Faceless YouTube channels

The claim

“If you make a faceless YouTube channel today, you could easily earn $10,000/month by February 2025.”

@AndrewBolis, 25 December 2024, 407,284 views¹

“I’m begging you: - Start a faceless YouTube channel - Don’t tell anyone you know - Upload twice a week for a year - Make $10k a month”

@Adam_DelDuca, 2 October 2026, 61,931 views¹

A “faceless” channel is one where nobody appears on camera: a voice over pictures, clips or animation. View counts are as collected on 6 October 2026¹.

The sums

Ads pay nothing until YouTube accepts the channel into its Partner Program. That needs 1,000 subscribers, plus either 4,000 hours of watch time in the past 12 months or 10 million views of Shorts (short vertical videos) in the past 90 days². From 1 February 2027, new applicants need 8,000 hours or 20 million Shorts views⁴.

AIR Media-Tech, a creator-services company, measured 300 established partner channels⁸. The median (the middle channel) received about $2.30 per 1,000 long-video views⁸. Our sums for $10,000 a month:

That is roughly 1 to 4 million views every month, before costs and tax⁸.

What happens to most people who try

No source measures what faceless channels earn as a group. The nearest evidence covers all kinds of channels and is from vidIQ, which sells a YouTube tool.

• Of 32.9 million channels under 1,000 subscribers, 1.52% reached 1,000 within 360 days²⁹. Among those that added 52 or more videos, 30.77% did, so about seven in ten still fell short²⁹. This counts subscribers only, not watch hours or income²⁹.
• Of channels at 1,000 subscribers, 89% get under 5,000 views a month²⁸. At the median rate that is under about $12 a month (our estimate)²⁸⁸.

The upside

Some faceless channels pay well. The strongest evidence is Empire Flippers, a broker that says it checks a seller’s revenue, traffic and expenses⁴⁸. We counted 20 faceless YouTube-only channels in its listings, 10 of them marked sold⁴⁶.

• Their median profit, after the costs the seller reports, is $4,423 a month. The range is $1,184 to $22,249⁴⁶.
• 4 of the 20 make $10,000 a month or more⁴⁶.

These are winners, not a sample, and we did not see the records. Asking prices run from 7 to 39 months of profit; we read that as a sign the income may not last⁴⁶.

Fortune reviewed screenshots of Adavia Davis’s dashboards and recent payout records and reports about $700,000 a year before costs, across five channels of almost entirely AI-made videos²³. That is not an audit. It took him about five years, and he sells a course²³.

A realistic good first year, on our estimate, is being accepted for ads and earning tens to a few hundred dollars a month. That is roughly the top 4% of the channels that reach 1,000 subscribers, and most channels do not reach 1,000 within a year²⁸²⁹.

What it takes to compete

• Videos that break out. $1,000 a month at the median rate needs about 435,000 views a month⁸. Of new channels that posted ten long videos in their first 90 days, about three in ten had one pass 10,000 views within 30 days⁵⁴.
• A subject that pays. The broker-checked channels make information videos on vehicles, history, business and news⁴⁶. Most have viewers mainly in the US, UK, Canada and Australia⁴⁶.
• Usually a paid team. 17 of those 20 channels pay freelancers, up to seven, with the owner choosing topics and checking scripts. Three owners work alone⁴⁶.
• Original work. YouTube allows faceless channels and AI as a tool¹⁷. Paid content must “Not be mass-produced, generic, repetitive, or manipulative”¹⁷. Repetitive AI channels can be terminated¹⁸.
• Money to last. Ad income is zero until YouTube accepts the channel. Doing it yourself costs $6 to about $190 a month in tools, on our estimate²⁰. Freelancers for short videos cost about $870 to $1,700 a month, on our estimate²¹. The 20 broker-checked channels report costs of $17 to $3,144 a month, with a median of $731⁴⁶.

How to tell early (our judgement):

• At 1,000 subscribers, do you get over 20,000 views a month? That is the top 4.2% of channels at that stage²⁸.
• Could a viewer tell your videos apart? The same template, voice, music and AI script matches YouTube’s example of what is not paid¹⁷¹⁸.

Who else makes money from it

Of the 146 tweets we collected, 95 lead the reader to a guide, course, tool, service or community. Those 95 hold about 90% of the views, on our approximate count¹.

Course and coaching prices we found run from about $500 to $7,800; the top figure is from one unverified customer review²²⁴¹.

The author of the second tweet writes in his newsletter: “I definitely would not start by relying only on ad revenue”⁴².

No seller we found publishes what share of their students reach any income level.