621: How to Make Money on YouTube with AI Video Tools

0:00:06 A hundred bucks a day on YouTube with the help of AI video tools.
0:00:07 What’s up?
0:00:08 What’s up?
0:00:09 Nick Loper here.
0:00:11 Welcome to The Side Hustle Show where we can help you make day jobs optional.
0:00:19 Since 2013, last year, we met Tony Eason-Dreides on the show, with episode 565 in the podcast
0:00:20 feed.
0:00:25 We did a really interesting episode on YouTube automation where the flow was kind of like
0:00:26 this.
0:00:32 A hopefully viral video topic, send it off to a researcher/scriptwriter who then passes
0:00:37 that script off to a voiceover artist who hands that off to a video editor who pulls
0:00:42 in all these clips and makes the video all in the name of hitting that viral YouTube
0:00:47 lottery, playing the game of really planting a bunch of digital assets in the form of these
0:00:52 videos, little money seeds to go out there and hopefully work for you, and then banking
0:00:59 that enough of them hit to turn a profit on all that labor cost in the form of ad income.
0:01:04 Well, what a difference a year makes because now we’ve got AI tools to assist in just about
0:01:07 every step of that production process.
0:01:12 Tony’s been on the front lines of these changes, so I wanted to have him back on to find out,
0:01:16 first of all, is that a good thing for content creators, for YouTubers, but also Side Hustlers
0:01:20 can make some money in this new AI-powered YouTube landscape.
0:01:23 Last year, we talked about his interesting flow channel, where he had earned as much
0:01:27 as $14,000 in a month during a viral spike.
0:01:33 He’s since started several new channels, including Bible Blazing, a Bible-themed channel, which
0:01:39 was able to get monetized in just 30 days, making up to $100 a day, built using AI.
0:01:43 Now, we talked about the video production process.
0:01:47 Where is the human element, where is your value at as the entrepreneur here?
0:01:48 What stages are you involved with?
0:01:49 Yeah.
0:01:50 Thanks for having me back on, Nick.
0:01:54 Yeah, a lot can happen in a year, and there was actually a huge spike of AI in the last
0:01:55 quarter of 2023.
0:02:01 There was a huge spike of AI, and now in 2024, it’s just rolling out very fast.
0:02:07 So AI has made a significant change to the industry, and it’s been good and bad in terms
0:02:12 of good for the creators, but a bit bad for the freelancers, because a lot of the freelancers
0:02:14 have pretty much been replaced with AI.
0:02:18 There’s someone I know who I’ve been talking to about AI, and he’s been telling me that
0:02:22 AI is going to completely take over the film industry, even to the point where we’re going
0:02:26 to have full-on movies and full-on videos, YouTube videos that are going to be completely
0:02:30 made by AI 100%, because it’s not 100% there yet.
0:02:36 We’re close to there, but yeah, it’s debatable as to whether there’ll be zero human aspect
0:02:37 by the looks of how things are going.
0:02:38 I think we’re heading there.
0:02:44 What’s your role today, or is it still kind of this idea generation process?
0:02:48 I mean, I imagine you could probably cue ChatGPT, like, “Give me some viral video ideas
0:02:52 on the topic of Bible verses,” or something like for the case of this Bible channel.
0:02:57 Yeah, so ChatGPT is really good for giving out video ideas, so you can just whack into
0:03:03 ChatGPT, “Give me 10 video ideas of this,” or “Give me 10 variations of this viral video
0:03:04 that went viral.”
0:03:09 So let’s say you had a viral video that was talking about where was Jesus during Satan’s
0:03:14 Rebellion, like, you can whack into ChatGPT and just put that title and just say, “Give
0:03:21 me several different variations of that video that I can use as a benchmark to do more videos.”
0:03:26 So essentially what you’ll do in YouTube Automation that you’ll still want to do now is that you
0:03:30 would want to pivot off of an already existing viral video, so let’s give that example.
0:03:35 So one of my viral videos on that channel was where was Jesus during Satan’s Rebellion.
0:03:39 I created several different variations from that video that I’ve gone on to hit hundreds
0:03:43 of thousands of views, so instead of where was Jesus during Satan’s Rebellion, I just
0:03:48 changed up the word “Jesus” and I put the word “God,” so I did another video that
0:03:51 talked about where was God during Satan’s Rebellion.
0:03:54 Then another video where was Angel Michael during Satan’s Rebellion, and now we have
0:03:58 a few more that’s going to be where was Gabriel during Satan’s Rebellion, so we change up
0:04:03 that name, and yeah, we do use ChatGPT to help with the ideation.
0:04:07 With YouTube, ideation is the most important facet of the YouTube game.
0:04:11 Having a great idea is going to be the difference between you hitting like a million views and
0:04:13 just like 10,000 views.
0:04:16 That’s how powerful ideation is, so I don’t mess around with ideation.
0:04:21 I make sure that even though AI comes up with suggestions, I always filter through that process.
0:04:26 In terms of a lot of scripts that we do, AI has been a significant help, so a lot of
0:04:31 script writers, the cheap script writers that did very basic scripts, they’re pretty much
0:04:32 out of the water now.
0:04:36 They’re pretty much out of the consideration to be hired, because ChatGPT’s pretty much
0:04:38 replaced them.
0:04:41 If you do want a premium script with a higher level, then you’re going to have to hire someone
0:04:45 who’s experienced in that area and is really good.
0:04:48 Those guys can’t get replaced because they’re really good at what they do.
0:04:53 In terms of voiceovers, there is a website called 11Labs, and this website is phenomenal.
0:04:58 You can have all these different variations of voices, and you would never tell that their
0:05:00 AI generated.
0:05:04 You’ll think they’re real voices, and we use them for our videos, and they work pretty
0:05:05 fine.
0:05:07 I’ve had comments, people say, “Who is that voiceover?”
0:05:10 No one questions if it’s a real voice or if it’s an AI.
0:05:15 For $20 a month, you can hire an AI voiceover, all these different variations of voices.
0:05:19 You can even clone your own voice, so you can just get several minutes of your voice
0:05:23 spoken, and then it will put together your voice and it will clone your voice.
0:05:25 That’s another aspect to 11Labs.
0:05:28 I recently had one of my voiceovers reach out to me.
0:05:31 He used to charge a ridiculous price for his voiceovers.
0:05:34 I can’t remember, but he was very, very expensive.
0:05:39 He recently reached out to me, and he was offering to do work for me for a fraction of the price,
0:05:42 because I’m assuming, he didn’t tell me this, but I’m assuming AI has literally just wiped
0:05:44 out that industry.
0:05:47 Not fully, but yeah, it’s been impacted heavily.
0:05:50 Yeah, that’s frightening for anybody in that space.
0:05:52 It’s frightening for me as a podcaster.
0:05:56 How long before my job is obsolete and where somebody else can come through and do this,
0:06:01 but you’re actually the second person to recommend 11Labs just in the past week or two, is one
0:06:06 of my initiatives is trying to build out a library of video content, but the bottleneck
0:06:12 is taking an existing blog post, in my case, this evergreen piece of content, this evergreen
0:06:16 article, and trying to create a video version of that to try and double dip in SEO and serve
0:06:21 a video-first audience versus an article-first audience, but the bottleneck is scripting
0:06:27 it for YouTube and then doing that voiceover, where it’s like, okay, maybe I could clone
0:06:32 my voice and it would do the voiceover part or accelerate that part of the process, even
0:06:37 if it’s only a seven, eight minute video to narrate, but that was something that was
0:06:38 on my radar.
0:06:44 I want to go back to the idea generating phase or even the channel idea generating phase.
0:06:48 Was there some level of research that led you to the Bible niche because interesting
0:06:53 flow was in the mega construction project niche, we were talking about Dubai’s man-made
0:06:55 islands and stuff like that?
0:06:56 Yeah.
0:07:00 So the way I got into the Bible group channel or the Bible blazing channel, I was scrolling
0:07:04 through YouTube and I found a lot of this Bible content that was just going viral, and
0:07:10 the content that was going viral was this AI and Bible stuff, and it was very basic,
0:07:15 and I knew that with the use of AI, I can blow that channel out of the water and just
0:07:16 get more views than them.
0:07:23 I knew that I can leverage the already existing videos that have gone viral, and yeah, that’s
0:07:24 pretty much what I did.
0:07:27 I did similar videos and I used a lot of AI.
0:07:31 We use an image generation tool called Mid Journey AI, which is one of the most popular
0:07:35 AI softwares that is used for image generation.
0:07:39 We use Mid Journey to generate the images and we put together the images with background
0:07:40 music.
0:07:41 It looks amazing.
0:07:43 I mean, I was blown away when I first saw my video editor put it together.
0:07:44 Yeah.
0:07:45 It really looks good.
0:07:51 So, Mid Journey is not just a thumbnail, it is creating internal images for the video
0:07:52 itself.
0:07:53 Yes.
0:07:56 So, you can use Mid Journey AI not just to do thumbnails, you can use it for the video
0:08:02 itself and you can use a tool called, I believe it’s called Runaway AI and it has a motion
0:08:06 brush effect where you can actually select parts of the image where there’s motion.
0:08:11 So, for example, if you have a man on a beach, you can use the motion brush tool to highlight
0:08:15 only the sea to have a bit of motion.
0:08:19 So, in the image, it will look like a moving image because the sea is moving, the waves
0:08:21 are moving, but the man is standing still.
0:08:27 So, AI has that effect as well and you have literally zero chance of being copyright claimed
0:08:31 or copyright striked with AI because you’re generating the images.
0:08:35 You’re paying for a subscription that’s generating the images so no one can say, “Hey, you used
0:08:36 my content.
0:08:39 I want a copyright claim on your channel or copyright strike on your channel.”
0:08:40 There’s none of that.
0:08:44 That still seems like a lot of effort to create hundreds of different scenes in an eight minute
0:08:49 video individually or is it just looking at your script and auto-generating those?
0:08:50 Yeah.
0:08:55 That’s exactly what I thought, Nick, but you can whack in your script into the AI.
0:08:59 With Me Journey, you would have to do it individually, but there is another software that my editor
0:09:00 is using.
0:09:02 He uses Runaway, but he uses another one.
0:09:06 I keep forgetting the name of it, but he just puts the whole script and it generates loads
0:09:08 of images.
0:09:11 He can pick and choose which image he wants to use and that’s made it so much easier.
0:09:13 I’ve been playing around with one called Pictori.
0:09:15 There’s a few of these.
0:09:20 I think I have a referral discount code for Pictori and it will take your voiceover, it
0:09:26 will take your script, and it will pull together hundreds of stock footage type of clips related
0:09:28 to what you’re talking about.
0:09:34 I would say it’s 90%, 95% good and accurate and occasionally it’s something like, “Well,
0:09:38 that was a different meaning of that word,” or something like it just looks a little bit
0:09:43 off or random, but the time savings versus having somebody go and source all of those
0:09:49 different clips and worry about the licenses for all that is like, “Oh, shoot, this is all
0:09:50 taking care of it.
0:09:53 It really, really accelerated a lot of videos that we’ve been trying to make where I’m doing
0:09:54 the voiceover.
0:09:55 It’s not AI yet.”
0:10:01 But then we are using Pictori, the AI tool, to build out the rest of that video and hopefully
0:10:06 make it something that’s visually compelling versus just me talking head and have maybe
0:10:09 a couple graphics fly in or something like that.
0:10:10 Yeah.
0:10:13 Pictori’s really good and other AI softwares that we use.
0:10:19 So we have ChatGPT for the script, then we have the voiceover, 11 labs, and you can pick
0:10:21 male or female and it sounds real.
0:10:26 You can even clone your own voice, image generation, yes, mid-journey, but we also use Dali, which
0:10:30 is, if you have the paid version of ChatGPT, you can use Dali as well.
0:10:34 So now you don’t even need to go on Dali, you can just write to ChatGPT.
0:10:38 If you have the paid version, just write a prompt and it will come up with the image.
0:10:42 Sometimes ChatGPT AI, the Dali is actually more accurate than mid-journey.
0:10:49 In terms of the thumbnail, we use either ChatGPT, Dali, or mid-journey, and then you can just
0:10:53 whack it into Canva to just add an arrow or add some text into it.
0:10:59 Traditional faceless YouTube channels, you would need to have a scriptwriter, video editor,
0:11:02 thumbnail designer, and then a voiceover.
0:11:08 But now ChatGPT is your scriptwriter, 11 labs is your voiceover, you can have the editing
0:11:13 with mid-journey, with different, to be honest, I haven’t fully outsourced that to AI.
0:11:19 That’s one thing that AI has helped video editors to achieve better videos, however,
0:11:22 it hasn’t fully taken over yet.
0:11:26 Me personally, I don’t know how to video edit, so for me, I’ll be clueless, so that
0:11:27 hasn’t been fully outsourced.
0:11:32 I still pay a video editor for that, so that’s not in the hands of AI fully, even though
0:11:34 they use AI to help them.
0:11:38 AI can either help you or it can take away your job.
0:11:43 You choose, in a sense, where you want AI to take your life, because I’ve had people
0:11:48 who can’t really work anymore due to AI in their field, whether it be voice-overing or
0:11:53 scriptwriting, but then I have my editor who has made so much money in the past few months
0:11:54 of me paying him.
0:11:56 I told him, I said, “Get rid of all your clients.
0:11:57 I want you.”
0:12:01 He does a phenomenal job, and yeah, I’ve paid him so much money in the past few months,
0:12:04 and it’s helped him dramatically.
0:12:08 Someone like him, someone like a video editor who knows how to utilize AI, for them, they’re
0:12:14 going to benefit, but someone who pretty much does basic stuff, then yeah, AI is sadly coming
0:12:18 for a lot of jobs that don’t require a lot of effort, if you know what I mean.
0:12:25 Yeah, it’s similar to a Fiverr or an Upwork situation where everybody was kind of concerned
0:12:30 about it’s a race to the bottom on pricing, and it’s like at the very bottom of the market,
0:12:36 yes, but at people want a higher touch point or a higher level of service, there’s still
0:12:40 room for humans, but the bar is getting higher and higher, unfortunately.
0:12:43 Or fortunately, like you said, on the content creator side, it reduces that barrier, but
0:12:48 on the service provider side, it’s just like, okay, I got to level up my game to be able
0:12:50 to compete in this AI world.
0:12:54 More with Tony in just a moment, including how he picks trending topics to create videos
0:12:59 for, and how you might stand out as the cost of production gets lower and lower right after
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0:14:11 So the name of the game is still like trying to find a trending topic or a topic that’s
0:14:16 gone viral and like trying to draft behind it or write on its coattails or piggyback
0:14:19 on that popularity a little bit.
0:14:23 It’s not necessarily like search and discovery where I’m, “Oh, the keyword tool said there
0:14:27 was a search volume of 5,000 a month, so I’m going to go after that.”
0:14:31 It’s like, “I really need hundreds of thousands of views for this to pay off.”
0:14:37 In a sense, yes, there is vidIQ that you can use to see the search volume on certain keywords.
0:14:41 VidIQ hasn’t been my best friend in terms of the keyword research side of things.
0:14:47 The vidIQ have a really good aspect to their software which is called a views per hour feature.
0:14:50 I think this can work even if you have the free version of vidIQ.
0:14:54 It works like an extension, like a Chrome browser and it can actually show you how many views
0:14:55 per hour a video is getting.
0:14:59 So if you’re scrolling through YouTube and you want to know which video is popping off,
0:15:02 sometimes the data alone with YouTube is not enough.
0:15:06 So when you see like a video has gone viral in the past three weeks, yeah, that’s pretty
0:15:07 much telling.
0:15:11 If it got like a million views in three weeks, then you know it’s in the algorithm, then
0:15:15 you can model after that video, but sometimes you don’t know when a video has fully died
0:15:16 down.
0:15:22 So if a video has got a million views in three weeks, but that video has died down in terms
0:15:25 of views per hour, but you don’t know it, you’re just looking at what YouTube’s given
0:15:26 you.
0:15:30 The vidIQ software allows you to see the views per hour video is getting.
0:15:35 So when I’m looking at trending topics, I always want to look at the views per hour that video
0:15:36 is getting.
0:15:39 So I know that the trend is still alive and I can do similar videos and benchmark off
0:15:41 of that wave.
0:15:46 And then when I’ve spotted a trend, I just double down on that trend and eventually it
0:15:47 works.
0:15:49 It’s not as hard as people make it out to be.
0:15:54 What’s very important as well is understanding your audience and chat GPT can help a lot
0:15:56 with understanding your audience.
0:16:00 I was on the call with a YouTuber a few weeks ago and he had like an EV channel, which was
0:16:02 about electric vehicles.
0:16:08 And he said that his income went from like three grand a month from his channel to like
0:16:10 he went to hit his first 11 grand month.
0:16:15 Only when he started to understand who his audience was did that change happen.
0:16:18 So basically his channel was about electric cars.
0:16:22 He was getting views and it was popping off and he was making like three grand a month.
0:16:27 He thought that his audience loved electric cars, but until he started looking at the
0:16:31 comments and he started to see that his audience, they don’t love electric cars, the reason
0:16:33 why they’re watching the video is because they hate electric cars and they’re saying
0:16:38 how it’s a scam, how it’s not efficient, it’s a big scam from the government.
0:16:39 Are you understood?
0:16:40 Hold on.
0:16:41 My audience, they hate electric cars.
0:16:46 So then he started doing videos against electric cars saying how it’s a scam, how it’s an agenda
0:16:49 from the government and then his views just skyrocketed.
0:16:54 And then I was just like, damn, when you understand who your audience is, then you can just leverage
0:16:57 that and just take your channel to the moon.
0:17:00 And so that’s what I’ve been doing recently, I’ve been analyzing the data and the YouTube
0:17:04 analytics enables you to see who your audience are, how old they are.
0:17:07 If they’re male or female, what percentage are male, what percentage are female, which
0:17:09 country they’re watching from.
0:17:13 And what you can do is you can go on your most viral video or the most viral video in
0:17:14 your niche.
0:17:18 There’s a section on the right hand side with vidIQ where you can copy and paste the script
0:17:23 of the video and you can whack that into chatGPT and then ask chatGPT to give you a customer
0:17:28 avatar or a audience avatar of the people who would watch that kind of video and it
0:17:32 will come up with an avatar of your audience and that’s the person you want to speak to.
0:17:33 Dang.
0:17:34 Okay.
0:17:35 That’s fascinating.
0:17:41 And then the next phase would be to kind of include that audience profile or customer
0:17:45 avatar type of persona into your script prompt.
0:17:51 Like, hey, I want to make a video about the next topic that you have in mind, but write
0:17:53 the script for this type of person.
0:17:56 Like, is that kind of how you’re leading the tool to give you the script that that audience
0:17:57 would like?
0:17:58 I thought of it that way.
0:17:59 I might start doing that, Nick.
0:18:01 Thanks for suggesting that.
0:18:04 Actually ask in chatGPT to say, “Write me a script for this kind of avatar.”
0:18:07 That will actually work, I believe.
0:18:09 I’ll give that a shot, but I didn’t specifically do that.
0:18:16 I’ll look at the customer avatar and I’ll look for things like Bible stories that fit
0:18:18 to that avatar.
0:18:19 That’s what I was doing before.
0:18:20 Yeah.
0:18:23 Just tailoring to their needs and what they want to feel.
0:18:25 Some people want to feel joy.
0:18:29 Some people want to feel that their beliefs are being reassured.
0:18:30 They want to feel smart.
0:18:32 They want to feel like, yeah, I like this content.
0:18:36 This is making me feel that I’m right, that I’m in the right, kind of stroke in the ego
0:18:37 kind of thing.
0:18:39 So, you can just leverage that.
0:18:40 Yeah.
0:18:44 And even if one video already went viral on that same topic, that ship has sailed, it
0:18:49 means, hey, there’s clearly a hungry audience for this type of stuff, so how can we feed
0:18:50 into that?
0:19:00 Now, how do you make your video on that same topic better, different, unique in some way,
0:19:02 especially as everybody starts to use the same tool?
0:19:05 Hey, give me a script on this topic.
0:19:10 And after a while, like the barrier to entry, the cost of production goes so low that it’s
0:19:14 just got to be flooded with almost identical videos.
0:19:20 What you need to do is you need to be the person in your niche who knows the most or
0:19:25 who’s the most knowledgeable or at least be perceived as that person who’s the most expertise
0:19:26 in your niche.
0:19:31 I’ve studied the Bible and I’m pretty much passionate about my niche, which I’m in right
0:19:32 now.
0:19:36 So, I just apply the knowledge I know and I just make sure it’s perfect.
0:19:40 Like every script, I don’t care if AI has generated most of it.
0:19:45 I don’t even care if I’ve had a script writer do the script for me.
0:19:47 I fact check everything.
0:19:48 I look at it.
0:19:49 I mull it down.
0:19:50 I pretty much rewrite it.
0:19:53 I’m very fussy when it comes to this niche and this and the scripts that I’m doing right
0:19:58 now, because like you said, YouTube keeps increasing, so I’m not too worried about things
0:20:02 being oversaturated with YouTube, because YouTube has just overthrown Netflix right
0:20:03 now.
0:20:07 There’s a statistic that just came out that there’s more consumers on YouTube than on
0:20:12 Netflix and it’s been constantly increasing, so there’s always going to be more consumers
0:20:16 than producers, but in terms of different niches, yeah, you have to be good at what
0:20:17 you do.
0:20:22 So, gone are the days of doing crappy videos and them going viral when you get in a way
0:20:23 with it.
0:20:28 Right now, you have to have quality over quantity and really make sure that the content that
0:20:35 you’re producing is good, is edited well, but in my opinion, and from my experience,
0:20:39 the most important thing is ideation, so you have to master ideation and scripting.
0:20:44 So, those are the two most important things I found out in my YouTube journey, that if
0:20:48 you have a brilliant idea and then you have a brilliant script that goes with it, and
0:20:53 if you’re really, really fussy with the script and say fussy, I mean like you redo the intro
0:20:57 like three or four times and you just want to perfect it and you’re up all night and
0:21:02 you’re working hours on it, that’s the kind of fuzziness I apply to my scripts.
0:21:07 It’s actually helpful to hear because it makes for a nice sounding, hey, I came up with this
0:21:12 idea and then AI did everything else, it’s like, oh no, I still had to apply my expertise
0:21:17 here, I helped massage that script to use my own first-hand experience and expertise,
0:21:23 and I think that’s how creators can still stand out and win in an AI world is your first-hand
0:21:27 experience, no machine is going to be able to replicate that, and then creating primary
0:21:31 source material, even if the machines are going to eventually rip that off and use it
0:21:35 to train their models, like at least you came up with it first, it’s got to be worth something
0:21:39 hopefully, knock on wood down the road, but that’s kind of how we’re trying to play the
0:21:43 game, like oh, we’re going to actually go out and test these different apps and websites
0:21:48 that we talk about rather than just regurgitating what else has been said about it online.
0:21:52 Anybody can do that, but it doesn’t add any unique value, so what unique value you drive
0:21:57 into the table, hey, in your case, I’m bringing my own Bible experience to these scripts and
0:22:03 trying to make something that is better and unique compared to whatever else is out there,
0:22:07 and six months from now, the other AI tool is going to crawl that, but at least you came
0:22:08 out with it first.
0:22:09 Yeah, that’s good.
0:22:14 And going back to the whole competitive advantage aspect, it’s very important to identify whoever
0:22:19 you are, so you might not have the best knowledge in your niche, but you might have a competitive
0:22:24 advantage, and I believe everybody is unique, and everyone has some sort of competitive advantage
0:22:27 in their hands, whether they know it or not, especially when it comes to YouTube.
0:22:32 So someone might not have a lot of knowledge in their niche, like I do, however, they might
0:22:38 have a lot of money to burn, and they can just hire somebody who has a lot of knowledge
0:22:44 in their niche, and they can hire a better editor, or your competitive advantage might
0:22:46 not be money, it might be time.
0:22:49 Some people have more time than others, if you’re in high school and you have a lot of
0:22:53 time in your hands, you don’t have responsibilities, you can just learn editing, you can just become
0:22:58 the best editor, and you have all this time, you can just become the best video editor
0:23:01 like in your city, or pretty much aim for the best in the world.
0:23:04 If you have time, then that’s your competitive advantage.
0:23:06 If you have a lot of money, that’s your competitive advantage.
0:23:09 If you have a lot of knowledge, that’s your competitive advantage.
0:23:14 So you have to discover what your gift is, what your competitive advantage is, and just
0:23:16 double down on that, because that’s what’s going to make you unique.
0:23:21 Otherwise, anyone and everyone can be successful in that field, but once you understand that,
0:23:26 no, I have the gift, I’m gifted to write great scripts, I’m a writer, I love writing, I love
0:23:28 copywriting, so use that.
0:23:32 If you’re visual, if you’re good at designing, and you have an eye for things, then just
0:23:35 use that for thumbnails and for videos.
0:23:39 Or if you have a lot of knowledge in a specific niche, like electric cars or whatever, just
0:23:43 use that and apply that to your YouTube or your business journey, even if you’re not
0:23:46 going into YouTube, you can apply into any journey.
0:23:50 Or you’ve probably gone through certain experiences like horse riding or fishing, you probably
0:23:54 have an expertise, an expertise that most people don’t have, and you just think it’s
0:23:58 always just me, but I’ve always done horse riding, it’s nothing special, but little
0:24:00 do you know that most people in the world don’t know how to do it.
0:24:04 Yeah, the curse of knowledge, like it’s hard to imagine, not knowing that thing.
0:24:05 Yeah, exactly.
0:24:09 So that’s the thing I would advise, because that thought does run through my mind in it,
0:24:13 I believe it runs through everyone’s mind, who’s in business, or who’s in YouTube, where
0:24:18 they think, okay, what’s stopping a bunch of people from doing what I’m doing, but when
0:24:22 you understand that you have a competitive advantage and you have a lot of knowledge
0:24:26 in this niche, or you have a lot of money in your hands, or a lot of time on your hands,
0:24:29 then you can use that for your advantage.
0:24:34 I asked ChatGPT to give me some viral video ideas of the side hustle niche, and came up
0:24:35 with some pretty good ones.
0:24:41 It said the top 10 most profitable side hustles for 2024, passive income side hustles earn
0:24:46 money while you sleep, how I made 500 bucks in a week flipping thrift store fines, I feel
0:24:50 like some of these titles are almost word for word ripped off from vlog content titles
0:24:55 or podcast titles, from side hustle the full time, how I quit my nine to five, side hustle
0:24:58 mistakes, some of them are not that great.
0:25:02 The downsides of side hustle, it’s hard to imagine that one going viral.
0:25:08 But some of these, you could see how they might have some potential to get the creative
0:25:12 juices flowing versus, I guess I could also start on YouTube and just sort by views or
0:25:18 sort by like a view velocity metric too, to see like, oh, okay, I could add my own unique
0:25:22 spin on that topic since that seems to be trending right now.
0:25:23 Yeah.
0:25:27 So ChatGPT is really good for when you’ve kind of lost your creativity.
0:25:32 Just like what you said, Nick, you just whack it into ChatGPT, ask it a question, it will
0:25:35 come up with a bunch of answers, but then it might not give you the answer that you’re
0:25:38 looking for, but it will lead to the answer that you’re looking for.
0:25:43 It might not, like those titles that you just typed in, Nick, you might not go for one of
0:25:44 those ideas.
0:25:49 However, like you said, it gets the creative juices flowing, so it might lead to you doing
0:25:52 something similar to one of those ideas that has popped up.
0:25:53 Yeah.
0:25:54 Oh, five side hustles, you can start with no money.
0:25:56 I feel like that would be a good one.
0:25:58 It will have to do that, make that video at some point.
0:26:03 Do you spend time and effort on marketing or is it just like, I put it out there, I did
0:26:08 my homework and ideation upfront, I tried to make the best video that exists on this topic,
0:26:12 and then I’m going to hope that people start to notice it, or do you have to do anything
0:26:16 to push that viral algorithm, hopefully, to get some attention.
0:26:20 I would say hijack the psychology of a viral thumbnail.
0:26:24 If you see that there’s something being used in a thumbnail, which is like, for the listeners
0:26:28 who don’t know what a thumbnail is, a thumbnail is like an image that, before you click on
0:26:32 YouTube video, it has the title, and then you have the thumbnail, which is like an image
0:26:34 of what portrays what the video is about.
0:26:38 I would say hijack the psychology of an already viral thumbnail, so if you look in your niche,
0:26:43 if you see like MrBeast, for example, he uses this a lot, where he uses a lot of bright,
0:26:46 vibrant colors in his thumbnails and a lot of emotion.
0:26:51 So there’s always like him screaming, or him like underwater, or something crazy is going
0:26:52 on in the thumbnail.
0:26:57 So if you’re in his niche, then do something similar, and you can even ask ChatGPT to do
0:27:04 an analysis of your thumbnail, just screenshot it, throw it into ChatGPT, tell it to give
0:27:07 you an analysis and ask it how you can improve it.
0:27:08 And actually does that for you.
0:27:13 It’s very, very smart, ChatGPT, just things that anything you throw at it, it pretty much
0:27:14 does it.
0:27:15 It’s weirdly amazing.
0:27:20 But one thing I would say when it comes to YouTube, most of the times it is a numbers
0:27:21 game.
0:27:24 So I was saying this to one of my clients, I’ve been coaching him on how to run YouTube
0:27:25 channels.
0:27:27 You can push out 10 videos a month.
0:27:30 Not all 10 videos will go viral.
0:27:37 However, if three videos go viral, then that will pay for all of the seven videos that
0:27:38 didn’t go viral.
0:27:43 So you can invest money, and you can invest time into 10 videos a month.
0:27:49 And even though seven videos don’t make you any money, the whole purpose is you would
0:27:54 want at least three of those videos, which will make you money and will pay for all 10
0:27:57 of those videos plus profits.
0:28:00 And the good thing about YouTube is you just have to post the video once, and once you’ve
0:28:03 posted it once, it will remain on there forever.
0:28:06 And as long as it’s getting views, it will pay you pretty much as long as it’s getting
0:28:07 views forever.
0:28:11 And that’s the good thing about having these digital assets or digital real estate with
0:28:12 YouTube.
0:28:14 You upload the video once, it pays you passively forever.
0:28:15 Is that where you like to be at?
0:28:19 If I’m batting 300, if I have a 30% hit rate, then I’m happy.
0:28:21 I know I’m doing something right.
0:28:22 Yeah.
0:28:23 That’s the minimum that you would want to accept.
0:28:26 And all you pretty much need is three videos a month to hit decent numbers for the whole
0:28:28 production process to be paid for.
0:28:33 What kind of minimum view count is considered good or is considered a hit?
0:28:37 I would say the current RPM we’re working with right now is around $4.5.
0:28:43 So if we get a million views, then we’ll get $4.5,000 USD.
0:28:51 So essentially, I would say a good number for us to break even for 10 videos will be
0:28:57 around 150K, 150,000 views to 200,000 views.
0:28:58 Okay.
0:28:59 Gosh, that’s a lot.
0:29:04 I think in 10 years of my YouTube channel, I’ve had one or two go over 100,000.
0:29:06 Clearly not using all the tools to my advantage here.
0:29:08 What’s the typical production cost for you these days?
0:29:10 It’s around $10 per minute.
0:29:12 That’s the production cost right now.
0:29:15 So for like a 10 minute video, it’ll be like $100.
0:29:19 And to break even on a 10 minute video, which is the average view duration.
0:29:24 So we invest like $100, we’ll need 22,000 views to break even.
0:29:25 All right.
0:29:27 We’ve got lots of different channels going on.
0:29:31 We will link up Tony’s seven steps on how to crush it on YouTube.
0:29:33 That’s an email opt-in over at his site.
0:29:35 We’ll link that up in the show notes.
0:29:40 Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side hustle nation 2024 edition.
0:29:43 Never ever give up.
0:29:47 And I know it sounds like a cliche, but it’s a cliche for a reason.
0:29:52 Never give up and find out what your competitive advantage is.
0:29:54 And I know I mentioned it earlier.
0:30:01 It’s important to understand who you are, what you have experienced in life and what
0:30:02 you bring to the table.
0:30:07 So whether it be YouTube or any type of business, it’s very important to see what is your competitive
0:30:08 advantage?
0:30:10 What have you experienced that most people haven’t?
0:30:11 What do you have that most people don’t have?
0:30:12 Do you have a lot of time?
0:30:13 Do you have a lot of money?
0:30:14 Are you young?
0:30:15 Do you have a lot of energy?
0:30:16 Are you good at remembering things?
0:30:18 Are you photographic?
0:30:22 Use that to your advantage because that’s going to be what makes you different from everybody
0:30:23 else.
0:30:24 Yeah, absolutely.
0:30:28 In an AI world, you figure out what’s going to make your channel unique from the next
0:30:29 guys.
0:30:30 It’s you.
0:30:34 You got to be that extra ingredient and sprinkle in your own personality expertise, whatever
0:30:39 it may be, to really drive results and to make something unique in the world, make something
0:30:40 stand out.
0:30:46 So again, fascinating stuff on the YouTube and AI revolution on the video front over
0:30:47 there.
0:30:51 So as we mentioned, this is Tony’s on-core visit to the side hustle show.
0:30:54 So make sure to check out his first appearance if you missed it.
0:30:58 That is episode five at 65 in your podcast feed.
0:31:02 But again, we’re talking about making money on YouTube, planting these little money seeds
0:31:06 and maybe a good one to pair with this one and see what all has changed over the course
0:31:07 of a year.
0:31:10 But if you’re new to the show, you’re wondering what to listen to next, I want to invite you
0:31:13 to do what thousands of listeners have already done.
0:31:18 Please do in it and that’s to build yourself a personalized playlist of the side hustle
0:31:21 show episodes that will be most relevant to you.
0:31:26 All you got to do is go to hustle.show, answer a few short multiple choice questions and
0:31:31 the little quiz will spit back out this cool curated money making playlist recommendation
0:31:33 based on your answers.
0:31:37 So that’s at hustle.show and you grab your playlist over there.
0:31:40 Big thanks to Tony for sharing his insight.
0:31:43 Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:31:48 You can hit up side hustle nation.com/deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors
0:31:50 in one place.
0:31:51 That’s it for me.
0:31:52 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:31:55 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen and I’ll catch you in the
0:31:58 next edition of the side hustle show hustle on.