes for your video!
You will then edit each scene by replacing the footage their software chose with either their library of stock photos and images or you can upload your own.
Then, you can simply record your own voice over or upload a voice over.
Sync the voice over with each scene, download the video and you’re done.
You can even use their AI voices to do your voice over although it’s better to use a real voice.
If you really want to learn how to make money on YouTube without showing your face, we suggest taking a course that can teach you every aspect of this. The best course is our faceless YouTube course.
Method 2: Simple Whiteboard Videos
The next method you can use to create videos so you can make money on YouTube without showing your face is simple whiteboard videos.
We can look at many channels that use this method very effectively such as Young Entrepreneurs Forum and they get over 485,000 views a month.
Another channel called Better Than Yesterday has over 1.6 million subscribers and gets over 2.8 million video views every month!
One more channel we can look at is Philosophies for Life. With over 700,000 subscribers and 1.3 million views per month, this channel is effectively using whiteboard videos to make money on YouTube without showing their face.
Creating Whiteboard Videos
This method to create faceless YouTube videos is very easy.
You can use online software called VideoScribe. They offer a 7 day free trial so you can learn how to use them.
Using VideoScribe is easy. You would go to VideoScribe, select add new image, you can add images of whatever you’re talking about.
Let’s say you were going to create a video on how to write a business plan.
Search for a business plan or business, and you will see you can add any image from their collection.
Place the image on the canvas, then you can add text. Click the text icon in the lower right, and start typing your text.
Click the mic icon to add a voice over, then the software will create the video and draw it for you! It creates whiteboard style videos just like the successful YouTube channel videos we looked at earlier.
You never have to set up a camera and film the video. It does everything for you.
Method 3: Slideshows
The next method to create faceless YouTube videos to make money on YouTube without showing your face is using slideshows.
Slideshows are easy to create.
You can use Powerpoint on a PC, Apple Keynote, or Google slides.
Then simply create a voice over that will play in your background.
Next, you will need to record your screen with a screen reader such as OBS Studio.
A good example of a video using this type of process is the video by a channel called Permission To Exist called “Permission To Exist Narcissists Really Don’t Get It“.
It’s a simple video using the slideshow approach to faceless video creation.
Method 4: Screen Capture
The next method we will discuss here to create faceless YouTube videos and channels is creating videos using screen capture.
This is a great way to make YouTube videos without showing your face.
Creating a video using screen capture is probably the easiest of them all.
These types of videos are typically great for how-to videos, reviewing online courses, software, or anything that would need the recording of your screen. Here is a good example of a review using screen recording.
You simply use screen recording software such as Screencast-O-Matic to capture your screen and a microphone to capture your voice.
Once you capture your screen and your voice you can then edit this in a video editor. See our list of best tools here.
Capturing the screen is also used by gamers who record video of themselves playing video games on YouTube. This is a massive niche on YouTube. Look at this channel making money on YouTube without showing their face called Painful.
Method 5: Getting Other People To Make Videos For You
To this point we have looked at how you can start and create your own faceless YouTube channels to make money on YouTube without showing your face.
We have focused on how you can do this by creating the videos yourself. However, if you want this to be more hands-off, you can have most of the process done by others leaving you with more time to do other things.
Here are the steps to get someone else to do most of the hard work for you:
1. Coming Up With The Idea
It’s still important that you get the right ideas for your videos so it’s best if you do the research and come up with video ideas yourself.
2. Write The Script
Next, you will need a script. This can be easily outsourced to a freelancer on Fiverr, Upwork or Freelancer.com.
There are so many great and inexpensive writers that you can find on Fiverr or Upwork.
Once you find a good script writer, you can use them every time you need a script written. You may need to test several writers before you find one that fits perfectly with your needs.
3. Voice Over
Once you have the script written, you will take that script and give it to a voice over artist. These can be found for dirt cheap prices on Fiverr.
Simply go to Fiverr and look under voice over and you can find people that will do an incredible voice over for $20 to $30.
4. Video Editing
Next, you will hire someone to edit your video. You can find great video editors on Fiverr, Upwork and other freelance sites.
You then take your voice over that you had done in the previous step and give it to your video editor. They will then take that and add the scenes and produce your final video ready to upload to YouTube.
5. Thumbnail Design
You will need a great thumbnail before you upload your video to YouTube. Be sure that you look at what other successful channels are doing with their thumbnails in your niche.
Go to Fiverr and find someone to create a thumbnail. There are many great designers there and many will do it for $5.
Just a note, it’s very easy to create thumbnails yourself using Canva. You may want to do this and skip hiring someone. However, if you want to keep this as hand-offs as possible, it’s easy to get it done on Fiverr.
6. Upload Video To YouTube
The last step of this process to have videos done for you can be outsourced, but we suggest doing this yourself to make sure it’s done correctly. It is crucial that your title, keywords, description, and your thumbnail are all done properly and everything is optimized so you can be seen when someone searches on YouTube.
Step 4: How To Make Money On YouTube Without Showing Your Face – Monetize Your Videos
This last step in the process of how to make money on YouTube without showing your face is all about video monetization.
You can churn out 50 videos a day but if you don’t think about monetization, you won’t make as much money as possible.
To determine how to monetize your videos on YouTube we will look at it as a process of three different steps.
1. Determine Main Monetization Method
The main monetization method that people think of when looking into making money with faceless YouTube channels is ad revenue.
You can make a lot of money with ad revenue so it is an important part of the whole monetization process. There are many YouTubers with faceless channels making $3,000, $5,000, even $30,000 a month with just ad revenue alone.
When you look at stats on Social Blade the revenue they show is mainly ad revenue.
Before you can monetize with ads on YouTube you must meet certain requirements and that is your channel must have 4,000 hours watch time and 1000 subscribers. This can happen very fast if you learn what to do.
2. Other Monetization Methods
Many faceless YouTube channels don’t make the amount of money that they could. This is because they only focus on ad revenue as a monetization method.
That’s really too bad because they could be making possibly 10 times more than what they currently make.
How? The secret is by selling other people’s products. This is done through something called affiliate marketing.
This is where you can partner with people that own physical products like those you buy on Amazon or digital products such as courses. You can then partner with the people that created these products and get paid a percentage of the revenue for each sale you send their way.
So if you’re in the technology, health niche, finance niche, psychology niche and others, there is a large number of people looking to buy products and services in these markets.
For example, let’s say you were looking to buy a new refrigerator.
You go to YouTube and search for the best refrigerators.
You come across the video “Top 5 Best Refrigerators You Can Buy” by the channel BestProducts.
The creator of these videos reviews several refrigerators in faceless videos and in the description of each video they place affiliate links to each refrigerator.
Each time someone clicks the links and then buys a refrigerator through their link they receive a commission for the sale.
Many YouTube creators go wrong by not placing a link at all or by placing a regular link without using affiliate marketing so they can make a commission from the sale.
How much can be made from this process?
This video on the Top 5 Best Refrigerators You Can Buy has had over 3.2 million views.
Let’s say conservatively that out of those 3.2 million views, only 0.5% of the people clicked the link and bought a refrigerator through the link.
This would be 16,000 purchases.
Now let’s say that the creator receives a 3% commission on each sale and the average price of the refrigerator is $2,500.00. This means they would receive $75 commission per sale.
So if there were 16,000 purchases, this is $1.2 million in commissions!
Now that may seem like an extreme example, so let’s look at another one.
Even if your channel is small and doesn’t get as many views as a larger channel, you can still make a decent income from affiliate marketing.
Here is a smaller channel called Real Estate Schooler with just over 1,000 subscribers. They’re in the real estate niche. They do reviews of real estate schools in faceless YouTube videos.
Here is one of their videos on The CE Shop Review. They have over 9,400 views on this video.
This market has affiliate programs you can join such as real estate schools like The CE Shop which pay up to 30% commission on their courses. Some of the courses can be priced over $500!
So let’s say the course is a $455 course and the creator makes 30% of the sale. That’s $136.50 per sale.
Now let’s say that 2% of the people that watch the video click the link and purchase a course. That would mean that from their 9,400 views that 188 people purchased the course. That’s an extra $25,662.00 in revenue from using this method.
This particular video gets around 783 views per month. If 2% of the people that view the video purchase a course that would be 15 sales per month at $136.50 in commissions which makes an extra $2,047.50 per month in income.
What if this video were to get 1,500, 2,000 views a month and more? You can see the income would go up quickly.
These are just examples. Do this math on other much bigger channels and you will see the potential to make money on YouTube without showing your face is quite good.
There are many channels that use affiliate marketing and make much more than just ad revenue alone. Combine them both and you can see the potential is huge to make real money on YouTube without showing your face.
Almost every niche has affiliate marketing programs you can join to promote products. You can add affiliate links in the description of any kind of faceless video.
You can find affiliate products to promote at ClickBank.com, CJ.com, ShareASale.com digistore24.com, Amazon.com and many others. For a complete list of affiliate marketing programs check out this site.
Another Way To Find Affiliate Programs
You can find affiliate programs for your niche by doing a quick search. Go to Google or any search engine and type in:
“your niche” affiliate programs
So if your niche was drones you would search for drone affiliate program.
Doing that search will help you to find other affiliate programs in your niche that might pay more.
3. Start Making Money On YouTube
As you can see, you can make real money on YouTube without showing your face.
While it is best to start with one faceless YouTube channel, once you start to succeed with one, you can then expand and add others.
What if you were to run several faceless YouTube channels and each made an extra $2,000 per month. That starts to add up fast.
It’s best to upload 30 or more videos on your channel. Matt Par from Tube Video Mastery says that the tipping point is 33 videos before you start to see real progress.
What if you were to make an extra $1,000, $2,000 or more simply by creating faceless YouTube channels and easy to create faceless videos?
These methods can work if you apply yourself and take advantage of the opportunity that exists today with YouTube.
Conclusion
So this guide has shown you exactly what you need to do to make money on YouTube without showing your face.
If you are serious about doing this, we would suggest taking a course to help you learn every step of the process in more detail.
We suggest taking our YouTube course (CHECK IT OUT HERE). It’s one of the best courses you will find on this subject. This course will show you everything you need to know to build and grow a faceless YouTube channel. Plus, it’s 70% less expensive than other courses on the market.
For more, don’t forget to check out our guide to ways to make money on YouTube without showing your face.