In this instructional video, Matt Parr reflects on his 12‑year YouTube journey, sharing six hard‑earned lessons he wishes his younger self had known. He begins by urging viewers to start as early as possible and to consider faceless channels—using stock footage, screen recordings, slideshows, whiteboard animation, or AI‑generated visuals (via his own tool vid.ai). He then argues that focusing on tutorial/educational content, rather than pure entertainment, creates deeper viewer connections and higher revenue potential. Third, he warns against scattering effort across unrelated niches; instead, he recommends building a portfolio of complementary channels that can cross‑promote each other. Fourth, he introduces a “symbiotic system”: a long‑form video on the main channel that sells a product at the end, funneling traffic from all other videos to boost both growth and earnings. Fifth, he challenges the belief that one must be a world‑class expert to teach, describing the “information DJ” mindset—remixing existing knowledge into fresh formats. Finally, he outlines effective monetization tactics: early enrollment in the YouTube Partner Program, prioritizing digital/affiliate products over Amazon links, and leveraging high‑ticket commissions. Throughout, he backs each point with personal anecdotes, revenue figures (over $10 M earned, 11 k+ students helped), and references to additional resources.
Chapters
Nobody cares, just start. That would be what I would tell my past self back in 2014 that was sitting on the edge of maybe doing YouTube, maybe I shouldn't. I'm so thankful that I took that leap of faith and I went all in on YouTube. And honestly, I wish I would have started sooner. I've grew a bunch of different YouTube channels over the years, getting millions of subscribers and making over $10 million off the platform. But what I'm most proud of is the fact that I've been able to help over 11,000 people start their own channels. But all of these great things didn't come without a lot of failures along the way. I made almost every single expensive YouTube mistake that you could possibly make, and I wish that somehow I could get this video you're watching right now in the hands of my past self because it would have saved me, and it probably would have made me hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of extra dollars. Not only that, I would have structured my entire YouTube business and journey completely differently than I did. So this is going to help you a ton if you are thinking of starting a YouTube channel a faceless YouTube channel, or even a personal YouTube channel. And I say this as someone who has done all of those growing huge channels of every type. Now for the first thing that I wish I knew, we're gonna go way back, back to when I was 12 years old and I was posting videos to YouTube just for fun. These were just videos like backyard stunts, videos with my friends, and these were videos that got next to no views. I had zero strategy. Yes, it was fun making some of these videos, but I genuinely wanted to be a YouTuber and I wanted to do YouTube as a job at that point. So I wish I could go back to 2012 and tell my past self, "Give faceless YouTube channels a shot." Because back then I was super awkward on camera, there was no possible way I would be talking to a camera, and those videos with my friends, there was never any talking in them whatsoever, and they had zero chance of getting any views. And I wish I would have known at the time that there were huge faceless channels, even though I watched a bunch at the time, I didn't really put two and two together that, "Wait a second, I could potentially do this." So I wish I would have known about faceless content, and I wish I would have known about all the different types of ways that you can generate faceless content. You can use stock footage, you can do screen recording tutorials using something like OBS, you can do slideshow presentations. Yes, there's actually big channels that do that. You can do whiteboard animations, and you can even do AI-generated visuals. In fact, YouTube is going all in on AI, and I actually started a software company called vid.ai for that reason. That helps people generate full YouTube videos up to 20 minutes long. But you have to make sure to do it the right way, in a way that's not gonna get you banned. And I have multiple videos on my channel talking about how to do that. Now you might be saying, Matt, you still started YouTube at 14 years old. I mean, was that really that big of a difference, 2 years? And as crazy as it sounds, yes, it actually was. That was a lot of time that I could have been spent doing this, and I just wish I would have known about this business model a little bit sooner. And I'm not saying that to make you feel bad if you're a little bit older, because we have people of all ages within our training programs that are starting successful YouTube channels of all sorts. I'm just going over what I wish I knew through my personal journey. Now, the second mistake that I made that I wish I would have known when I was starting YouTube is I wish I wouldn't have focused on making entertaining videos. Now, you might be saying, Matt, isn't the whole purpose of YouTube to make entertaining videos? And if you're doing top 5 and top 10 videos, which was the first type of video that I produced on my channels, shouldn't you be trying to make those entertaining? Is that not the point of YouTube? My point is that I wish I would have focused on a different type of content. I wish I would have focused on more tutorial-based channels. Now I had a few tutorial-based channels back in the day that actually did really good. Like I uploaded some videos about how to install Minecraft and other videos like that that actually got a few hundred thousand views and then I just quit on them. I wish I would have gone more in on doing more tutorial-based content, screen recording videos, as well as even just general tech tutorials and videos documenting my journey as I was building up Faceless YouTube channels and showing what I learned learned along the way. That was a big mistake I made, just focusing on entertainment. And through focusing on entertainment channels, that is what got me, you know, millions of subscribers. So obviously I'm very grateful for those channels. It also made me a lot of money at a very young age. However, I would have made even more money focusing on educational channels because with educational channels you can sell something, you have a much deeper connection with your viewer. Now the third mistake that I wish I wouldn't have made was focusing on too many different niches. Throughout my YouTube journey, I've started over 50 YouTube channels, out of which I only have about a dozen or so that I've really gone all in on and really focused on. And I wish that the channels that I did focus on were a little bit more related to each other. Instead of having a general entertainment channel about a random subject and then another random subject, I wish I would have thought it through a little bit more and had channels that all complemented each other. So that when one channel blows up, let's say a channel about AI tools for instance, and then I have another channel about YouTube growth, both of these are benefited as a result. And I wish I would have structured my YouTube journey a little bit more like that. And that actually brings me into the next mistake I made, which was not implementing a symbiotic system into my main channel. A symbiotic system means making an ultra long video on your channel that sells something at the end of it. I have a whole script template for doing this. I've talked about this on my channel numerous times. I'm sorry if you're hearing this for the 50th time, but basically I've I wish I would have done that on my first channel, having that symbiotic system in place and then driving all the traffic of my other videos to that. It would have turbocharged my growth even more. And then also I would have made a lot more money from YouTube. Another mistake that I made was thinking that I had to be some world-class expert in order to sell any type of my expertise. I saw people selling courses back in like 2016, which at the point I was making between $10K and $30K a month depending on the month. But then I saw ginormous YouTubers that were way bigger than me making millions and millions a year. And I was like, you know what, I'm not at I don't really feel qualified to teach anybody. Whereas if you really look at it, all you have to be is a few steps, even just 1% better than most people, or a pool of people big enough to be able to then buy your product and make you potentially millions of dollars while helping them in the process. I wish I wouldn't have had that limiting belief that I had to have some crazy results in order to start, and that prevented me from making my personal channel that you're watching right now, Make Money Matt, until I was 18 years old. And also another point on that is that you don't even need to be an expert in order to run an educational-based channel. One of the best ways to learn is actually to teach. And I like to tell my students, if they're doing an educational channel, to look at yourself as being what I like to call an information DJ. Basically, you take information, you remix it in new and unique ways, and then you package it in a new way using proven formats. And that is how you go viral consistently on YouTube and build a large business out of YouTube, especially if you sell something. And that brings me into my next mistake, which was not monetizing my channels properly. In fact, I didn't even know about built-in YouTube monetization until I was 15. So I ran channels for almost a year not even knowing I could make any money from them, but I knew there was some way to make money, I just didn't know exactly how. I saw YouTubers living their dream lives, being able to travel the world and everything else, and I thought just eventually if I just make big enough videos, YouTube will just be sending checks to my house. But that's not how it works. You have to actively sign up for the YouTube Partner Program And luckily I learned about that when I was 15, and I had to ask my parents at the time to help me sign up. And once I did that, I went from making zero money to $3,000 a month. I wish I would have known about it sooner though, because I would have turned on monetization sooner. But that's just the tip of the iceberg, because I wish I would have known about the better ways of monetizing your channel by promoting things like an affiliate product. By the way, the best affiliate products you can promote from YouTube are not Amazon affiliate links. That's a huge mistake. Do not make that mistake. Instead, promote digital products. You'll make a lot more money per sale and you charge more for them due to the fact that there's no fulfillment cost associated with it like there is a physical product. So if you promote somebody else's online course and you get 50% of a $1,000 sale, that's $500 a sale. Sell 12 of those a month, you're making $10,000 a month. I'm just doing this for illustrative purposes. Obviously, I can't guarantee you'll make that much, but this is how I became a multimillionaire from YouTube. That award actually back there was for making over $5 million. From a platform called Digistore, and I did that off of YouTube. Also, I wish I would have focused on the right niches instead of just doing general entertainment videos. I wish I would have focused on the right type of educational videos in order to make as much money as possible. And I actually go over those correct best educational niches in this video right here, where I also go over my complete faceless YouTube strategy that's working right now, updated with the best information, the best niches, the best way of getting tons of views, and my secret for doing so, and also the best way to scale to multiple channels the right way. Check out this video right here. You'll get a ton of value from it. My name is Matt Parr, and I will see you there.
