565: YouTube Automation: Up to $14k a Month w/ Faceless Viral Videos

0:02Viral cash flowing videos on autopilot. Here's how one side hustler is getting it done. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to The Side Hustle Show because your 9 to 5 may make you a living, but your 5 to 9 makes you alive. Fascinating Side Hustle for you today. Tapping into the massive viewership of YouTube where people are consuming something like a billion hours of video content a day. And so in this episode, we're going to cover how to carve out your share of that viewership and get paid to do it. My guest today runs several YouTube channels and what's unique about them is that he's not on them.

0:36They're faceless videos intentionally engineered for virality. Tony Laisandrides, welcome to the Side Hustle Show. Thank you so much for having me, Nick. You bet. So Tony, you're bringing in up to 14 grand a month in YouTube ad revenue from these videos. And I think with a little practice, with a little patience, there's no reason why anybody listening can't do the same. So stick around in this one to learn about Tony's research process, deciding what videos to make, and then the automated production process that keeps the publishing machine spinning. If you're new to the show, make sure to grab your personalized playlist at hustle.show.

1:14All you got to do is answer a few short multiple choice questions, and I'll build you a custom curated playlist of the episodes that are going to be most relevant to you. And once again, that's at hustle.show. So Tony, take me to this$14 ,000 month. Like how long did that take? You know, what are you thinking at this point? That's crazy. Certainly, Nick. So basically, I was just uploading content, uploading content, and I was seeing some progress, but I wasn't seeing the crazy results that I was really going for. And my first$14 ,000 month came, I believe it was a December. I actually had COVID during that time, which was crazy, because I was like making the most money I've ever made whilst being sick and not able to work, which was an interesting, there's something in that.

1:59There's an interesting message in that saying that we can, we can actually make money in our sleep or even whilst we're sick. And, um, yeah, I had a video that popped off. It hit literally, I had one video that hit 22 million views within a week and that blew me away. And wow. When I hit those numbers on that video, that was my record breaking month of$14 ,000. It was very sweet seeing such results after, I would say it took me a year and a half to get there. After a year and a half of grind, I finally had that breakthrough tipping point, which was sweet. Yeah, a year and a half, we'll talk about the patience to get into it, how long it took to get monetized, what kept you going during that process.

2:43But that was a shower thought of mine just last week, this weird realization that I don't get paid while I'm working, so I can get paid while I'm not working. And it sounds like had a similar experience lying there, lying there sick and still having this video that really took off. And I want to give the example if you're comfortable sharing. So this is on the Interesting Flow YouTube channel, which has 100 ,000 subscribers at this point, obviously started from zero and grew over time. And this video that went super viral was how Dubai's artificial islands were made. And so the natural question is like, are you a civil engineer?

3:20You have a background in these big construction projects? Talk to me about maybe the research process that goes into coming up with something that you think is going to have a chance of winning that viral lottery. I'm not a civil engineer. I have zero construction background or architectural or civil engineering experience. And so the reason or the way how I came up with that idea is that I saw that the Dubai man-made islands were actually trending on YouTube. And I just thought, why am I going to try and reinvent the wheel when I can just use what's already working? And because I saw that Dubai was a topic that was trending, specifically their man-made islands, I just thought I'd make a video about how they were created.

4:00And so when I made that video, at first, it didn't do anything. For literally the first three months, that video did nothing. But it wasn't until I told my thumbnail designer to change the thumbnail to something that I had in mind, which was like the construction machine actually shooting out sand and dirt to basically create the man-made island. I just said, just put that in the thumbnail, just that picture, no text, no nothing, just put that. And when he did, that video began to gain traction and then it hit those numbers. And so, yeah, sometimes it's just that one little tweak you make. That's crazy.

4:33I just, I love this idea of, you know, these videos as kind of mini digital assets that you send out into the world to do your bidding and they can generate this kind of cash flow. I think it's a really interesting model. And I've had nothing to hit 22 million views. I've never had anything hit a million views to my knowledge. But it's just, take me back to why I discovered that the Dubai man-made islands were trending. How do you discover that as a potential topic? So I was just scrolling through YouTube and I was just looking for what will work and what is trending right now. And I was just scrolling through YouTube and I was just going, just doing my digging, just doing my digging.

5:12And yeah, I came across that topic. And I just thought, why not make a different variation of that topic and see how it will blow up. And so one of the ways I kind of look for video ideas is once I see that one topic has had a proof of concept, I would kind of do several variations of that topic. So let's say, let's take the Dubai manmade island, for example. Let's say there's a video trending, like the one I did, how Dubai's man-made islands were made. What you can do in order to just leverage off of that topic is that you can do different variations of that same subject. For example, you can look into what the Dubai man-made islands are and you can say why they were made, who made them, or why are they empty?

5:57Why is it that no one lives in them? Why are they sinking? Because they are actually sinking. And you can just do these different topics of them and see them explode. Okay, yeah, and tackling it from all these different approaches. So then, as you see this as a trending topic, like, hey, somebody else has already posted a video about this, it's doing really well, and so now if I can move quickly enough, I can kind of draft off of the popularity of that, I can ride the tailwind of that other video or these other videos. So then what happens next? What happens next is that you can then do different topics as opposed to just Dubai.

6:35So you can see that Dubai is more like a sub niche. It's not really a niche. It's very narrow and specific. So instead of just hitting up that very niche that you've done, you can then branch out to other mega projects because essentially, even though that topic is about Dubai's man-made islands, the niche is mega projects. So you can then start doing videos on different types of mega projects that happened in China, that happened in the United States and in different countries. So you would want to be in a niche and not just in a sub niche because a sub niche isn't big enough to be lucrative.

7:12You can make a bit of money, but in order to really scale and have consistent results, you would want to branch out to the niche. So instead of looking at Dubai's man-made islands, you would want to look at other mega projects like skyscrapers and underwater tunnels and different mega projects that are in the world right now. and so that's basically how you branch out and just keep that consistent viewership coming in every single month okay yeah i see examples of both of that on this interesting flow youtube channel the second most popular video went that dubai roll look and how can i cover dubai from a different angle the dark side of dubai what they don't tell you four and a half million views on that one and then a lot of these other you know mega construction projects skyscrapers and amusement parks and other places with man-made islands and trying to say like, okay, well, if this is a hit, what else might people be interested in on a similar or a shoulder topic?

8:05Are there any tools that you use to discover, you know, what keywords to target? Or it's just, this is not a keyword. This is not a search and discovery. This is like purely, you know, viral, like I'm going to get shown in the YouTube algorithm kind of play. Yeah, it's that. But there is another way to look for video ideas. And one of them is through keyword research. And I have done that before. And some of the videos that are getting consistent results on my channel is from keyword research. And one of the ways you look for videos that are through keyword research is just typing in the YouTube search bar something to do with your niche and see what pops up.

8:40So if you're in the niche of mega projects, type in something to do with mega projects on the search bar, but don't click enter yet. Just see what kind of pops up because that's basically what people are searching for. and when you study those keywords and you type in on the youtube search bar something within your niche like for for your example nick you're in the finance niche so if you was to go for this keyword research method go on an incognito browser so that people so that youtube doesn't know it's you and it just sees you as an average viewer and you just click on the youtube type in the youtube search bar something to do with your niche finance and see what comes up because that's pretty much what people are searching for.

9:21And if you do a video about that topic, then you can rank in search and get consistent views because that's what people are searching for and will click on your video. So that's another way of looking for video ideas. It's not just looking for what's trending, but also what the YouTube search bar is showing you. And another, going back to tools I use, I use the YouTube search bar, but I also use vidIQ. And an interesting thing about vidIQ is that when you have that software installed onto your extension, is that it actually shows you the views per hour on a specific video. So if a video has gone viral, it will show you the views per hour, how many views that video is still getting, because that's really helpful because it actually shows you which videos, some videos may look viral, but they have died down.

10:03The trend has died down. So vidIQ enables you to see if the video is still going viral within that hour that you're watching it. So otherwise it's too late in some cases. Exactly. Sometimes it's too late. Yeah. So I'm like, as an example, I've punched in side hustles. And so some of the suggested searches that come up are side hustles 2023, side hustles for teenagers, side hustles from home, side hustles that actually work like that'd be a great, a great video to make. So just once you have some idea, and this would be for videos, it'd be for blog content, any type of thing that's keyword driven, like trying to put yourself in the best position to succeed and capture some of that search traffic.

10:47This vidIQ, because I use TubeBuddy, and TubeBuddy will give you kind of a metric of competitiveness in addition to search volume. And it kind of shoots out this keyword score. Does vidIQ have something similar? Yeah, exactly. I've used TubeBuddy as well. TubeBuddy are really good software as well. One of the things I really like about TubeBuddy is that it actually gives you the option. If you have the higher premium version of TubeBuddy, it gives you the option of split testing thumbnails. So for the, I don't know if you've ever used it, Nick, but if you post the video and on TubeBuddy, you put two different thumbnails.

11:22So sometimes your video will show one type of thumbnail and sometimes it'll show another type of thumbnail. and TubeBuddy basically split tests the two thumbnails and it will basically tell you which one outperformed the other. And then you can, after the two week period, you can then choose which one you want to stay with. And I've done that before and it's worked really well, split testing thumbnails. And I believe MrBeast uses that as well because I've seen sometimes he'll post a video and sometimes he'll have one thumbnail and then next time that video, that same video will get recommended to me, I'll see another thumbnail.

11:52So I can see that you split test in thumbnails and you can also split test titles, which is interesting. Yeah. So the next question is, you know, so you stumble upon these manmade islands as a trending topic, but you don't know anything about that. So what gives you the confidence to say, you know what, I can make something about this. I can make something as good or better than what's already out there and say, like, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring here. That's a really good question, Nick. And that's why you have to hire a team from overseas who will do all the research because there's a wealth of information on the internet.

12:26So our freelancers can basically go through blogs and websites and articles and even other videos and do their due diligence and put together a script for the video. That will be well researched. And that's basically how we get to our scripts. okay so step one is is the research and so you can either do that yourself or you can hire somebody to go and do that and this is you know fiverr this is upwork this is onlinejobs.ph at this stage yes okay and are they the person writing the the script as well or do you just you plug that into chat gpt at this point you know who's coming up with the actual script um i have used chat gpt and I have actually told my script writer to test it out.

13:16I seek to do eight minute videos. And this is because if you have eight minute long videos, you can whack in in-stream ads and make more money that way. And so sometimes with ChatGBT, it produces a video script, but sometimes it's not long enough to be eight minutes. So that's why even with ChatGBT, I still get my script writer to add some stuff on and just to make it a longer video, I get the video script. And then I'll have another person who would be a voiceover who would speak the script to bring it to life and then a video editor who will then use the script and the voiceover to put it into a video put animations together videos together footage together with background music and then at the end we have the thumbnail designer who will create a clickable thumbnail that will bring in the views and it's my job to basically manage the quality of the whole process a lot of side hustlers suffer from what if-itis.

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15:09As a business owner, you worked hard to make that phone ring, but missing a business call? It's like watching money fly right out the window. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. It's the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one business phone system built for 2025, not 1995. In fact, it's rated the top choice for customer satisfaction with over 3 ,000 reviews on G2. Quo works right from an app on your phone or computer, and it means your team can share one number and collaborate on calls and texts, just like a shared inbox. And here is what is really cool, because if you can't answer the phone, Quo's AI agent can.

15:51It can qualify leads, it can route calls to the right person, and it's going to make sure no customer is ever left hanging. Think of it like having 24-7 support without the 24-7 payroll. More than 90 ,000 businesses are already running on Quo, from solo operators to growing teams. Try it free when you go to quo.com slash side hustle. That's q-u-o.com slash side hustle. You can even keep your existing number. Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. Yeah, there's a lot of moving parts here. I'm overwhelmed all of a sudden so there's research researchers last script writer that's one person okay then voiceover is another person and this person is likely not overseas this is a native english speaker yes yes okay and then there is an uh video editor person i think this is a in-demand skill video editing service and then there's a thumbnail person all told like what is a typical production cost for one of these things um it really depends on what quality you're aiming for so i mean for me personally it's around 40 for the whole thing that's the lowest i've been able to get it but that's basically lowest quality lowest quality um but if you're upping the quality right now my budget per video is around 200 per video that's the budget i have put on the videos because i'm really aiming to just hit that quality mark and get like consistent views because you can you can use like 50 videos and you can get average quality and they can get views for you.

17:23But if you really want to have that consistent viewership and that loyal subscriber base where they're not just subscribers on your screen, but they actually watch your content, then that's when you have to really aim for the quality. And so that's what I've been doing recently. I've been really aiming higher for the higher quality on the videos. So that's for$200 per video is kind of my budget right now. Okay. Yeah. That's helpful to know. Cause you have 40, 50 bucks per video, like to pay all these different people for their piece of the pie. It's like, dang, That's really cheap. Okay, that's helpful to know.

17:54So in your case, did you assemble this team? Like, okay, you woke up day one. All right, I'm going to be a viral YouTube sensation. And these are all the people I need to have. And they're on demand. Like you're not paying, I don't know, or are you paying them kind of a monthly stipend or monthly salary to be on call for you? Or is it just kind of like, hey, I'm going to send you this project. I'm going to pay you ad hoc as the topics come up. I actually started paying them a monthly salary, which is a bit of a mistake because sometimes I would get lazy in a month or sometimes I wouldn't really be too focused on the projects.

18:29And we will end up doing like two to three videos in a month and I'll still pay them a fixed wage every month. And so I found out that wasn't the best idea. So I started to pay people per project. That was initially the idea. Now that's why I pay per job. How long was it before your channel got monetized? around, it was around, I believe, eight months. It took me around eight months. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So this is, I want to draw this contrast and I appreciate you sharing that. So rather than, you know, raising your hand and saying, I'm going to be a freelancer, I'm going to be a consultant. I'm going to solve this problem for this client.

19:07It's like, no, I'm going to, you know, kind of almost on faith, put all this time, effort, energy, money into these YouTube videos in exchange for what we talked about to be able to make money while I'm not working at some point later on fingers crossed hopefully one of these videos hits the uh hits the algorithm right it kind of erases all of the cost because what do you what do you got to get view wise to break even on a video um it really depends because some videos have a high budget some videos have a low budget some videos is around 10 000 views to break even and um some yeah so some videos it's around 25 view 25 000 views to break even and that really depends on the rpm because as you know some rpms have some videos have higher rpms which is paid per 1000 views so the average is around three dollars per 1000 views some of my videos are like five dollars per thousand views and that's because the niche is more about um luxury as opposed to another video that's um might be um about just construction.

20:12So, so yeah, it's, it's really depends on what the topic is about. So I'm thinking, because my RPMs are much higher than that because of the niche, like it's personal finance, it's entrepreneurship content. And it's, you know, you know, I think the last 28 days, it says my RPM is$25. So five, five X higher. But I, if I, if I interpret that, you know, from the pessimist point of view, it's like, well, that's probably because it's five times more competitive to have something, you know, go truly viral in that niche. Because if you're on the outside looking in, you're like, well, why wouldn't I just, you know, target videos that I think are going to have a higher ad value versus kind of these, you know, broad, broad appeal, you know, curiosity induced, like, oh, I'm, I want to learn about these manmade islands or something like that.

20:59Yeah, that's a good question. And that's what I kind of went into when I first started. I was doing a lot of videos about finance and trying to get the high RPM. but I began to realize that those kind of videos are very competitive and you may get a higher cpm or higher rpm in the finance niche but sometimes the views might not be as much however you might find another niche that you can get more views in but you the rpm won't be as high but you can get a lot loads of views um so yeah the finance niche is very competitive but if anyone's listening right now and they want to go into the finance niche and they believe that that's their passion and they really want to crush it in that niche i would say go for it uh but do know that it does come with its challenges and i believe nick nick will tell you more about this niche than than myself because he's he's lived and breathed it for 10 years but i don't have 20 i don't have 22 million views to my name either so take it with a grain of salt it's fascinating because one of these i mean what's 22 million views worth in that case i mean i could do times a three dollar rpm or something i don't know it's it's a lot if you're in the finance niche then you're talking crazy money but there's many channels right now that that have a bit of both like channels like imangazi who's that who's the the young entrepreneur imangazi who's in the finance niche and yet every single video he posts gets literally millions of views um well someone like him is making crazy money on youtube his main sources of income are other things but i think recently he shared his youtube income and i think from he made like a hundred thousand dollars from only around like four million views so with four million views he made like 100k but i think because he's kind of really he's kind of reached kind of like a celebrity status right now where he's known by he's got like three million subscribers or something and every video he posts gets millions of views like it's as if youtube has created this platform for the young ones and entrepreneurs to be like the next celebrity and even some move into boxing like you see with jake and logan paul no that's funny my my kids they have this like really really crappy digital camera it's like you could use an old phone of ours like do you want more than like 1.3 megapixels you know but they're like filming videos of themselves looking at their pokemon cards and pretending to be you know news personality it's like really interesting to watch because they're seven and five and because they watch um like the dude perfect youtube channel and all of their videos have millions and millions of views i like trying to be trying to emulate what they see.

23:31It's like, Hey, I've, I fully support, you know, being a content creator, in addition to being a consumer of content, it's just really cool to see. So maybe some future, future YouTube stars, uh, over here as well. So I just looked this up. My best performing video is closing in on 200 ,000 views and has earned a lifetime$4 ,700 from one video, which is in context, that's like probably more than what my first two cars cost. Like that's pretty like you know this it starts to get real money and it's like from you know one digital asset put out there uh into the world to kind of do your bidding but it's super good but it's it's one of hundreds you know it's just like you know not and there's the 80 20 to all of this where you know most of what you post isn't going to get there it may not even break even but it's you're kind of banking on that one that one hit is is that my understanding of the model yep it's usually like that in pretty much any business as well.

24:29It's usually like the top 10 % of people doing 90 % of the work. That's a weird kind of mathematical metric that you see across the board. And that's the beauty of YouTube. All you have to do is post a video once and it will make you money for the rest of your life. And if you have an army of videos going out there and grabbing your money, getting you money every single month without you having to show your face make videos that is essentially what we want this is what a side hustle is you work in order to essentially you work in order to gain a return on your investment passively yeah what and that's the that's the dream right that's right what kept you going during those eight months pre-monetization Like, did you have anything that was a hit during that time?

25:20Because it's like, okay, every week I'm plunking more cash into this business. I'm not getting anything out of it yet. And I could see a lot of people after eight months being like, I'm pulling the plug. This is just, this is just a money pit. Oh yeah. So many times I felt like pulling the plug. I felt like giving up. I felt like I was bleeding money. I felt, man, every time I would pay my freelancer, it would be painful. I'll be like, I'm making zero from this investment, this YouTube channel. And my videos are hardly getting any views and I'm just bleeding money. All the money that I'm earning, I'm putting it right back into the business, right back into the business, not even knowing if it's going to go anywhere.

25:58And I really felt like giving up during that time, Nick. It was it was difficult, to be honest. I was even going through other personal issues in my life and I felt like there was a lot of heavy burdens coming upon my life. And I was really like struggling. And I think one of the reasons that made me keep going is the fact that I knew that I've already invested money into this and I didn't want to let it go because I felt attached to the business. I felt attached to the YouTube channel. I felt that I've already invested money into this. I've already put so much time, energy and effort and money into this.

26:29I can't just let it go. You know, so that's one of the things that kept me going. The fact that I didn't want to lose the money I've already invested. The second reason was I was seeing a bit of results. It wasn't anything crazy, but I was seeing a few videos that were taking off. And they weren't doing crazy views at that time, but they were doing some views like couple thousand, couple 10 ,000, 20 ,000, something that was giving me a bit of like, you know, like the shark when he tastes a bit of blood, it makes him, you know, keep going, you know? yeah just enough traction i mean it was probably similar in the early days of the podcast where financially it didn't justify continuing doing itself but it was just like well it was i found it fun and entertaining and rewarding in its own way and then you know it's not just enough traction on the chart to say like okay let's keep doing this because now i'm at again on the interesting flow channel 95 videos posted and so if we ballpark you know 50 bucks a video close to five thousand dollars in investment there but it just like you said it just takes one just takes a couple things to really hit and all of a sudden it erases all of those all those losses but i can definitely feel like you know where at what when when do i start collecting the checks versus writing them uh it's a stressful position to be in yeah but that's the risk you have to take you know you have to take that risk of entrepreneurship i'm putting money in i'm putting time in i'm not seeing anything out.

27:56And this is why I really want to encourage everyone watching. Just whatever side hustle you're pursuing, whether it be YouTube, whatever you're doing, just keep pressing in and don't give up. Don't give up because you can be literally days away from that breakthrough that if you give up, you can just literally just lose so much money and all that time. So just don't give up. This is a word for someone listening. Just don't quit. Your breakthrough is literally within arm's length. That's kind of planting these money seeds, so to speak. And it may not happen right away. It might be three months after you post the video that it takes off.

28:32So it's just, you never know. And do you ever lose sleep over playing in somebody else's sandbox where a YouTube algorithm could change or a moderator or a bot for all intents and purposes could say, nope, your channel we're shutting it down we don't like it for whatever reason you violated some you know bylaw and you know section of the terms and conditions that nobody ever reads and all of a sudden you're you know all this investment all this time is kind of up in smoke those thoughts have come to my mind a couple of times about youtube algorithms changing or the algorithm actually changes a lot but nothing that will be too bad and so yeah i mean i have had thoughts about copyright strikes and all that stuff.

29:18But the good thing with YouTube is they first kind of warn you. If you do have a copyright strike or some type of violation, they will tell you. And I think it's around three strikes and you're out. I've never had a community strike or a violation like that. I've had copyright claims, not a copyright strike, but a copyright claim. So if I was using someone else's video, I mean, using someone else's music or using someone else's footage if they have the option to copyright claim on that video where they actually take the revenue. And basically what I do is I just submit a form to say that I have the permission to use that content and I'll show my certificate or ask my video editor to provide me with his certificate for using that content or that footage.

30:04And yeah, and then it will be removed and I'll get the revenue reimbursed. Yeah. Where are they sourcing all these clips from? other, I mean, it seems like, well, it just comes from other YouTube content. And it's like, well, is that copyright? Is that fair use? Is that, you know, the defense that, well, everybody else is doing it doesn't necessarily stand up. A lot of our content comes from Envato Elements, Shutterstock. So these are kind of softwares, which we pay monthly subscription. Oh, sure. My video editors, they pay a monthly subscription to have access to these stock footages and so forth.