From Faceless Clips To Full-Time: How Joe Built High-CPM YouTube Shorts

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We dig into the real skills behind profitable YouTube Shorts: hooks that reduce swipes, scripts without fluff, and niche choices that attract high-RPM audiences. Joe shares how faceless storytelling beats AI spam, why 30k view jail happens, and what daily cadence sustains growth.

• platform differences across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts 
• faceless storytelling with tight scripts and relevant b‑roll 
• hooks that match search intent or browse curiosity 
• retention targets and why endings should cut fast 
• revenue pools, RPM by audience location, and US targeting 
• niches with strong monetization like military and commentary 
• breaking out of 30k view jail with originality and edits 
• batching ideas, editor workflows, and daily cadence 
• using Shorts to feed long form and search-based discovery 
• thumbnail strategy, AI tools, and budget ranges

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Transcript

Why Viewers Stay To The End

SPEAKER_01 0:00

People need to stick with it longer than maybe they would think coming into it. Like at least give it a month before you even expect to see any results.

Meet Joe And His Creator Journey

SPEAKER_00 0:06

I love telling people um the next time you watch YouTube to do it as a student. I think like understanding why viewers watch things for a certain amount of time and certainly why they stick around to the end is super critical to understanding that. Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that's here to help you grow your channel faster than we would even grow ours. I'm Travis, as always, and I'm here with another special guest. Y'all have been loving the interviews, so we're doing more of them. Joe Sabini. Hey, Joe, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Alan. Um, we're gonna talk about a lot of things about how you've grown your channel and the things that you've seen while growing your channel. But if you're new here, that's what we do. We help grow your channel, give you some tips and tricks, and we also interview a lot of people that have done it successfully here on YouTube. And we might as well start with Joe. Joe, you've done a lot of things in the uh shorts kind of area, which we have a lot of people that are shorts creators and want to understand more about that. But before we kind of talk about the things you're seeing now and the type of success that people can have with shorts, tell us about you. Like, how did you get started on YouTube? How did you get started uh content creating and tell us about your journey?

SPEAKER_01 1:04

To be honest, it was a while ago, like maybe when I was around 18, 19. I'm 22 now, just turned. Um, but yeah, basically I started off with faceless content, um, just looking for a way to make money online, like a side hustle. So I started with mainly Instagram and TikTok and not really much YouTube, and then I grew a page to around 300,000 followers on Instagram and like 500,000 uh followers on TikTok. And then off the back of that, I started a community talking about how to like grow pages and stuff, and then I was getting a bunch of the same questions once that community, like I think I got it to with just my faces pages, around 10,000 members. Um, but then yeah, I was getting the same questions over and over, so I was like, I may as well start a YouTube channel just uh so yeah, I can put it out there and it's up there forever. And I also noticed at the time as well, which is something that I think is uh an interesting point, is there was a lot of people talking about how to grow on Instagram in particular that didn't really seem like they had grown on Instagram at the time. So I just used that as my unfair advantage that I had grown a faceless page to 300k followers and to help me get started, really. Um so yeah, that was how I started my personal YouTube channel.

Growing Faceless Luxury Pages

SPEAKER_00 2:06

I'm curious about the Instagram things. We don't talk a lot about other social platforms, but um, what is kind of the trick to grow like an Instagram following? It's not a bad thing to have multiple platforms where you're doing well. So I'm really curious, like what kind of things did you do? What were your what was your faceless content on those uh those other platforms?

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah, I mean the channel is still live now, I actually still own it um just because it wasn't worth me selling it. I don't I'm not really active on there at the minute, but it's called millionaire.esthetic. So that page is all about like basically luxury content. Um and I initially grew it through like through like through Reels. It was at the time, obviously Andrew Tate was blown up a lot, um, and I was doing a lot of like stuff with his voiceovers at motivational sort of Instagrams and TikToks, and then basically just overlaying um luxury clips of like nice cars, nice buildings, nice views, things that people like kind of aspire to be successful for. Um so that was kind of how I grew on there, and it was just a lot of trending audios, and yeah, like I say, Tate did definitely help the page, and obviously a bunch of other people as well. So it's mainly like podcast clips at the start. Um, that was just giving advice and then having the successful clips over the top to help motivate people even more, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Um, TikTok?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

Yeah, so I've loaded those to both. They are quite different though, in terms of like I would it's like there were different periods where I'd focus more on TikTok and periods where I focus more on Instagram. So at the start, it was definitely more Instagram focused, and then when the creativity program came out on TikTok, I put a bit more focus there because it was generating more cash flow just through the views. Um, so yeah, you kind of it works on both, but you do definitely like tailor your content of one platform or the other, I would say. And then yeah, more recently with Instagram, like before I fully finished the page, a lot of people go and look at it. Um well, I haven't posted in a while once it's finished, but uh, I was growing it through posts. So when Instagram dropped the feature where if you had a post with music and stuff on it, it could get shown on the Reels feed. I was basically just uh spamming out a bunch of those and yeah, just had a well-curated feed of luxury photos, and those were getting some good views and helped me grow.

TikTok vs Instagram vs Shorts

SPEAKER_00 4:00

So if someone's on, because we're seeing people come from different platforms like Instagram, TikTok, over to YouTube. What are some of the things that you found work on those other platforms that don't necessarily work on YouTube? And what kind of things are uh the the the bits of information you wish you had known when you started your YouTube channel?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

I mean, obviously Instagram and TikTok are basically just short form, whereas YouTube has the long form stuff as well. But in terms of shorts, I would say TikTok is the easiest to blow up on, and you can do like very low-edited content, and it can do well because people find it more relatable in there. Instagram, I would say you can do well with that, but definitely slightly more edited, like cutting up the dead spaces, is probably best for Instagram. And then YouTube Shorts is where I find you need to do the more highly edited, uh a bit more brain rotty content to keep people engaged.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

That's interesting. Um, can you give me like an example of specifically like so for TikTok, there's there's everything. Of course, TikTok's known for a lot of dance things and memey type things. So give me an example of something that would work pretty easily on TikTok, but maybe not so much in shorts. And the reason I say this is because there are a lot of people who are just putting their TikToks on shorts and wondering why they're not necessarily blowing up.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Are you talking about is this like for a face content or faceless?

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Well, either. So we'll talk faceless as well. I think uh whatever you have the most experience with would be probably a good example.

What Works On TikTok Won’t On Shorts

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Okay. So yeah, I mean I could I guess I can give an example for both, but with faceless, I would say like a prime example of a niche that would work on TikTok but would not work on YouTube Shorts is like the AI kind of Sora clips. Like you can make those into viral YouTube Shorts videos, but they need to have the script behind them and they need to be multiple clips edited together to tell a story. Whereas on TikTok, you could just upload a clip of a cat doing a dance and it would go viral. Um, like yeah, an AI cat doing a dance. And then for phased content, um I mean a lot of the stuff that does work on YouTube Shorts, I'd say does also work on TikTok. Like I've had videos on my channel, one on my on my YouTube channel right now, as a short, has 1.7 million views. Um, and that same video has around 300k on TikTok. So it did do well on both TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Um, but yeah, it's definitely just it needs to be a lot more snappy. Like I feel like with TikTok, you can like I've had some videos. Usually, if I make a video for TikTok and it's not really highly edited or anything, I just won't post it to YouTube Shorts because I know it's probably not gonna do that well. Um so yeah, I can't really say I've tested that sense, but yeah, I'd say YouTube Shorts needs to be more edited and more faster paced with some music in the background rather than just a more of a plain video.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

So when you think about your business, uh you know, what gives you money to pay the bills? Uh what percentage would you say comes from YouTube versus the other platforms?

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Yeah, mostly YouTube. I've been doing YouTube the longest, right? So I'm the biggest on there. Um, and obviously with the faceless stuff, I'm only really running faceless YouTube channels at the minute. So I'd probably say like 90% YouTube. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Wow, that's crazy. So, what type of faceless con faceless content right now is working well for creators like you? Are you doing like AI automated or are you just doing regular faceless content? Because there's there's a multiple different versions of what faceless content means. And I want to be very clear about this because when someone says faceless, some people might think, oh, AI slop or something. That's not really the case. Faceless means a lot of different things. What type of content are you making that's faceless that kind of just to kind of give us an idea?

SPEAKER_01 7:10

To be honest, my the the niches I operate in more so are less AI and more like storytelling, um, and then basically having the clips and in the background. So I'll come up with an idea and then I'll create a script around it, or my editor will create a script. Usually they create the script and then send it to me, and then they'll go uh ahead and edit a video and just put it together with all of the b-roll that basically relates to the story. So this could be in any niche, like obviously I have a few like two different pages right now that I'm running um in different niches, but yeah, it could be for any niche. You could do it for sports content, you could do it for music content, like stories about rappers or whatever. You could do it for like yeah, basically anything, even just general commentary. It could be about a viral story that is a clip from TikTok you brought over to YouTube Shorts.

Monetization Mix And Faceless Storytelling

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Is that something that works generally? Uh stories from other platforms that went well that worked well. Because again, you're talking about long form content versus short form. Um and by the way, how about how long are your faceless videos? Are they like the 12 minute? Are they like the ultra long or what what are they?

SPEAKER_01 8:04

No, no, sorry. So I do faceless shorts with long form, that's just my Joseph Beaty channel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my shorts are um they're around one minute long, like anywhere from I'd say 40 seconds to like one minute and a half usually.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

That's another question. So when shorts uh were given the ability to go up to three minutes, did you find that those performed good, bad, and different to what the shorter form stuff does? Uh, I've obviously they did this to compete with like TikTok and stuff, but we've never really talked too much about should you be doing longer form shorts, like two and a half minutes or one minute 50 seconds. Do you ever do those?

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Um yeah, sometimes. I have experimented with it a fair bit. The only thing that's annoying about when you go over a minute is you can get copyrighted for things um that you wouldn't do under a minute. So sometimes I have some issues with that, but it's definitely something I test. I wouldn't say it makes a huge difference, but basically with shorts, like I mean a key metric to going viral is getting a good average percentage viewed. And obviously, if your video is longer, it's harder to get a better average percentage viewed. But if you do hit those metrics on a longer video, you're more likely to go viral. So that's kind of why I don't tend to do the ultra short shorts. I have had a few go quite, I've had I think a video that was 20 seconds is probably my shortest one I've had go viral. It got like around 16 million on a faceless page. Um, but apart from that, I mainly operate in slightly longer videos.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

And for those shorter pieces of content, uh, do they still make a decent amount of money? Because obviously, for like normal long-form content, the longer you get, the more ads you get. But for short form content, I don't exactly know how that would work for like a 20-second versus like a one-minute. Is there a financial difference to that?

Short Length, Retention, And Copyright

SPEAKER_01 9:37

So honestly, no, there isn't at all, which is also why I guess you're a bit less incentivized to make longer videos. It makes no difference. Um, the only thing that matters for money on shorts is literally just your audience location and your audience age, but mainly location. If you have a majority USA audience, you're going to be getting uh upper tiers of money. And that's basically because I don't know if I explained this 100% correct, but how shorts get paid out, because there's obviously no ads on every single video, like like there is with long form. Um it's basically let's say you get like a video of a hundred thousand views. Well, they put it into a pool, right, for each location, and however much money that pool generates, YouTube obviously take their cart, and then the rest of it they split between how many views each channel got. So if you if you contributed 10 million views to that pool and the pool is say a billion views, then obviously you get that percentage of the money that's in the pool from that location, meaning that if you have USA audience, you obviously can contribute more to that USA pool, you're gonna get paid more than say a pool that is from India or something where advertisers pay less.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

So when uh because we have a lot of international um uh creators who listen to the podcast as well, if you're focusing on trying to get your content uh viewed by a US audience, what is your typical strategy to do that? Because it is a little bit harder for certain niches, but some are really obvious. What's the normal thing that you go when you're thinking of like a new niche or or a new video idea? How do you make sure that it gets targeted correctly?

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah, my general advice is to try and pick niches where Americans would be interested. Um, a general example that I would give is like I have like I also help some people grow them in shorts and stuff. Um but yeah, you've got to kind of know what game you're playing, but like if you're got like a football niche, or I guess to American soccer, it's not as big in the USA. You still will get a small USA audience because it is growing over there, but you're definitely gonna get more of a UK, which is not so bad, but the UK isn't very big, so then it's gonna go to countries probably like Africa, which is gonna get you a slightly worse RPM. Um, but yeah, sorry, not countries like Africa, but countries in Africa.

Shorts Revenue Economics And RPM

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Right, right, of course. Yeah, yeah, no, I understand. So, in order in other words, if someone's thinking, uh, you know, I kind of want to make this uh like a side hustle. One of the things we talked about on a recent episode was that you don't necessarily have to make whatever these channels are your number one channel. Some people have passion projects, like they want to do YouTube for a specific art maybe artistic reason or whatever, but um, in order to do that, they need to either work a lot of extra hours or whatever, but there's these other channels that you could make that help fund that. In other words, maybe your passion project is something that doesn't get a lot of views, but you can make something that actually does get a decent amount of views, helps pay for you to not have to go to your nine to five job, or even uh helps you pay for better production on the stuff you really love and then move forward. It it it's it's so um interesting to talk to different creators, especially smaller creators, who just don't even think that way. They're just thinking I have this one channel, I need to make this thing blow up. When in reality, uh most successful content creators, when I say successful, I mean that this is their job. I don't just have one channel, but they have multiple and they're using those to fund anything else they would want to do sometimes off platform. Is that how you kind of operate? Do you have like a passion project or do you just use everything as a business?

SPEAKER_01 12:34

It's an interesting, yeah. I definitely have more niches I'm more interested in than not. I won't I won't do any niche that I'm completely not interested in, especially for like shorts pages, because I usually start them up myself. So I am somewhat relatively interested in it, or I could see myself being interested in it before I start it. Just because I think if you're doing something you totally don't care about, you probably are gonna be very detached from it and it's gonna make it harder. Whereas also, like I said right at the start, is you want to take advantage of your onfair advantages. So you know, like if I know a lot about football, then I'm probably gonna know I'm gonna be in the loop of what's going on in the football world, meaning I can make videos better um than other people that don't. So I would say that, but yeah, definitely there are niches that are easier to monetize than others and make more money with.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Give me an example of one that would be like a pretty easy uh to monetize. Because the other thing is some uh the the I guess an easy answer would be like gaming stuff's easy, but it's it's not a good CPM or RPM gaming in general. So what's like one that's pretty easy to get into, you can do pretty well at and has a pretty decent RPM or CPM?

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Um with YouTube Shorts, I would say something like something commentary-based, because that's another thing as well, obviously, is if your videos do have English in them, then you're gonna obviously attract a majority English audience or people that can at least speak English, because YouTube aren't really gonna push it to people that don't speak English. So that'd be a main one, and then just anything where Americans are gonna be somewhat interested. So maybe it could be a page about war. War is a big one, um, and also uh like army-based stuff, like military stuff, like Americans, especially older Americans, love that military stuff. And I know those pages get some of the best RPMs that you can get on YouTube Shorts. Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Well, one of the cool things here at VidIQ is we actually have tools that help you find these niches and help you find all of these ideas. There'll be a link in the description below to help you get signed up for that. Uh, if you're not really sure how to find these things. I mean, sometimes we talk about these things, you're like, okay, that's great, but how do I come up with things? Well, we got tools to help you out. There'll be a link in the description below. All right, so on to some of the videos you've made on your main channel. Um, you have some really cool ideas here. Uh these short niches to go viral in 2026. How did you come up with these? How did you research these to know that like these are like five niches that are gonna be amazing? Because I found that video really interesting. Um, and obviously so did a lot of other people. I'm just curious, like, how do you come up with that? How do you come up with five niches that are are gonna go viral? And what are you using to kind of come up with that um that association or um to be honest?

SPEAKER_01 14:57

I just scroll on YouTube Shorts. That's like the best way to find niches, in my opinion. Although there are a lot of tools now, and I generally do actually use VidIQ um as well as a few other AI tools to try and find niches. But yeah, I quite like scrolling on YouTube Shorts and just seeing one. And once I've found a page from that niche that I think is interesting, I'll just save it somewhere else, so then later on I can go down the rabbit hole and see if it is a good niche I'd want to go into. Um, so yeah, I'll just say scrolling is a great way to start. Like, yeah, it's a good way to understand what's working on YouTube Shorts right now, what isn't.

Passion Projects Funded By Faceless Pages

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Yeah, it's interesting because we talk about that in Longform too, that um in order to become kind of like a master or anything, you really need to become a student of it first. And as viewers, I think we sometimes for I think as creators, I think sometimes we forget that we should be viewers first because that's actually what uh uh YouTube is all about. It's about the viewers. So if we understand something that is connecting with a viewer on a specific level, it's easier for us to do make content around it, especially if you're paying attention to why uh something is so interesting and intriguing. Now, one of the things that shorts I mean it does have, but not really in the same way that Longform has is the comment section. A lot of times I'll use the comment section of long form to kind of figure out what's connecting with a creator from for a specific piece of content because those things leave clues all the time. People will say something, it's like I love this because of this, that, and the other. Uh do you ever do that to kind of figure out what's good? Are you just looking straight at the the view count and going, okay, this must have connected and let me see if I can figure out a way to recreate it?

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Yeah, no, for sure. I don't there's a I think shorts is slightly different to long form. Like sometimes like a technique you could use on shorts is like rage baiting, pretty much. So like I literally saw one this morning where someone um it's like a oh no, I was reviewing a page yesterday actually. And some of those, it was a like a WWE clip, and someone put in the text of Jake Paul instead of Logan Paul, and literally the video went viral, and it was all the comments were just like, Oh, that's Logan Paul. So like there's stuff like that with shorts. Um, but yeah, with long form, I'll definitely say with my channel. Sometimes people will be like, Oh, can you make a video about this? So it is good comments are a good place to get feedback for sure, and you can see if it's helping you or not, like that rage baiting. But yeah, I'd say less on shorts, I find video ideas and comments.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

I I love the the idea of keeping mistakes in on purpose, and some creators do this. Um, do is it something that you think is a good idea or a bad idea? Because there are there are moments, if you do it too often, then it might like undermine your credibility depending on what type of content you're making. But to your point, like yeah, rage may worse. Like people will click on things and go, well, actually, let me correct you there, and obviously that uh can get you more views. What what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 17:22

Yeah, I think on faceless stuff is there's not really loads of harm in it. It really depends what kind of faceless page you are, right? Like, if you're doing YouTube Shorts, it's a bit more brainwritten, and I'll definitely say it's less like it's a bit different in long form than you're you're kind of not building a massive audience, like it can go kind of quick. People watch it for the content, not really for like the page. But if you're obviously a more established page, like something like Fern or something that's in a more established page, I probably wouldn't do stuff like that. You're trying to build that sort of brand. Um, but then yeah, even with face content, I think if you if you do it on face content, like if I was to do it, I'll do it in a way that's kind of jokey, and it can be used as a good way to like break the flow of a video. Um, just even like a small thing. Like I know Graham Stefan does it a lot. He's like, oh, and to say thank you is a photo of this alien and it's like a dog or something. Like just little things like that, just like just uh you know make your brain think for a second, keep you engaged.

High-RPM Niches And Military Content

SPEAKER_00 18:11

One of the hard things for a lot of content creators uh to really understand when it comes to short form is how important hooks are. Um, because you have less time to keep someone connected. I mean, there people will swipe in an instant on shorts. What are some of the things you've learned, some of the tips and tricks you've learned for shorts for engagement to keep people connected longer? Um if you would mind breaking down um like how you think of a short, like what the first three seconds should be, and kind of like how do you keep them watching till the end? Like, what are the things you've come up with?

Finding Niches: Scroll Strategically

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah, for sure. So the hook is obviously the main part. Um, because if if people have looked at statistics on shorts just using the YouTube dashboard, you've obviously got your swipe rate, which is always something I'm looking at. Like pretty much any short that's gone viral for me is at over a 75% at least swipe rate. Um, but yeah, it depends. So like you can I think of shorts differently. So, like, for example, my Joseph Beaty channel, when I post shorts on there, some of them are gonna be based on getting views from search. So when it's based on getting views for search, the hook is obviously gonna be related to what I'd expect it to come up as. So I have the video that has 1.7 million views on my channel as a short, it's basically talking about my journey with YouTube Shorts. So the hook is um I started a YouTube Shorts channel to see how much money I can make, something along those lines, like just telling you straight away what it is, and then you just want to go straight into the video. For a faceless page, it's kind of the same thing, like you just want to tell people what the video is about straight away. So if they're not interested, they can get straight off of it. Um, but then if they are interested, it if they are interested and it's your target audience, then they're gonna be hooked in and actually be interested in watching a video. And then about keeping people retained, it's once again just trying to make the video for shorts, especially, it's about keeping the video flowing quick, like a lot of cuts, um, things popping up on screen, and just so the script flows and not having filler words. That's a mistake I see a lot of people make uh with shorts, is having a lot of filler words in the videos. So I try and take all of that stuff about all of that stuff out to yeah, keep it nice and smooth.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

So to be clear, um, because we have a lot of content creators, we actually have content creators that are listening to podcasts, haven't started their channel yet, and sometimes we use words that uh they don't know yet. So, like fill explain what like a filler word is, and I guess I should I'll explain what a hook is. So a hook is something that um you say or do in a video that keeps people wanting to watch longer, in other words, and it might be in this video you'll learn how to do blah blah blah blah blah, and that's kind of the hook for that video. Um, tell us a little bit about filler words because a lot of people do this and they don't realize they're doing it. And when you're about to edit something, some people leave it in because they're just not really paying attention. Why is it important to cut out filler words and give me an example of a filler word? Again, I know this sounds kind of basic, but I want to make sure that everyone's listening knows what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

One I see quite a lot, like every basic one is like if someone's making a faceless video, they'll maybe use like on a mat appear in a way, like he'll be like, and boom, the guy knocked the door down. It's like, well, the footage should show that you don't need to say that, like that kind of stuff, basically. Just add in add in more than you need, you don't need to overexplain stuff.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah, so um what is this is that one of the bigger mistakes you see content creators making in the shorts field, or or is there something bigger?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Um probably I'd say that I mean I'd say the main thing with scripting is that just having too much filler words and not getting to the point. Um not getting to the point quick enough, and then on that note, also once you have gotten to the point, so like let's say your videos the hook is basically gonna tell you what your video is about. As soon as you have explained that part, what the hook has promised, you then want to cut the video off straight away, or like as soon as possible, because if not, you'll start to have your chart, your average view duration drop off, um, which yeah, like isn't a great thing. In fact, something I've seen a lot of people doing recently is literally cutting a video off halfway through a sentence just to make sure they get 100 plus percent um average view duration.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

And how much does that tend to matter? Like um, I know shorts when they first came out, you had to be usually over 100% retention. Like, what are your some of your better shorts looking at? Are they like 80%, 90%, 100%? Like, what are they, generally speaking?

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Um it really depends on my length. So like I say, that 20 second video that got like sixteen million views or whatever it was, uh this on a faceless page, it had like a hundred and twenty percent ABD, I believe. And that was just because there was something in the video that was really shocking to people would want to go back and watch it again. Um so I'd say for shorter videos like that sort of length, you do want to be aiming for a hundred plus like a hundred percent. If you've got a video that's maybe like a minute or a minute and a half, you could probably be looking at more 80 to 90 percent, but I do still see most of my videos having like, yeah, above 90 to go viral for sure.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Wow. Yeah, I mean 90% is kind of difficult for a lot of content creators. Um when you look at someone who's just getting in the shorts, uh, who doesn't have the background in it? I mean, you had a big background, you have a big background just because you've been across multiple platforms, so you get it. It might even be second nature, you probably don't even think about some of the things you're doing, it's just becomes second nature to you. Um someone who's just coming into this going, oh, this sounds really easy because it's a short form. I don't have to edit a lot, or but actually you do on YouTube. Um what are some of the things that they need to keep in mind going into the process? And I'm talking about more mindset things, it's not just like the technical because we've kind of talked about the technical things of like filler words and stuff, but like mindset-wise, because I think some people think, oh, I'll just put a video up of me talking for like 20 seconds and I'll get you know 10,000 views. It looks easy. What what's what's the reality of this?

Filler Words And Cutting The Fluff

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Yeah, um, I mean, I'm at a point now where you I probably can get 10,000 views quite easy, but in terms of getting a page monetized, that is still even for me. Like, sometimes it's not as easy as just do this, do that. Some pages I will still run for like a week or two and then it won't really work, and I'll be like, hey, maybe either I'm doing something wrong or maybe I'm not a fan of this niche, I'm just gonna cut it off. Um, so yeah, I definitely say like people need to stick with it longer than maybe they would think coming into it. Like, at least give it a month before you even expect to see any results, and then you're trying to be doing things like looking at your analytics after every video to see what you can improve. Like I say, looking at that average duration chart and the swipe uh and the swipe rate ratios just to try and improve your videos as much as you can. Like, if you get a video that has a good swipe rate, look at that video and be like, okay, why? And then you saw a touch on it earlier as well, and I was thinking it would be really good for like beginners to do is just to watch YouTube Shorts or YouTube in general and analyze it. I I do that all the time. Like, even though I'm watching a random video, I'll be like, oh, he's done that very well. And I'm like, I should apply that to my YouTube channel, you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Yeah, I love I love telling people um the next time you watch YouTube to do it as a student, uh it's easy to just sit there and go, okay, I want to turn my brain off, I just want to enjoy YouTube, which I do a lot of times. But uh, when you're in the mode of like, okay, I need to be inspired by something, uh, going on and then writing down why you clicked on something is really important, especially for long form or why you stayed watching something, because you can use those exact reasons to create better content for yourself. So if you go, well, I clicked on this thumbnail because it had a really cool image and I wasn't really sure what it was about. So write that down. Uh and then when you're into the video, if you ended up watching it to the end, write down, okay, well, what were you thinking the first couple seconds in? Like were you like, oh, okay, he's this person starting to answer the question I had. And why did you stay till the end? Because the vast majority of videos don't get watched at the end. That's why view durations are you know 50, 60 percent. And you know, it's funny when you when I first became a creator uh after being a viewer of YouTube for a long time, I I was shocked and it's like, wait a minute, people only watch half a video and that's considered successful. Like it's weird to hear that when you first get started, um, but it's actually part of part of the way it works. So I I think like understanding why viewers watch things for a certain amount of time and certainly why they stick around to the end is super critical to understanding that. Is there any time what how much time do you spend on like the ending part of the video? Because that's so critical too to get people to either watch to the end or maybe want to watch another video. Like, what are you doing towards the end of your videos?

SPEAKER_01 25:43

With faceless channels, once again, on that point, I but you were talking about shorts, right?

Endings That Boost Session Time

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Or long any any video, it's all three, it's all the same.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Okay, yeah. So for shorts, I'll say I definitely try and cut it off sooner to once again not get that AVD drop. Um, just because it's a faceless channel, but it's not really low, I don't really need to call to actions, I make my money off of the ad sense and stuff. But with my personal YouTube channel, um I try and have it so it flows into pushing people onto another video because I know that that's good for the YouTube algorithm if people stay on your channels for longer. So that's one thing that I try and do. Um, but to be honest, I think I could be better there on my channel. I think I could probably maybe waffle a bit less at the end and cut the video shorter um to get a better average re duration.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

So is your future in continuing to do short stuff, or do you want to do more long uh form content, or do you just like the mix?

Mixing Long Form And Shorts

SPEAKER_01 26:33

I kind of like the mix, and to be honest, on a face channel, I think it works quite well during the mix. So, like I say, I have some shorts on my channel, I've grown it mainly from long form, but like the feature where you can sh uh attach a video to a shorts video is quite useful. So, in fact, one of my most successful short is actually also one of my most successful long form videos just in a short format. So I'm like, I tried YouTube Shorts for I think it was 90 days or something, um, and then I just attached a full series where I where I had the like a 30-minute long video showing me try YouTube Shorts for 150 days. Um so I think they can work well together. My future in a I think I quite I think like I'm just I kind of am in short form now. That's what I know, that's what I'm good at, and I think there's a lot of opportunity in it. So I think that's what my future then just staying with shorts and maybe trying to develop that space and yeah, be one of the leaders in that space.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

What's a real realistic expectation on how much money a person can create can actually make from YouTube shorts? Uh and so let's say, for example, um I'm a new content creator, I've figured out a pretty good niche. Uh maybe I even watch a lot of your videos and I understand okay, there's one of these niches that seems to be doing well, and Joe says it's gonna do well, so I'm gonna try this. Um and I'm gonna try it for six months straight. What is there an expectation to even be monetized at the end of six months? Uh and then if so, and again, there's no prediction. Like, obviously, some people could blow us up here, but like what's realistic? Like, what is a realistic goal?

Realistic Timelines And Consistency

SPEAKER_01 27:55

Yeah, I mean, well, if you watch my like series, I'd say that give you a pretty realistic goal. Like, that was my first shot on YouTube Shorts coming from Instagram and TikTok. Obviously, I had a lot of experience on Instagram and TikTok. I managed to get monetized in around 40 days, um, and within 150 days, I think I had made over$20,000 uh through AdSense on the channel. So, and that was just on YouTube Shorts. Um, I probably should have been posting to TikTok and stuff too, but because I was focused on making that channel around YouTube that video around YouTube Shorts, I did it on there. I'll say that's pretty realistic if you understand what like you're doing, but yeah, there's so many different situations. Like I know people that have made um like over a hundred thousand in their first like year. Um, I also know people that maybe haven't made any money in their first like six months. So it's like posting to get that to happen uh daily, I would say, on pretty much all my channels. Once again, it's different for different situations, but um I'm also operating in just a one post per day per channel. There's different niches. I see some niches where people are posting like six times a day and they're making good money, and I see some niches where it's like maybe higher quality and they're posting a little bit less, like every other day. But with shorts, you definitely need to be on it. It's gotta be like daily or every other day at a minimum, really.

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Interesting. Do you batch record them so that you don't have to you know get everything out every day, or how how does your process work?

Breaking Out Of 30k View Jail

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah, so obviously with faceless stuff, I don't have to film it. With my face stuff um for short form, because I am posting daily there, I do batch film all of that stuff. So I'll sit down like once a week, film seven videos, get them sent off to editors, and then they're ready. With my faceless stuff now, because I have editors running my pages, um basically I'll just batch ideas and then they have ideas to go ahead and create. They'll send me scripts, I'll tweak the scripts or just say, Yeah, that's a good script, and then they go ahead and make the videos. Um, but when I was doing them myself, like in the series, I fully did that myself because I wanted to show that people could literally spend zero dollars, zero pounds um and make money from YouTube. I would say I would batch them if I especially I knew I had something coming up. I would always like to be a day or two ahead. So if like say, I don't know, I go to the hospital or something, at least on that day I could still post a video.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

When when did should you say, okay, uh I need to either pivot or or or just leave? I know you said about a month, but like when is it really obvious that something's not working? Does it happen faster than that, or does it should you have you ever had a time where you're like a month in, you're like, I don't know about this, and then it worked out? Like, what's the is it like six weeks? Is it like 30 videos? Have you had any kind of idea about when you should actually just quit or pivot?

SPEAKER_01 30:27

I think if the niche is good, like if it's proof that the niche works, then it can work for you. It's just whether you're going about things the right way to make it work. Um, I would say like a I would say like because usually you'll get you'll get stuck in like a 30k UGL and you have to be there for a little bit to break out. And this really can vary on a niche. If it's a niche with less competition, it can be quite easy to break out. If it's a niche of more competition, it can be a bit harder. So if you're in a more competitive niche where you know there's more pages, you're probably looking at around a month or two. Like probably a two, I'd say probably you'd want to give it two to three months to see whether it's maybe not going to work. But then if you're in a less competitive niche, I think you can definitely break out of that 30k view gel within the month. Um, but with that being said, like there's so many facts at play here. Like maybe it is just your videos aren't good enough or your videos aren't original enough, you know. Maybe you're just copying the leaders in the niche rather than actually going ahead and trying to do things that are a bit more, say, like original. Um, because I find that a lot of the time when people are stuck in that 30k view jail, they're not really doing things that are too original, and they're just almost trying to copy the leaders in their niche a little bit too much.

Search-Based Shorts And How-Tos

SPEAKER_00 31:32

Talk a little bit about the 30k view jail. And again, remember, there's some people here that uh either are just about Stark, they don't even know what you're talking about. Like, what do you mean, jail? What's that all about? Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Yeah, sorry, so that's just like basically a terminology for um YouTube tend to test videos. If they're like if it's a decent video, they'll tend to test it. And if in that testing phase it maybe doesn't perform how they would want it to, it will kind of get stuck and it'll just stop getting views after around 30,000 views. It's quite a common thing. It would just like the videos were just flatline, but then again, I have had videos that flatline them and in the future they pick up, and actually some of those have been my most successful videos, so it didn't always mean a video is dead, but yeah, it's just kind of a terminology for that.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

We've seen um on the vid IQ channel that a lot of our older uh shorts are getting a lot of search traffic. Are you seeing that?

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Uh I'd say it depends on your niche. Definitely for like probably like like you say, Vid IQ, where it's like how to do this. I tried this, that's gonna get a search volume. I see that with my YouTube channel, like my face channel. With faceless ones, um, with the niches I'm in, I don't really see too much uh viewership off of search. But search is great, search is a great way to get views because you're basically you're in a way more targeted area. It's gonna be a lot easier for people to click on your videos because they've searched for that. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

So is that something for like a smaller kind of beginning creator they can maybe look at uh doing some search-based content, which could be like how-tos or quick tutorials and stuff like that. Do you find that that that has a good future from what you've seen?

If Starting Today: Relationships Niche

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yeah, I think it's competitive, but like especially if you're doing that as your whole channel. I know there's a lot of channels that just create crazy amounts of content for like how-tos across anything from like how to fix your iPhone to how to use Google. Like, um, so there's a niche there, but I do I think it's good because it's less a bit less competitive, you know. Like you're not fighting for people's attention on the browse feed where there's so much content, you're more so fighting for people's attention in the search feed. And as your video performs better and better over time, it'll rank higher in that search feed. So people more likely to click on it. I think it's quite a good method, especially I'd say it's probably a better method for face content for sure.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Gotcha. Uh and I think finally, I just want to uh I like to do this for people that have successful channels. If let's say today you didn't have um you have your background experience, but you don't have access to any of your editors or anything like that, and you need to start a short sharing, like oh crap, I need to make money. I need to do this right now, today. What's the niche you're gonna make it in? What are the first three or four videos you're gonna make today?

SPEAKER_01 33:55

Um okay, I'd have to do research on a niche. Once again, I would be operating in something that would have uh be in English just because it gets a better RPM.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Okay.

Workflow, Batching, And Editors

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Um so yeah, that's that's me personally. I guess like a niche I've seen doing quite well recently is uh the relationships niche, and there's not loads of competition in that niche, so there you go, there's a there's a little niche out there. But um yeah, and that should have a majority USA audience. I'd probably start in that and then first three videos, so I'll do a mix for like first four videos. I would look at some of my competitors and try and copy or like replicate their most successful videos, but I would try and replicate it in a way where I improve it. So I would always want to look at a video and be like, okay, maybe the video is a bit too long. This bit doesn't need to be here, I can cut it out. So that's what I'd probably do for like two of the videos, and then two of the other videos, I would try and say make it more original to test the waters and see what performs better. So maybe I would let's say I was in a relationships niche, I'll find an original clip from TikTok or something to edit from that niche. But one thing to always look out for, especially in these types of niches, like the relationships niche, is you want to find a clip that's gone viral, even if it is on TikTok. Like if a clip has gone viral on TikTok, there's probably a reason for that. So if you can bring over to YouTube Shorts and like YouTube Shorts a fire, if there's if you want to say that, then it can work pretty well if it hasn't been done before.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

I like that. It's interesting. The the relationship niche is uh for me evergreen, right? So you might get some search traffic out of it, and it's very interesting for people. So yeah, what a great uh what a great little exercise there. Well, Joe, thank you so much for joining us today. Obviously, um, if you want to check out Joe, we'll have a link in the description. And if you want to sign up for Food IQ, you can sign up. There'll be a link in the description as well. Uh, anything else interesting that's going on with you, Joe, you want people to know about?

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Um honestly, no, not really. I would say just follow my my YouTube or my Instagram and TikTok, and you should stay up to date there. But yeah, just trying to help people in the short form space and even long form. If anyone has questions about long form, they can feel free to ask. Maybe I'll start making some videos about long form because of that. Obviously, I have some experience on my channel, but that's pretty much it, I'd say.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Uh, one last question. Uh, your thumbnails are really good. So, how are you doing those?

When To Pivot Or Quit

SPEAKER_01 36:02

Yeah, I think some of them are really good. Okay, what do you think? Um, I actually I have a thumbnail designer. Um, so yeah, I do need to play around with AI a bit more. I might save myself some money there. But um at the start of my channel, I literally didn't really want to spend any crazy money. I learned Photoshop myself. So my first like maybe my first maybe five to six thumbnails were made by me, and then I started paying people. Um so yeah, that's uh that's what I'd say. But there are a lot of great AI tools nowadays, so you can kind of get away with doing that early rather than having to do the grow-in work of teaching yourself Photoshop like I did when I started.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Oh my god, yeah, it's that's kind of brutal stuff. Uh, is it expensive to have a thumbnail designer, like if you're not good at it?

SPEAKER_01 36:45

Um honestly, I would say no, and especially with AI, it's now getting more competitive for them. So yeah, you can find some decent thumbnail creators for probably anywhere around I'd say like beginning, it's probably around$20 you can find a thumbnail creator for. And then if you want to sign a bit more premium, you're probably looking at around maybe$70 to like a hundred dollars.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Well, but if you're a VidIQ customer, we have the AI tool that you can make thumbnails with, so why don't you check that out as well? We have a great opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

I might have to try it myself.

SPEAKER_00 37:15

I'll tell you, we got some great stuff coming up. So, anyway, thank you for joining us today, and we'll see y'all in the next one.