8 Faceless YouTube Niches To Always Avoid (and 4 of the BEST)

So you may have heard of something called faceless YouTube channels, which are essentially channels that you can run without ever stepping in front of a camera or showing your face. My name is Matt Parr, and I personally run over 12 of these different channels. This channel you're watching right here is just one of my channels, but most of them I don't ever even step in front of a camera or show my face. And the first step in making money on YouTube with these YouTube automation channels is to choose a niche, which is essentially just a category of content to upload in. And by choosing a niche, you'll grow a targeted audience that'll be more more engaged with your videos, and then all of your videos can feed each other, which can result in a lot of growth and potentially a lot of money for you as well once you get monetized. And now there are hundreds of different niches to choose from, so it can be incredibly difficult, especially in the beginning. A lot of people get stuck on the step of choosing a niche, but the reason I'm making this video is to save people from choosing the wrong niche. And if you're out there, you're looking for what niche to do, or you're even just thinking about starting another faceless channel to add to whatever business you have, then I just wanna make sure that you avoid a few different niches at all costs. And that's what we're gonna be going over in today's video. We're gonna be going over 8 YouTube automation niches you should avoid at all costs. And niche number 1 that you should avoid at all costs is compilation videos. Now, these are videos where you just basically download a bunch of videos, put them together into a compilation, and re-upload to YouTube. And you might be saying, Matt, what's wrong with that? Well, there's a few things that are wrong with that that could potentially stop you from even making money doing this in the first place. And that's because compilations are not what I would consider to be transformative, and they're not what I would consider to be fair use. Essentially, fair use on YouTube is a legal doctrine that potentially allows creators to reuse content from YouTube if they make it different in nature from the original and if they add significant commentary on top of it. Now, I'm not any lawyer or anything, that's just my best understanding of this, but the problem with compilation videos is that you're not making it transformative, you're not doing a voiceover or any of those things. And unfortunately, a lot of times compilation videos can get copyright claimed by the original people who own the rights to the footage. And not only that, YouTube actually doesn't even monetize a lot of compilation videos. And you've probably seen tons of these compilation videos out there, whether they're animal compilations or whether they're just TikTok compilations re-uploaded on YouTube. You might be saying, "Matt, but they're getting millions of views," and that's all fine and well. But don't you wanna make money from your channel as well? And if that's the case, I highly suggest staying away from compilation videos. And even if you do get monetized with a compilation channel, it's very likely that that's going to be short-lived, and I want you to build a real long-term business with YouTube, and the way you do that is by following fair use. Now, there is a way of doing compilation videos correctly where you don't have to worry about copyright or anything like that, and that is by getting permission from the respective owners of the clips to use in compilations. For example, channels like Daily Dose of Internet do this, as well as many others. And essentially, they not only reach out to people asking for permission to use their clips, but also people at this point submit their clips to these channels in order to promote them, essentially. And also, you can make compilations of your own videos. Like for example, I've done a bunch of videos talking about how to get monetized on YouTube, and they're all teaching individual parts of the process of getting monetized, but then eventually I just combined them all into a mega tutorial about how to get monetized on YouTube. So it's different than any one of those individual clips, and it's content that I already own, so I have the right to do that. Niche number 2 to avoid on YouTube for faceless channels is meditation or relaxation videos. Now this one may be a bit confusing to a lot of people, granted that I recently uploaded a video called "How to Make Money on YouTube with Simple Meditation Videos." So you might be asking, "Matt, why are you saying that's bad now?" And the reason is that most people do meditation videos the absolute wrong way. For example, a lot of people simply download some music from the YouTube Audio library, put it on some royalty-free video that they get from somewhere like pixabay.com, re-upload it to YouTube, and they call that a meditation or relaxation sleep music or something of that effect. And the problem with that is it's not original enough for YouTube to always like that type of content. So a lot of these channels, first of all, never end up getting monetized in the first place, or they end up getting demonetized. And I want you guys to make real long-term money with YouTube. So if you're going to do meditation or relaxation videos, make sure you do it the right way. And it's really simple to do that. Just do a human voiceover saying a guided meditation or affirmations throughout the video. Or if you're just doing instrumentals or music, make sure that you either paid someone to make that for you from somewhere like Upwork or Fiverr, meaning you own the rights to that, or you make it yourself. And there's tons of meditation relaxation channels getting millions of views, making tons of money. But you just need to make sure that you're doing it the right way. And I have a video, like I mentioned, that I recently did talking about how to do meditation videos the right way. So feel free to check that out if you want. I'll link it in the description for you as well. Niche number 3 to avoid is motivational content. So you've probably seen motivational videos out there where it's simply some motivational speech from some famous motivational person, and these can get a lot of views, but the problem with them is that same fair use problem that we were talking about earlier. A lot of times These types of videos aren't considered fair use since you're simply reusing clips from somebody else doing a motivational video and putting that in the background of like stock content or something like that. It's not transformative enough, at least in my opinion, for that to be a safe bet for you. And the way to do motivation videos correctly and to actually potentially make money long-term doing this is to put things in your own words and to run channels with an original voiceover on it. Channels like Brainy Dose are a brilliant example of this. Niche number 4 to avoid for faceless YouTube content is kids channels. Now you might be saying, "Matt, what's the problem with kids channels? They get tons of views on YouTube. What could possibly be the problem with that?" Well, unfortunately with kids channels, they make a very small amount per 1,000 views. And that's due to the fact that YouTube has implemented something called COPPA, which essentially stands for the Child Online Privacy Protection Act. What this basically states, from my personal understanding, is that advertisers can't put targeted ads to kids, so therefore CPMs, or how much money you make per 1,000 views, will be drastically lower than content that's aimed at older audiences. So kids, to my understanding, are defined by people who are 13 years or younger. So when you upload your content, you have to check a box that says, "Is this content made for kids or not?" And basically you just check yes or no. If that was the intention of what the content was for. You can't really get around this 'cause if you put the wrong label on the content, YouTube will figure it out eventually. They have people who review videos and everything, so it's best to play it safe. And while you can make money with kids' content, it's just not gonna be nearly as much as you could with other types of content, which is why I actually do not recommend doing it under any circumstances, really, unless this was just your number one passion. Making this type of content. And to demonstrate this, I had somebody within my Tube Mastery community. I run a course, we have over like 10,000 people within this private community who've paid for access to it. And this one guy, his name was Pete. He ran a kids channel that was quite big. He got hundreds of millions of total views on that channel and he was getting millions upon millions of views per month. But he shared in the group how much he was making from that. It was only a couple hundred dollars per month. And if you're going to be getting that amount of views, you could potentially be making way more than a full-time income. With other types of content. So that's why I at least suggest steering clear from it if you can. And I just think that there's so many better niches out there. Niche number 5 to avoid on YouTube for faceless niche channels is non-advertiser safe content. And this might seem broad, but it's really simple once you understand what advertisers want to put their ads on and what they don't want to put their ads on. And once I explain this, this will make perfect sense. So essentially what advertisers are given the option when they put ads on YouTube videos is they can choose whether they want their ads on something called the Limited Inventory, which is standard, or the Expanded Inventory, which you have to actually go in into all these little settings and choose that individual setting. And most people and most advertisers, they don't do that extra work. They just put it on the Limited Inventory. And this is what essentially that means. And this is the difference between them. The Expanded Inventory are videos on YouTube that could potentially include swearing or things that advertisers typically wouldn't deem to be safe content. So like I said, swearing, and then there's a list of a bunch of others as well. Whereas the limited inventory is where you as a content creator, you want your content going into that category because the majority of advertisers will put ads on that content. You'll make a lot more money as a result. And so really, to make this as clear as possible, just to give you a quick checklist of what to avoid on your content for non-advertiser safe content: make sure you don't do swearing in your videos, make sure there's no violence or other things just ask yourself from the perspective of a brand putting an ad on this, like, would I want to put an ad on this type of content? If the answer is no, I personally would steer clear from it. Now, feel free to do what you want to do. Feel free to swear in your videos if you want to. But from the perspective of making as much money as you possibly can, it's simply not a good idea. Niche number 6 to avoid is AI content. Now, you might be saying, Matt, AI has gotten really good over the past few years. Why couldn't I use like robot voices or anything like that? Or any of these AI video generation tools that are out there. And the reasoning for that is due to the fact that not all of these tools are that good. So for example, there's a lot of robot voiceover tools out there that just don't sound that great. And if you do content like that, I've had a lot of students not be able to get monetized with that. That being said, there are great text-to-speech voiceover platforms out there like ElevenLabs, for example, which is something that I could actually get behind since it sounds pretty much indistinguishable from a human. Doing it. Also things like deepfake videos where you use someone else's likeness or video or audio of them and you basically transfer it into another video, and these are becoming more and more prominent on YouTube. These types of videos may get you in trouble on YouTube because YouTube is now talking about how they're implementing a process where when you upload videos, you have to specify whether that video is using someone else's likeness or not so they can put a disclaimer on it, and the person that you're using likeness of could request that video. To be taken down as well. So in my opinion, it's best just to steer clear from that unless you're doing it obviously for like parody purposes and you have the person's permission, because I saw some articles where YouTube was talking about if it's for one of those things, they could reconsider it. Niche number 7 to avoid on YouTube for automation channels is music and/or lyric videos. So this was pretty self-explanatory. If you re-upload music on YouTube, it'll probably get flagged under YouTube's copyright system and you probably won't be able to make any money from it. And the way it works is that if the video's claimed, that money will then go to the person who claimed the video in a lot of circumstances. In this case, the owner of the music. And this applies to lyric videos, this applies to any type of video that you have copyrighted music without permission in the video. So if you ever do use music in your video, obviously look into places like the YouTube Audio Library, which have tons of free music to use. And also, if you run a music-specific channel, make sure that either you made that music yourself or you're paying someone from somewhere like Upwork to make the music for you and you have the full rights to do that. And niche number 8 to avoid is gaming content. Now at this point you might be saying, "Matt, what? I see tons of gaming content get millions upon millions of views on YouTube. Why would you not suggest doing that and taking advantage of that?" Well, the thing is that the space is really crowded at this point and I see so many gaming channels pop up, like just thousands of them on individual games. And unless you're doing something to stand out or be unique from that type of content, I just think there's better niches out there. Now, that's not to say there's not gonna be new gaming channels that pop off, there always is, but you'll notice they're typically doing something different. There's typically a reason they're getting that attention, or they're just super valuable and they're doing unique walkthroughs of content or something like that. If you can find a way of doing that, more power to you. In fact, we recently did a video about exactly how to start a gaming channel the right way. Feel free to check that out. I'll also link it in the description for you if you're at all interested in that type of content, because you can do gaming content, but you just need to make sure that you do it the right way. Plus, there's not a ton of money in like affiliate marketing within this niche, and some games require you to have permission from the actual game developer in order to play them on YouTube. So always make sure to search if a game is copyrighted and make sure that you can upload it to YouTube and you have full permission of doing that. And most games now have like privacy policies and terms and conditions that you can read and then just search for YouTube videos on that. Now, this video is not to say that there is not potential in a lot of these niches. There certainly is. But if you want to have the potential of making a lot of money with faceless YouTube channels, I hope this helps you kind of steer in the right direction for that. And now at this point, you might be saying, Matt, what is the right direction? Where should I be putting my time and attention into in terms of the type of content I upload and which niches should I choose? And that is a fantastic question. And some of the best niches on YouTube, in my opinion, are related to finance, fitness and diet, technology, travel, and then I go over 30 more of the best faceless niches on YouTube in this video right here. So if you want to see all those niches, check it out right here. You'll get a ton of value from it. My name is Matt Parr. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you there.