Make $20K+ with YouTube without Showing Your Face with Tony Lysan

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Success Story Podcast. Today, we'll be breaking down how to make$20 ,000 plus with YouTube without showing your face. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Tony Lyson into EO Fire Studios. Tony runs multiple YouTube channels that make him passive income on a monthly basis, but the crazy thing is he does not show his face or create any of the videos. Now he has embarked on a journey to help others do the same.

0:39And today, Fire Nation, we're going to talk about YouTube automation. We'll talk about not showing your face on YouTube and still making amazing viral videos and the power of a strong team and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Tony and our sponsors. The Hustle Daily Show, hosted by Juliet Bennett-Ryla, Rob Litters, Ben Berkley, and Mark Dent, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the ideal destination for business professionals. The Hustle Daily Show brings you a healthy dose of irreverent, offbeat, informative takes on business and tech news, like a recent episode on hackers versus casinos, where the hosts talk about MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment and the devastating potential of cyber attacks.

1:20Listen to The Hustle Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Is now your time? Visit thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability. It's month to month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at thrivetimeshow.com. Tony, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? Great to be on here with the legend, John Lee Dumas. And what people need to do in order to be successful that most people disagree with, I would say, is you don't have to be the best at what you do in order to be successful.

2:11You can literally outsource what is needed to someone who is the best at what they do and just profit with that person instead of being at the best at what you do. That's the number one thing I would say that you don't need in order to be successful. And Fire Nation, that's why we're talking about making over$20 ,000 with YouTube without even showing your face. You went big, Tony, and I mean big into YouTube automation. Tell us how you got there. Walk us through that story. Yeah, thanks for letting me share this with your audience, John. And it was in the lockdown, the first lockdown when COVID-19 came into being.

2:51And basically what happened is I wasn't able to work at my job because of the COVID pandemic. So I was looking for other ways to make money online. I first started off with Forex trading that didn't really do well. And then I ran into YouTube automation where I would make videos on YouTube without showing my face and make money from that. And so, yeah, I just started doing that in the heat of lockdown. And then I just had a few viral videos that popped off and I started making some decent money every month from the YouTube videos. And so, yeah, it was in the heat of lockdown that it all came to being.

3:26And yeah, I'm so happy it happened. Fire Nation, you're about to be happy that it happened as well, because man, I will say a lot of people would probably think that you are lying if you told them Fire Nation that you could make money on YouTube without even showing your face, because that's what people just think of. They think of video, they think of faces, they think, you know animation whatever that might be but you found a way to do this tony take us to that story tell us how you do it yeah so basically what you have to do is you have to be a youtuber without being a youtuber so you would being a youtube automator is what we call it it's called youtube automation that's the business model and this is where you look for trending topics that are popping off pretty much in the last uh six months and when you see a channel or topics that are trending.

4:16Basically what you would want to do as a YouTube automator is that you would want to create similar content that will go viral in that niche and basically profit from the AdSense. So the way YouTube pays people who are YouTubers is through a program called Google AdSense where you get paid on every advert that comes on your video. So every advert that people click on, every time someone clicks on your video, every time you have a view on your video, So you will get paid based on the adverts that are shown on your videos. And so that's basically how YouTube pays creators. You get paid on average around$3 per 1 ,000 views.

4:51Some niches are a bit more. Or if you're in like the finance niche, you're going to get around$20 per 1 ,000 views. So it all depends on what kind of niche you're in. And so essentially, the way you make money on YouTube or the way I kind of got into it is I didn't really want to show my face. I didn't want to kind of look stupid in front of cameras. And I know many people are like that. Many people are like introverted entrepreneurs and they want to be kind of like the behind the scenes guy. And so what I ended up doing was I ended up hiring people from places like Fiverr and Upwork and onlinejobs.ph.

5:24So those are really good websites where you can find pure quality talent who do amazing videos for you that you fully own after you've paid them to do the work. and they're not that expensive. They won't break the bank because they are in places like the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan. These are like third world countries where their currency isn't as strong as the dollar or in my case, the UK pound. And so$50 to them is like$500 to us. So paying someone$50 to work for you who are just as talented as someone who may be here in the UK or in the US is pretty much what you're leveraging. We're leveraging the currency of what we have.

6:04So I'll pay people in the Philippines to make me videos, and I've had many videos go viral, and that's in return made me tens of thousands of dollars. And yeah, one thing I've done with one of my videos, one of my videos popped off and it hit 22 million views. And I was shocked when this happened. And this was about Dubai's man-made islands. I watched that video. Yeah? Oh, dude, I loved that video. Yeah, that was great. It was crazy how it just popped off though. It was like out of nowhere. And this is the thing about YouTube. Sometimes you may post a video and it may not do anything for the first three months because that video did absolutely nothing for three months.

6:46And then after three months, it just popped off and hit 22 million views. And that was because I changed the thumbnail. And I changed the thumbnail to something that I believed would really, really work. and that's one of the methods I teach in my program to my students is that if you really want to see results in your YouTube videos, constantly tweak the thumbnails until you see results. And so, yeah, that was one of my videos that popped off and did some significant numbers. And so what I ended up doing is that after I had one channel that started making good money, I then took the profits from that channel and reinvested it into other channels.

7:24And so now I'm running multiple channels that I invest into and bring in money every month. And yeah, so the whole ethos is to just see what's trending on YouTube and hire a team overseas to make you some quality content and then ride the wave of virality. Fire Nation, we have a lot to talk about around this topic because I know there's a lot of questions swirling in your head about the different things that Tony's talking about right now. The thumbnail, the different overseas teams, the topics to choose. And we'll be talking about that and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. The fourth quarter is here.

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11:19But let's get deep into the weeds here. How would a person listening right now find a viral video idea in the first place? Well, that's very simple, John. you just have to scroll through YouTube until you find the viral video. That's pretty much it. And there are three things that you would want to do in order to identify viral video. And the first thing you would want to look at is, has that video got at least 100K views? And was that video recently posted? So there's many YouTube videos out there that have got over 10 million views, over 20 million views. However, those videos were posted two years ago, so it's most likely not trending right now.

12:08So what you would want to do is you would want to look for a video that has gone viral in the past couple of months, even in the past couple of days, which is even better, which means you can ride that wave. Now, those are the two requirements. Now, there's one more, which I'm going to go into in a few seconds. but the first two requirements in order to identify identify a viral video is number one it has to have gone viral when i say viral at least 100k views um at least you know it's going to get more than that it's going to go to at least in the millions but if it got 100k views in the past let's say week or two weeks then you know that that video's like is climbing is climbing upwards now the third thing you would want to identify in terms of a trending topic is that you would want to see if that channel that posted that video is a smaller channel meaning that if it's got under 1000 subscribers so therefore you know that the views from that video is not coming from the subscribers but it's coming from the algorithm from what people are searching for and so yeah that's how those are the three things number one it has to have got a lot of views number two, that video has to have been posted recently.

13:20And number three, it has to be have posted half, it has to have been posted by a channel that is small. What do you consider recent? The past three months, but the sooner the better. So if you see a video that went viral in the past five days, then that that's, that's, that's a really good sign. It means it's only going to go bigger. Um, but yeah, I would say the sooner the better, but don't, don't have it over three months because the trend may have died down. Over 100 ,000 views recently, Fire Nation. The more recent, the better. And is the channel small? It does have under 1 ,000 subscribers.

13:58Those are all keys to figuring this out. Now, real quick, walk us through how you actually came up with your 22 million view video idea, the Dubai man-made islands. Yeah, sure. So I was scrolling through YouTube and I was just looking for some trending topics. And once I saw a video which was about the Dubai man-made islands, and I think it was a guy who was just touring them and was just talking about why they are still empty, even though these rich oil shakes have invested billions of dollars into this project, but still the islands are still empty. there was a lot of hype around those videos at the time and so i just decided why don't i just create a similar video about that same topic but from a different angle so instead of talking about why the dubai mine-made islands were empty or why they are sinking why don't i just create another video about how they were made and so when i created that video with the thumbnail of like this this this um massive machine that was like shooting sand into the sea i was like when i saw that picture i was like that looks cool why don't i use that as a thumbnail and so i put that as a as a thumbnail and that's when it popped off so i saw a trend i spotted a trend i saw that it was a topic that was trending and that went viral already has gone viral and it was on and it was done by a recent video pretty much exactly why i explained that if there's a viral video that's gone viral within the past few months, then do a similar topic.

15:30That's pretty much what I did. And that's the secret sauce. Now, is it fairly common for people to use thumbnails that aren't exactly real? And what I mean by that is like, for instance, you know, hey, like the world's biggest waves and like, it'll be a thumbnail of like all these people at the beach, you know, like hundreds of people. And then this wave that's like hundreds of feet high, you know, that's about to crash down upon them. So obviously it's a very dramatic image that was probably generated with AI or something like that. Is that common to use for thumbnails? Yes, it is common to use those kind of clickbait-y images for thumbnails.

16:13Now, there is a fine line. Now, clickbait has kind of gone... YouTube has kind of cracked down on clickbait. And I'm going to explain why, because there's two metrics that determine a video going viral. Now, number one is the click-through rate, meaning that the percentage of people that scroll through YouTube end up clicking on your video is very high. So if like 100 people see your thumbnail and title, if 10 of them click on your video, that's 10 % click through rate, which is really good. If you have a high click through rate, then YouTube promotes your video. Plus, if you have a long, if you have high watch time, a high average view duration of your video, that means that YouTube knows that people like your content, they're watching it till the end, and they end up promoting that video because you do want to keep people on their platform as long as possible so those are the two metrics that determine a video going viral now the way youtubers crack down on clickbait is that when people would have a high click-through rate meaning that loads of people click on the video but people would like click off like within the first 30 seconds then they know that you're most likely clickbaiting because people are clicking onto your video but they're clicking straight off meaning that you didn't really deliver on the click you didn't really deliver on the promise of what you said the video was about um so yeah but you still see those quote-unquote clickbait thumbnails now there's there's a difference between clickbait which is pretty much lying on the thumbnail where you deceive people and they just click off and exaggerating so you see mr beast do a lot of quote-unquote exaggerations in his thumbnails where um it's like how can i say it so it's not clickbait but it's a bit more exaggeration so like you're saying like a wave of people being like destroyed by like a um a tsunami or whatever that's people know the videos about tsunami but they know that the type the thumbnail is kind of exaggerated which is fine i mean people do that with book covers people are still watching the video to the end then they don't feel cheated and yeah youtube still promotes them so one thing that i really want to hammer home to you fire Nation when you're listening is think about what you experience with these videos.

18:20Like for me, to be completely honest with you, when I see one of those videos that has that exaggerated thumbnail and I click on it, kind of expecting to see something like that in the video and it doesn't have that, I'll usually give the video a thumb down. I'll usually stop watching before it's over. Like it's obvious to me that that's not what I came to view. And like, you know, we were just sharing with Tony, YouTube is going to negatively impact and reward that video because of that. So when you can create a nice seamless flow and people are getting what they think they're getting, what they want to get from your video, you have a lot higher chance of hitting those metrics that YouTube's looking for.

19:04The view time, the liking, the sharing, et cetera. And this all comes down to building a strong team. Like you said, you took the profits from one of your videos and you were able to invest it in other channels, et cetera, and build a team. Talk to us about how you've successfully done this. When you have one profitable channel or one channel that's making money, you can take the profits of that channel and reinvest it one, either more back into that channel or into another channel. So you can basically say that YouTube is digital real estate. So once you have one channel or one digital property producing you money every month, you can then reinvest that money into another channel.

19:51So basically reinvest the profits of one property into another. And then once another channel goes viral, you can then reinvest that channel into another channel. And then the goal is to have 10, 20 channels pulling in money every month. So that's how you do it. I mean, in terms of hiring a strong team, YouTube, there's different niches that you can go into. Some are more quality focused and some are more like quantity focused. So there's different, there's so many different channels out there, like so many from like how to channels to like channels about channels about luxury. Then you have channels about AI, you have channels about crime and then there's pranks.

20:33There's just so many niches out there which you can choose from. Now, I would say that hiring a strong team is pretty much your strongest asset in this game. It's very important to have a strong team that produce strong videos. And it's important to not just have good people on your team, but make sure that they keep up with the quality that they produce. Because the truth of the matter is, and you'll know this more than me, John, is that in business, your employees will never care about the business more than you do. Never. Never. it just doesn't exist and they shouldn't because you're the one that has the you know 100 upside reward when you crush it they're doing their job but at the end of the day they're not gaining in the exact upside that you're gaining and i respect that and i understand that but that's just something we have to unless you give equity to them which is probably not what you would want to do but um but yeah that that's just something if they're just working for you and they're not keeping up with the quality.

21:34You just need to keep a strong eye on them and on the quality of the work to make sure that they keep up with the quality. But Tony, what I want to know is, can anyone do this or does this take a special type? Anyone and everyone can pretty much do this. Now, it does cost money to hire people to do this, but you can learn some of this yourself. but it is possible for pretty much anyone to do this. So if you have a bit of money to invest and if you have a passion for the niche you're in, then I can't see why anyone can't pull this off. So Tony, what is the one takeaway that you want Fire Nation to get from our conversation today?

22:19We talked about a lot of cool stuff. What's the one thing you want to make sure we remember? One thing I would want Fire Nation to remember is this. And no matter how hard you are trying, no matter how much time and effort you're putting into something, it's very important to know that you should never give up if you know that that thing which you're doing has a proof of concept. now I'll be honest with you there was many times even with my YouTube channel I felt like giving up I felt like throwing the towel in I was like this isn't working I'm just investing all this all this time and energy and finance into this into this project and I'm just not getting a return and then all it and I just kept going because I was determined to make this thing work and as I kept going then the results just took off and then it happens more quickly than you expect.

23:10So the takeaway I would say is never give up. Your breakthrough is on the horizon. If Fire Nation wanted to connect with you, learn more from you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? We should have some links down below. One of it is a free training to my seven steps on how to crush on YouTube. So they can access that below. And we should have my Instagram link below, which they can connect with me on and they can reach out to me on and Instagram if they want to learn more on how to do this, how to make money on YouTube without showing their face. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

23:49You've been hanging out with TL and JLD today, so keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, just like Tony mentioned, go to eofire.com, type Tony in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. Tony, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, John. I appreciate you having me. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Tony for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free, freepodcastcourse.com.

24:30I'll catch you there. We're on the flip side. The Hustle Daily Show, hosted by Juliet Bennett-Ryla, Rob Litters, Ben Berkley and Mark Dent is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Hustle Daily Show brings you a healthy dose of irreverent, offbeat, informative takes on business and tech news, like a recent episode on hackers versus casinos, where the hosts talk about MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment and the devastating potential of cyber attacks. Listen to The Hustle Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Is now your time? Visit thrivetimeshow.com to see testimonials of how Clay Clark's business coaching has helped over 2 ,000 entrepreneurs to dramatically increase profitability.

25:10It's month to month and less money than an average minimum wage employee. Schedule your free consultation today at Thrivetimeshow.com.