Hello and welcome to the YouTube Success Podcast.
In this episode, we're talking about faceless YouTube channels.
I'm going to talk about the five things that you need to know to get started
with a faceless YouTube channel.
And I'm going to tell you exactly how you can come along for the ride with us and
come and join me as we start this journey for faceless YouTube channels together.
All right, this is YouTube automation, very, very simply
put over the next 15 minutes.
All right, let's go.
Well, hello YouTube Success Podcast.
I'm coming at you from a different place today, as I'm sitting in my hotel
room, waiting to go and get on a plane to go to Social Media Marketing World.
My hope is, by the way, if you're listening to this podcast, that
when I'm there, I'll be able to find a whole bunch of people that
I can interview for the podcast.
So stick around over the next few episodes.
You're going to find some people that I've found.
Even the hat I'm going to have too much to drink, not film any content
and be really annoyed that I've gone all the way to San Diego and
not managed to get any interviews.
But scratch that, let's be intentional.
Intentional is a key word when it comes to any kind of content creation.
Let's be intentional and say that I'm definitely going to do that, right?
That's the former, not the latter.
Okay, so today I'm going to talk about faceless YouTube channels.
This is something that I've been thinking about for a while now.
I've been doing loads of research.
I've found loads of creators that are running faceless YouTube channels.
And so I'm just going to talk about the things that I think you need in order
to create a faceless YouTube channel.
If you want to come along for the journey, you can head to
youtubeaccelerator.co.uk on March the 1st, which is in a couple of weeks.
This is going out next Thursday and, it's Friday the 16th of February today.
This is going out next Thursday.
So you should have a bit of time to come and join us, youtubeaccelerator.co.uk.
And you can join us because one of my clients, somebody that signed
up for that Accelerator, wants to start a faceless YouTube channel.
And I was like, well, if that's the demand, if somebody's asked
me to do that, it's something I've been thinking about for a while.
Why don't I do that as well?
And then I can teach him and we can learn together and grow together.
Always, always I'm looking at like, how can we work together?
How can we get on the same ship and go for this journey together?
And I think through the research I've been doing over the last six
months, I kind of know what's involved in creating a faceless channel.
And I've got a few bits of software that I'm interested in using.
And I know the exact steps in terms of what.
What is actually needed to create a faceless YouTube channel.
So here they are.
So the first one is a topic or niche.
You need a topic or niche that you're going to pick that will allow you to
create a faceless YouTube channel.
Now I know the kind of thing that we're talking about here
is motivational videos, right?
That's the one everyone goes to, motivational videos.
Actually, if you, if what I've learned is that if you want to get a good,
faceless channel, you really want to find something that has a high CPM, right?
This is the amount of money that YouTube will give you per thousand views.
And I know the highest is always finance.
This is always money.
Anyone talks about money on YouTube it's the best CPM for your, for your
YouTube videos, but I really don't want to go into the financial niche.
So I'm going to think about the niches, probably on the plane ride
and see if I can find something.
I'm really liking the idea of sport, but I'm interested to see
how the copyright issues come in.
I also know a guy that's got a great faceless channel.
That's all about WWE.
I know when he first started it, he was creating the videos himself
and then he's hired a team out now and he's making a million pounds
a year from this faceless channel.
Ridiculous, right?
Absolutely ridiculous, but I know it's all automated for him now as well.
So thinking about sport, thinking about things that I like, things that I enjoy.
If I'm reviewing the footage from this channel, when I'm reviewing the
content that's coming back, I want to have an interest in it, right?
And I don't want to just create, Oh, let's go for, let's go for money
because that's the obvious one.
It's got the highest CPM.
What about something that I enjoy as well?
The second thing that you need then is a script writer.
You need somebody to create a script for your videos.
Now when I'm thinking about sport.
I'm thinking about somebody that has a big interest in creating scripts for sports.
So going back to this wrestling example, this guy had like the 10
best moves or the 10 best showdowns.
So thinking if it was football for me, it would be like the 10 best goals.
It might be like the 10 times that there was fights on the pitch or
the 10 worst tackles, you know, thinking about those kinds of things.
That's what I would think of.
But actually what I'd want is a script writer that's going to go and
create some scripts that are really going to keep people's attention.
So I'm definitely going to go and want to hire a script writer.
And the site that I use, for me, by the way, for these things is onlinejobs.ph.
I love that site.
It's got some great, well skilled individuals on it, relatively
well priced individuals as well.
And so onlinejobs.ph is my first port of call.
I might explore some other places to go and find these people as well.
But for me, that's a good one.
The next thing that I need there, number three.
So we've got the topic and niche script writer.
And number three is a video editor.
Of course, we're going to need a video.
And so if we're going to automate all of this stuff, we want to
have a video editor as well.
I've done this in the past.
I will say to you that when you're hiring any of these
people that you want to vet them.
Vetting these people is very good.
Give them a task, give them something to do first, to show you
the kind of stuff that you need.
And I will say you've got to kiss a lot of frogs before you get a prince,
because some of the editors that I've hired in the past they say they can
do a lot and they don't turn out to be as great as they think they are.
So, just know that it's going to be a bit of a process and I would say it's
probably the same for every resource that you get when you're automating this stuff.
Another site, just to think about another site that you
might want to use is fiverr.com.
So there's some great resources on fiverr.com.
You can see the kind of work they've done before.
This will help you potentially remove the ones that are not so good, right?
Or find or weed out the ones that are not so good.
So fiverr.com is good, but I think fiverr.com is probably more expensive.
And it's never really a Fiverr these days, but it would be more expensive and you'd
probably do that on a gig, per gig basis, so per video basis, whereas if you go on
onlinejobs.ph, you might be able to find someone that you could have full time or
part time that would actually work with you consistently over those videos.
That's an editor.
Okay, so then there's a voice over artist.
Now this one's really interesting actually, because when I spoke to
the guy who's interested in doing the faceless channels with me,
voice over artist was a logical one.
And I'm not sure whether we need a voice over artist anymore,
or whether we can use AI.
Now, a friend of mine, I wouldn't say me and Austin are friends, but
somebody I know, Austin Armstrong, he runs a company called Syllaby, I'll put
the link in the description for you.
And Syllaby has a great bunch of tools and I'm sure AI
voiceover artists is one of them.
And the great thing about the voiceover artists for AI is they're starting
to sound like real human beings.
They no longer sound like the robotic people that you know, when you're,
well, if you've ever tried these tools before, so voiceover artists is one.
Yes, we could go on Fiverr.
Yes, we could go on onlinejobs.ph.
But I think I'm probably going to use AI for it.
I'm sort of probably going to start with AI first and see how we get on.
And maybe we'll look at, going to hire a voiceover artist.
So maybe we'll just test both and see which one we get the best results on.
And then I think the next thing that I really need is a thumbnail artist.
This is someone that's going to create the thumbnails for me.
So if I think about the fact that I've got my topic, my script, my editor, my
voiceover artist, I'm going to have to have a thumbnail that hooks people in
and grabs people's attention so they actually click through to the video.
So I'm going to really want a talented artist.
Again, a guy who's speaking at TubeFest, Justin Evans, he runs a
service called Custom Thumbnails.
I think it's customthumbnails.com.
I'll have to check, but I'll put again, put the link in the show notes.
In Custom Thumbnails, you can pay a fixed fee.
It was the last time I looked at something like $127 and they delivered
4 thumbnails for you every month and you can pay more and get more thumbnails.
Again, I would say potentially you want to go to fiverr.com and you want to go
to Online Jobs (Ph) and find somebody that you could work with where you
could get more out of that, you know.
When we're doing faceless channels, we probably want to get from not the
standard strategy of one video per week.
We want to do more like 3 or 4, or 7; maybe one video per day.
So we want to up the game mainly when it comes to how much output.
And if we do that, then we're going to need, we're not going to want to spend
$127 every 4 thumbnails, as we're going to want to find someone that can consistently
pump out these thumbnails and make sure that we get a good amount per month.
But I think the key for this stuff is just to start small, build this team,
make sure we're getting the right team and getting the stuff that comes back
to us in a reasonable amount of time.
One of the downsides I saw, one of the YouTubers when I was doing my research say
was that they started with this grand idea that was going to have so much content
coming out and all of that kind of stuff, but they didn't expect all of the back
and forth that you would get with editors.
They also said one of the editors disappeared after
a while, which is no good.
Here's some little things to think about I think that may help you
if you're going down this journey.
Just a few little things, I'll give you a handful of things, I don't
know how many because I'm just making this up on the spot, but I'll give
you a few little tips when it comes to hiring external people like this.
The first thing I will say is that you want your own online
storage for all of the data.
So this guy that said about the editor that disappeared, what he said, I think
he was creating an animation-based faces channel and the animator disappeared.
And the problem was when the animator disappeared, all the data disappeared,
so they couldn't recreate that animated character or anything like that because
the animator disappeared with all the files, so this is so important.
Get your own online storage.
For me I use Office 365 OneDrive.
You might use Google Drive.
You might be used Dropbox.
Yeah, maybe drop but something like that, but find your own online storage and
insist, absolutely insist, that all of the resources that you get, put their files,
their source files, into that storage.
You can insist on this.
Some of them will say, oh, I don't want to work like that, or whatever.
But it must be something that you own, that you have the password
with, that you share with them.
They save all their data into that.
And then if they disappear, you've got all those source files.
Not just the outputs, not just the exported files, but the actual source
files that they're working on, they need to be stayed with you and they need to
be your intellectual property, right?
It just means if one of your editors disappears, you can go and get another
editor and let's say they're using Adobe Premiere or After Effects, you
can say I need another editor that is capable of learning, is capable
of working with Premiere, After Effects, whatever it, the case may be.
So really, really ensure that you have your own stories.
That is so, so important.
And the other thing is to make sure you brief your editors really well.
A lot of people will just say that I'm going to give you this video.
Maybe we've got the script and the topic and we'll just give it
to the editors and away they go.
If you want to avoid the back and forward, I don't want you to tell them
how to make videos and edit videos because they know how to do that stuff.
But it's really, been really, really clear that you say, well, for
this style of video, I'd like to have a new shot every five seconds.
I want to have, I want to make sure that the audience is constantly kept engaged.
I want to make sure that there's time to be able to consume what
content is in there, but not too much time that the user gets bored.
I want to have this kind of style, look and feel.
You might go and find a few examples of the kind of stuff that you like.
So you can give them some inspiration and just know that you're going
to have to go back and forward and go through this process until you
find the right style that is yours.
can always look for inspiration, but don't just copy somebody else's.
You want to get the actual right style for yours.
What else can I tell you about external resource?
The other thing I would say is, for me, I'm English-based, so I'm based in the UK.
When I'm looking for external resource, especially resource that's
in a different country, I insist that they speak good English, right?
And you, most places that you go and search for this stuff is that you can ask
for the level of English that they have.
But also interview them face to face, make sure you have a conversation with them.
I think the challenge with outsourcing stuff is largely around communication.
If your communication is not good, if they don't understand you, you don't understand
them, there's always going to be problems and things will get lost in translation.
So make sure you take the effort to actually interview them face to face.
Yes, you can, once you get the applications, you'll get an absolute
ton of applications at a thought.
Weed them out, find the ones that look the best, make sure the English is on point
and then interview them face to face.
And by face to face, I'm talking about Zoom.
I'm not saying go out to the Philippines or to India or wherever you're
going to get that resource from.
I'm saying go on Zoom, have a conversation with them because some of them you
chat to them and the CV will look great and the application will look great.
But actually when you get on camera with them, they can't communicate with you.
So it's really, really important.
On that basis as well, just when you're putting the application out there,
make sure you also put some kind of little hidden gem in the application.
So one of the things that I do is I put a little keyword inside the
application and say, when you apply, these are the three steps you take.
You send an email to this address with your application, your CV, you must
mention this secret word and so it might be like rockstar or something like that.
I think that's what I use in the past.
And then you must apply by this time and this time only.
And what that does is it shows your attention to detail.
If they don't see that secret, hidden word and they don't say it in the
application, I don't even read it, because the attention to detail
is so important and I want to make sure they've read the whole thing.
I think that's it really.
I think that's kind of a good unplanned version of what we're
going to do with Faceless Channels.
We're going to start this on March 1st, so in a couple of weeks.
And me and a guy, Seb, we're going to try and build a Faceless Channel, alongside
the stuff that we're already doing.
So this is a separate thing.
So if you want to come and join us, don't forget to go to youtubeaccelerator.co.uk
and you can sign up and jump in on that.
We have 6 spaces for every month for our Accelerator.
So already, we've got two of those sold and we'll see if we can fill
that up by the end of the month.
All right.
Thanks so much.
My name is Matt Hughes, King of Video.
I'll see you on the next podcast.