YouTube Gurus Are LYING (What They Won't tell You)

So I called out the YouTube automation space on Twitter, and the response exposed a massive trust crisis in the industry. Now, the post got over 700 bookmarks, but the comments told the real story. One person said, "There's so many liars and so many scam artists in this space, and I really only trust 3 people when it comes to YouTube automation." Another person said, "For a change, finally someone is talking sense." And another simply said, "All of my channels are dying." And the message was clear: people have lost faith in traditional guru advice, and they're looking for someone to finally tell them the truth. Now here's what this trust crisis reveals about our industry. I'm gonna reveal exactly why people only trust a very select few in a sea of thousands of supposed experts and break down the 5 biggest lies causing this trust crisis and give you the system that's actually working right now. But first of all, let me break down why this trust crisis is completely justified. Let's start with the the biggest hypocrisy in the make money online space. And then I'll show you exactly how it applies to YouTube automation specifically. Most gurus in general talk about business models that they don't actually do. They'll teach you dropshipping, yet they've never ran a successful dropshipping store, or they did temporarily, but they no longer do. They'll teach you Amazon FBA, but they've never ran an FBA business. They'll teach you affiliate marketing, So what are they actually doing? Well, here's what we know that they're doing. We know that they're doing YouTube and they're doing it in an educational format and they're selling something from their channel. Think about it, every single guru that you've ever watched is making their real money by teaching on YouTube and selling courses or programs. That is their actual business model. But here's where it gets really interesting with YouTube automation specifically. Because there are some gurus who talk about YouTube automation. There's gurus who have play buttons for supposedly getting millions of subscribers across different channels. And 99% of the gurus who are talking about doing YouTube automation are talking about it in the context of making entertainment videos. They'll tell you things like start a top 10 scary places channel, do viral celebrity gossip. But here's the thing that's gonna blow your mind. These same exact gurus that are telling you to make entertainment content, what type of content are they making in order to sell you their course? They're making educational content. For example, how to make money on YouTube videos. They're making YouTube Automation Secrets videos, and they're making tutorial content. So I hope you can see the hypocrisy in telling you to make entertainment content while they themselves are making educational content. But you might be saying, "Matt, can't you do both? Like, for example, don't you run some entertainment channels?" Like most of the channels that have gotten me my gold play buttons for getting millions of subscribers, After all, those are the channels that have gone the most viral and have had the most viral moments. And I'm gonna explain all that, but that actually brings me to the first lie that they tell you. So here's some real data that a lot of gurus, I guarantee you, hope that you never calculate for yourself. Most channels make between $3 and $25 per 1,000 views in ad revenue. Ad revenue is when YouTube places ads on your videos, and then you get a cut of that revenue. If you wanna get really scientific with it, it's called RPM, or revenue per million, how much you make per 1,000 views. And let's be generous, let's say you're in a pretty good niche and you're making $10 per 1,000 views. In order to make $10,000 per month from ad revenue alone, you're gonna need a million views a month. That's over 33,000 views per day, every single day. But here's what most gurus don't tell you. They'll tell you, "Oh, it's easy to get that many views." It's not. It takes time to do that, and most channels struggle to get 1,000 views a video, especially in the beginning. So you're telling someone who can barely get 1,000 views a video to just magically get 33,000 views a day. The math just doesn't add up. Add up. And this is where it gets really interesting, because what I've discovered over my past 10 years on YouTube is that you can actually make $100 to $1,000 per 1,000 views if you sell something from your channel. Now you might be saying, "Matt, I don't believe you. That sounds absolutely unbelievable. And how in the world is that even possible?" Well, let me give you a real example. If you're selling a $500 digital product and you get just a 0.2% conversion rate, and that's literally just 2 people out of 1,000 viewers, then you're making $100 per 1,000 views. So now you only need 100,000 views per month in order to hit $10K per month, not a million. Suddenly YouTube starts looking a lot more realistic and it doesn't just look like a lottery ticket like how most people approach it. Plus all of those entertainment channels are so commoditized. There's so much competition and you're just gonna be one out of a thousand channels that look the exact same. But here's the secret that the gurus do not want you to know. They know this. That's exactly what they're doing. They're not making the majority of their money from their "how to make money on YouTube" videos through AdSense. They're making money by selling you courses. And that brings me into the second huge lie. You might be asking, "Matt, if educational channels work so much better, then why are these gurus pushing entertainment channels? Shouldn't they just push the better one?" And this answer is probably gonna shock a lot of people, but it's actually because entertainment channels are a lot harder to monetize So they're gonna sell you a monetized channel, which is the biggest scam in the world. Never fall for buying a monetized channel. They're BS. Unless you buy an actual channel that's actually been built up and you stay within the same niche, never buy a monetized channel. So number one, they can make money selling you monetized channels, which I've never done and I never will do. And number two, when you fail with entertainment channels, you still need their help, so then they can sell you more courses. And if you think about this logically, If they told you, for example, to start an education channel where you can sell something from your channel and you succeeded with that, you don't necessarily need their help again. So you don't need to buy from them again. But when they push you towards entertainment channels that take millions of views to make any type of decent money, you're setting yourself up for failure. And when you fail, who are you going to turn to? Another course, another program, another secret method. It's a cycle that keeps you dependent on buying training instead of building a real business. So let me show you the difference real quick with some real examples from my community. Here's an entertainment channel example. A typical top 10 scary places type of channel might get 100,000 views per video if you're lucky, if you build it up to that point over time, which some of my students have been able to do. But even at that, you would need to be posting 20 videos per month just to make $10,000 a month from that channel. That's first of all posting every single weekday on the channel, nearly every day, and that's not even accounting for the fact that what if a video gets demonetized? What if for some stupid reason stupid reason your channel gets demonetized. Whereas if we take an educational example, like this channel HowToAI, which is completely faceless, they get 737,000 views per month, but here's the kicker, they sell a course, and they're affiliates for all of the software that they talk about, and they get sponsorship revenue on top of that, which is just even an extra bonus. I'd estimate that they're making about $50,000 a month from their course, plus $10K a month from affiliates, plus ad revenue, all those things combined, it's potentially a 6-figure per month business, million dollar per year business from a single educational faceless YouTube channel. But it gets even worse because these gurus are setting you up for the third big lie. And this is honestly where it gets really painful. And this is something that I personally learned the hard way when it comes to doing YouTube automation. Most YouTube automation gurus tell you to put together an entire team from day one. Get a scriptwriter for $50 a video, hire an editor for $100 a video. Don't forget the thumbnail designer for $15 a video. That's $175 per video before before you ever make a single penny. And if you're posting 3 videos per week like they recommend, then you're bleeding out $2,280 a month hoping that something goes viral. And if you're reliant on ad revenue, you only have one source of income. Is that a smart investment? It could potentially be down the line if you grow the channel and spend thousands and thousands on content. Sure, there's lots of channels that make a lot more than that back if the content quality is good, but you're managing an entire team, you're reliant on ad revenue, and here's the thing that they don't tell you. Most channels never go viral, and most channels never break even on these costs. I know this because I made the same exact mistake when I was 14 years old. I tried outsourcing my channel before I was making a ton of money. I only had a couple hundred dollars in my bank account at the time. I thought that hiring a team would make things go faster, and I ended up spending a lot of money, all— pretty much all the money I had, before I ever got a single dollar back. I was hiring people to create content for niches that I didn't even fully understand yet. And here's the crazy part: when I did finally start making money, it's not because of the team I hired and all the time they saved me, although that was a benefit from it. It was because I learned how to create valuable content myself. I fired that initial team because I hired a lot of bad people, and since then I've learned exactly how to hire the right people. And I started making the videos myself and spending all of my time doing that until I found a format that was repeatably working, and then I hired a team to duplicate what I was already doing. So what should you do instead? Start lean. I cannot stress this enough, especially if you have limited money right now. Use your phone, use free editing software, and use AI tools to prove it works before you hire anyone. Most successful creators that I personally know, including myself, started with literally nothing. I made my first videos on a cracked iPod and a laptop that barely worked. But here's where it gets really sneaky, because the gurus know that if you start lean, and you do end up succeeding, you might actually figure out their fourth big lie. And this one's probably the most damaging lie of all because it determines everything else in regards to your channel's success. These gurus will tell you to pick niches based off of what's trending or what gets the most amount of views. They'll show you channels getting millions of views in those niches, usually entertainment niches, and then they'll say, "See, this works! This is proof!" But here's what they don't tell you: views don't equal money. I have channels that get 1,000 views a video that make more money than channels that get 100,000 views per video. And the difference comes down to literally just one thing: the quality of the audience. Entertainment audiences are looking to be entertained. They're not looking to buy anything or solve any real problems that they have. They just wanna open YouTube and mindlessly go through and watch videos, which we all do, right? But when we're in that state of mind, in an entertainment state of mind, we're not as valuable as viewers. And you wanna view this through a business mindset for these channels and for YouTube itself and for advertisers especially even. They want a certain type of audience. They want an educational type of audience because these people are coming in with problems that they want to actually get solved and they're willing to pay for solutions. Let me show you exactly what I mean with some real data from actual successful channels. So Jet Set Genius right here, it gets 1.3 million views per month. They make videos in the travel niche. They could easily make 15 grand a month from ad revenue alone. But let's say they created a simple course on how to book flights for 90% less or the ultimate guide for travel hacking, something like that. They could easily double or even triple their revenue. Or this channel called Discover the Globe. They probably are making $70K a month from ad revenue alone, but they're leaving massive money on the table by not selling anything from their channel. What about Stoic Journal that gets 481,000 views a month? They could make a full-time income from ad revenue alone as well, but they could make tens of thousands more if they sold a course about stoicism or personal development. These channels are all successful, they're all doing great, and I'm sure they're happy with the amount of money that they're making, but they're not maximizing their potential because they're following the old entertainment model instead of the educational model. And that brings me to what the gurus know but what they won't teach you, which is the secret to choosing profitable niches. After running over a dozen channels myself and analyzing thousands of more channels within my community, I've discovered that all of the best niches have one thing in common. They target people with expensive problems who are willing to pay to solve them. And here, in my opinion, are the big 5 niches that I genuinely recommend. You have money with things like online business, investing, and personal finance. Health with things like fitness, weight loss, natural remedies. Relationships with dating advice, relationship help. Travel with things like travel tips, guides, destination planning. Technology with things like software tutorials, tech reviews. And there's just one simple reason why I recommend these niches over almost anything else, and it's because these people have problems that are big enough that they're willing to pay hundreds, and in some cases even thousands of dollars to solve. And for example, if someone is struggling to find a job online, for example, they would easily pay $500 for a digital guide that shows them exactly how to find one. Or someone trying to lose weight would happily pay $300 for a program that actually works. Someone who's trying to save their relationship, which could cost tons of money, would easily pay $200 for some expert advice or even just a community where they could get answers to their questions and support from people going through the same thing. But here's the mistake most people make, and this is where the guru's advice gets really dangerous in my opinion. They choose a broad category instead of a specific sub-niche. For example, most people would pick health as their niche and then they would start worrying about content ideas for their health channel. That is where you will get stuck instantly. What the smart YouTubers do is picking a sub-niche like bodyweight workouts for busy professionals or natural sleep remedies for new parents. This way you're speaking to a direct specific audience, so all of your videos will feed each other. When one goes viral, all your others will benefit as well, and it's much easier to create content targeting that specific person. Plus it makes it easier to sell things. But even if you pick the perfect niche, There's still one more lie that the gurus tell you that can destroy your entire channel, and this might be the most expensive lie out of all of them because it costs you months of your revenue. Most YouTube automation experts tell you to post videos for a long time, build up your subscriber count and your views and everything like that, and then apply to maybe get monetized. So YouTube will put ads on your videos and you get monetized that way. This is through something called the YouTube Partner Program. And in order to qualify for this, you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time. And don't get me wrong, YouTube ad revenue is amazing. That's what got me to making $30K a month by the time I graduated high school. And even today I make anywhere from $20K to $50K a month from ad revenue. But notice how big that range is. I would never trust putting my entire business on ad revenue alone. And I think that people who do that are putting all of their eggs into one basket. Channels can get demonetized for random reasons, ad rates fluctuate massively, and a simple algorithm change could destroy your entire business overnight. But smart creators, who are doing things the right way in my opinion, monetize from day one. You don't need to have 1,000 subscribers or 4K watch hours to monetize immediately with your channel, and the people who think that you do need that are falling into what I like to call the AdSense trap. And the gurus will happily keep you stuck there because it benefits their business. And it keeps you dependent on their advice. I know creators who are making $10K+ a month who aren't even monetized with ad revenue at all because they're focused on selling something from day one. And the simplest way to do this is to sell a higher-ticket item, but not just any item. I recommend selling a digital product because the product that you sell will be almost entirely profit. You don't have to pay fulfillment fees to ship something out and deal with all that, plus you can charge a lot more per sale of that product. So instead of promoting a $50 product, promote a $500 one. And this can be an affiliate product that you find, this can be your own product that you create. So therefore, instead of hoping for $5 per 1,000 views, now you can be aiming for $100+ per 1,000 views. Now that I've exposed all the lies, let me show you the real system that's working for myself and all of my successful students. I like to call this the symbiotic system, and it's the complete opposite of what most gurus teach. And here's how it works. Instead of treating every video like an isolated piece of content, what you're doing is creating a collection of videos that all serve a common aim. All of these videos, the goal of all of them isn't just to get views and do well by themselves. Sure, that's great. When a video pops off, you get some views, you make some money from it from ad revenue. That's awesome, we'll take it. But the main purpose of those videos isn't that at all. It's to funnel people back to what I like to call a money video. This is using things like end screens, pinned comments, and links in the description to send all the people back to that money video. Your money video then will follow a specific script saying specific things, and it sells something at the end of the video, whether that's your own course, a high-ticket affiliate product, or even a consulting call. It could also even be a community on a platform like Skool, for instance. So with this system, not only are you making money through selling a product at the end of that video, But you're also turning one view into two views, and that second view is gonna rack up so much watch time because the "Your Money" video is a very long video. And I can just give you the script of exactly what to say in that video. And YouTube, in my experience, rewards session time like crazy. And session time is the amount of time that somebody spends on YouTube after watching your video. So it makes sense if you send them to a longer video, you're gonna absolutely crush it. Let me show you exactly how powerful that this is. I have students with 3,000 subscribers making $100K a year because they implemented this system correctly. Now obviously I can't guarantee you're gonna make $100K a year just by watching this video, but I'm just saying this to stress a point that I see other channels that have 100,000 subscribers that struggle to make $1,000 a month because they're only relying on ad revenue. So let me now give you the exact roadmap to implement this system. Step 1 is to pick a problem-rich sub-niche from one of those big 5 categories. Don't just choose health. Step 2 then is to create your money video as one of your first videos on your channel. It can be your first one or your second or third one. The point is it should be one of the first ones on your channel. And again, I've got an exact script of exactly what to say for that video. And basically you want it to be a long-form video that then leads people naturally to buy something from it. It should be at least minimum 15 to 20 minutes long, but I've had students' money videos be 30 minutes, even an hour long, because it follows a specific structure that's structured to not only give a lot of value but make it just an absolute no-brainer for them to buy your product. Step 3 then is to create supporting content that all funnels to that money video. Now every video has the dual purpose of also making you money from ad revenue and sending people to the money video. So every video you do has double the power. Now you should make sure that every video has a clear call to action directing people to your money video. And step 4 is to start monetizing immediately. Don't just wait for AdSense approval. If you don't already have a digital product, that's fine. You can make an MVP of one that you can launch before you've ever even created it. I've had students do that with huge success. But if you want to get started as soon as possible, find an affiliate product to promote. Either a course or a software is typically what I recommend. Step 5 then is to focus on session time, not just views. When people watch multiple videos in a row, YouTube will promote your content like crazy. But here's something that most people get wrong when they try to implement this system. And this mistake costs them everything. They think they can just throw together some random content and hope it works, but there's actually a specific science to creating content that converts. Here's what most gurus won't tell you about creating content that actually makes money. It's not about being entertaining. What it's mostly about is actually being helpful. And you might be saying, Matt, that sounds great, but listen, I'm not an expert in anything. I don't want to be on camera either. How helpful am I realistically going to be? Well, that's fine, because here's the secret. You don't just need to be an expert. You just need to be one step step ahead of your audience. I recommend my students to look at themselves like information DJs. You take the best points from 3 different videos that have already done well and crushed it— all 3 of them have gone over 100K or even a million views— and then you remix them into a better piece of content that's better than all 3 of those videos. That way, you're not coming up with revolutionary new ideas that might work, they might not work. You're taking ideas that have already worked and improving them to making them even better and presenting them in a better way. And with AI tools like TubeMagic, which I specifically made for this, where you can put in context videos from multiple different YouTube videos and then generate incredible scripts using all the best hook formats and everything else. It makes it so easy to create just incredible quality content without ever even showing your face. You can also use vid.ai, which is my other software, which allows you to generate stock footage-based videos. So if you're in a niche like that channel earlier that I mentioned that does travel content, that would be a perfect channel where you could literally just generate those videos using vid.ai. but you want to make sure they give value. And the way you do that is by writing amazing scripts. Now, if you can't afford a tool like TubeMagic or VidIQ, no worries whatsoever. I just have to mention them. They're my companies. But even with perfect content, there's one more critical piece that determines whether you make $100 a month or $10,000 per month. And that actually brings me to my final piece of advice, which is the one that took me from making around $30K a month to over $100K a month. And again, I can't guarantee you'll make that much whatsoever. I'm just telling my own story here, so I hope you can take some really useful information from this, which I truly believe you will. And once you have one profitable education channel, which is the first type of channel I recommend starting, don't just stop there. You can make multiple different channels still, but you want to make sure they're an ecosystem of related channels. For example, if your main channel is about how to start an online business, you could then create a second channel about business success stories. This is an entertainment channel that's within the same niche. And then you could create a third channel going over software tutorials of all the software that helps you run your business. And these are related tools that your audience needs. All of these channels, then every single video on them will funnel people back to your main money video that's on your main channel. And this is exactly what I do now. But here's the critical part that a lot of people go wrong with. They try to start all their channels at once. Do not do that. Start with one channel and focus on that. And I recommend that being your educational channel. Just think of YouTube as any other business in the world. It doesn't make sense to be opening 10 different restaurants at the same time if you haven't even had one successful restaurant yet. And what's exciting about this is that we right now are within what I like to call the golden window for this strategy. AI tools are advanced enough to create super professional content, but most creators have not figured out how to strategically use them yet. I think this window will only be open for a limited amount of time before everybody uses these tools, things get more commoditized. But right now is the time to start building a brand. And the way you do that is not making the same commoditized type of content that everybody else does in terms of entertainment content. All the other gurus are gonna tell you to make that type of content because it benefits them, they can sell you additional stuff. Stop listening to them, stop listening to the hype. Understand that views don't equal money. Don't wait for AdSense to monetize. Implement a symbiotic system. And I know this might seem like a lot, especially if this is your first time hearing this information, but remember, I learned this the hard way over 10 years of experience. You can use this video as your blueprint to start doing this now. My approach is different than most gurus out there. Most gurus in my position, they would be selling you monetized channels, they would be selling YouTube automation packages, and overall they would just be focused on selling courses. I still run my faceless YouTube channels to this day in the background. They're still making me money. And instead of selling courses like 99% of gurus do, I decided to make a program where I could help people in-depth because let's be real, education is very profitable and I do get a lot of joy out of helping people as well. So I do have an educational program and within there I'll answer any questions you have personally. Plus you get access to coaches who are also helping me run channels and I get the added benefit of being able to meet so many different students, see what's succeeding right now on YouTube and everything. So I try to structure it to be a win-win for both of us. And if you want that exact script that I use for the money video, the step-by-step system for finding profitable niches, all of the tools that I use, feel free to check out the link down in the description, book a call with my team. We'll see if it's a good fit for you and we'll be honest about if we actually think that it is. And yeah, whether you book a call or you don't, I hope that you can still walk away from this video looking at YouTube a little bit differently than you did before and just approach things in a little bit different of a way. And honestly, I hope this was incredibly helpful to you. And if you did find this valuable, feel free to check out this video right here, which goes over a little bit more in depth how to run YouTube automation channels the right way right now. My name is Matt Parr. Hope you got a lot of value and I'll see you there.