--- title: 'How We Built a $500K YouTube Empire with Animated Balls' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=yTZWetc7NRU' video_id: 'yTZWetc7NRU' date: 2026-07-13 duration_sec: 789 --- # How We Built a $500K YouTube Empire with Animated Balls > Source: [How We Built a $500K YouTube Empire with Animated Balls](https://youtube.com/watch?v=yTZWetc7NRU) ## Summary This video details the journey of two brothers who built a network of animated 'ball' channels on YouTube, starting with a space-themed channel inspired by a competitor. They scaled by creating multiple channels in different languages, eventually dominating the niche and earning over $500,000. The story covers their strategies, failures, and eventual closure of the channels. ### Key Points - **Channel Origin** [00:02] — The creator and his twin brother started a YouTube channel called Space Balls, inspired by the popular channel Sharanuty Kosmos (Solorball). They aimed to surpass it by simplifying animation and releasing videos more frequently. - **Differentiation Strategy** [01:09] — To stand out, they simplified the animation style to 'balls in the shape of planets' and released long videos every 3 days instead of weekly. They also reused competitor's topics with slight twists. - **Video Creation Process** [02:26] — The creator worked with an animator (Kirill) and voice actors. He provided detailed scripts and demos. The animator was independent and handled most of the work. - **Importance of Thumbnails** [02:40] — Thumbnails are 90% of success. They must be clickable, clear, and complement the title. Example: first video 'What if the sun explodes?' had a thumbnail showing Earth, Moon, and Sun with broken pieces. - **Scaling with Multiple Languages** [03:07] — They created channels in English, Spanish, and other languages by hiring native speakers for voiceovers. English and Spanish channels performed best. They paid 2,000 rubles per video for English, 300 rubles for Russian. - **Expansion to Country Balls** [04:40] — On day 90, they launched a channel called State Balls, focusing on political news with engaging stories. They released content every 4 days and optimized thumbnails with text and dynamic frames. - **Hiring Animators** [06:04] — After earning $50,000 in 6 months, they hired more animators by posting in Telegram groups. They sent a specification, price list, and test task to interested candidates. - **Merchandise Launch** [07:42] — On day 680, they launched merch (toys, slap bracelets) for their audience. They created a website for English-speaking viewers and earned significant revenue. - **New Format: History Mapping** [08:36] — They started a 'mapping' format on State Balls, retelling country histories. The first video on Japan got a million views. This format outperformed space content. - **Shorts Strategy** [09:27] — They began posting daily shorts (1,500 rubles each) and optimized for the YouTube Shorts Fund. They set a schedule, used no tags, and targeted non-children audience. One channel earned $750/day from shorts. - **Dominance and Closure** [11:00] — By day 1000, they had 10+ channels, 20 million subscribers, and earned over $500,000. However, they eventually closed the channels as they hit a ceiling and moved on. ### Conclusion The brothers built a massive YouTube network through strategic differentiation, scaling, and diversification into shorts and merch. Despite earning over $500,000, they eventually closed the channels, emphasizing the cyclical nature of YouTube and the need to constantly innovate. ## Transcript now it has 7 million subscribers, a large network of channels, its own merch, millions of views and, most importantly, how much money I've made from all of this but in partnership with my twin brother 3 years ago. I would like to began, what steps we took and where it all led us. The creates 2D animations related to space. He is making a full-fledged series with space theme has some unreal RPM because it is watched by an adult and check it out. At that time, Sharanota space was just gaining popularity. Each of his videos collected 3 million views, and he had no competition. Perhaps due to the complexity of the format. But it was a good friend who was a 2D animator. His name is Anton. My brother and I started brainstorming a plan to make this channel go viral and maybe even surpass the original. Creating a channel. The channel we started with was completely new. English, just like Solorbol did. The first thing we need to do is competitor's name is Sharanuty Kosmos. A little play on words. And our channel will be called Space Balls Here. We asked our animator to create the channel design, and within an hour we had the finished version. By the way, right monetized channel on my Telegram channel. Click the participate button and you channel with a coin. Link in the description. Creating a format. Before we start how we will differentiate ourselves from our competitor. To stand out, we must competitors lack. And after analyzing it, we realized that the wide-eyed space puts a lot of this, they come out quite rarely. We decided to simplify the animation style so that animate balls in the shape of planets. And so you understand how we came up with our style. We simply sent the first script to the animator and said, "Here, take it, do the same thing , only for 3,000 rubles." And a day later he gave it to us." for the channel. wide-screen space, only with a slight difference. What if the sun disappears? Our version: "What if the sun explodes?" We started for the wide-open space, we simply replayed. They used the same characters, but in a different situation. He had a video with the Sun, we made the same one live on Mars, and where did life go on Mars? Plus, we started making long videos much more often. For us they came out every 3 days, while for him they came out once a week. This way we could cover more topics and move more freely without feeling like we were in competition. Video creation. Our first videos were created thanks to one main animator. Kirill as much detail as possible, and gave it to me. I worked directly with the animator and voices. I sent this demo to the animator so that he could adjust turned out to be very independent and could . There was only one small thing left to do. Coming up with a preview is 90% of the success of a long video. It's important that it's clickable, that everything on it is as clear as possible, and that the video title competently complements the preview, so that you do text to it. For example, the title of our first video was “What if the sun the competitor's, showed exactly what was written in the title: the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun in the middle with pieces broken off. The preview and title complement each other, which is why the CTR for this video was quite high. Scaling. We noticed project. And that the creators of this channel are not simple Russian guys like us, but it turned out that the channel we relied on was not the main one at all. They Spanish and so on. We took this as a basis and decided to immediately scale the project and create a network of channels. We created several channels at once and began languages. The English and Spanish channels formed the basis . They worked best for us. first place and become the largest. To do this, we found people who know these languages ​​at a native level. We looked for them in VK groups where fairly short time we managed to find people for the voice acting. We usually paid 2,000 rubles. per video, 1 minute dash 2 minutes, in English and 300 rubles. in Russian. Then Kirill wrote the script, sent it to me, I sent it to a friend the people who did the voiceovers. They translated Russian into their own language and only had to insert into the video sequence on the thirtieth day. After a month, we had good income and continued to open new channels. We started with the States Balls Ispanols, India and Brazil channel, and the Spanish channel The rest of the channels never took off even after a long time. Thus, we achieved good coverage from the same content uploaded to different channels in different languages. We then published this content without changing anything for two whole months. During this time, we earned $5,000 from the Spanish channel and won big because our ambitions were much higher. on and that we couldn’t stand still. We continued to release content on all What else can be done? How to scale further? Day 90. At this who did the same thing as with space, only with countries. We countries to become the first in this niche. They named the channel State Balls audience and began releasing content every four days, creating engaging stories on the most current political news. This time, having learned from our experience with the Space Channel, we began to previews. How did we make the preview? The most important concept is that the preview should be text and should be in harmony with the title of the video. The viewer must first be attracted by and, if interested, click on the video. To do this, we have highlighted a couple of important preview perspective should be such that the most important thing that reflects the video title is in the center. This is why Germany lost, for example. In the center popular character of Hitler and the main countries that participated in the splash screen, everything is clear. But there is a lack of context. And the title of the video preview. And all a person has to do is click on the video to find out dynamic and natural, so that the viewer thinks that this is not a special cover, but the most dynamic frame of the video. Ideally, happening in our video. YouTube promotes these types of covers the best . 181 days. In six months of work from this channel we earned means to increase our staff, and we began searching for new animators. many animators are members. I'll leave them in our private YouTube chat. You can come in and vacancies, new animators started writing to us . It was necessary to respond to everyone and realized we couldn't handle it, so we put together a general specification and sent it to every interested animator, along with our price list and an explanation of our project. Plus a test task. As a result, new employees joined us, and the We already had more than five channels running non-stop, but that wasn't enough for us. 365 days, so we decided to create another channel. We were hanging out in the ball niche, and the channel Anjob, which made a doing very well. We created a channel and called it Country Z. The literal translation of Country Z is zombies. Zombie project. We decided to make it in our own style, We decided to make it in our own style, our own plot, our own atmosphere. And our videos did that hit 50,000 views and then stopped abruptly due to the overflow through the endpoints and help from our other channels. It was a complete failure, and we gave up on this channel. On day 546, we tried creating a channel about currency, dollar, and crypto work. It was an experimental project and we weren't sure about it. But after two weeks the channel still showed no signs of life. We released about five long videos. And soon our hands also dropped, and we simply deleted the channel. It felt like we were going through a rough patch. Before this, all our projects had flown successfully, and we had never encountered any difficulties. And now two projects, on which we had placed some bets, have completely but to dive into our already successful projects and think about what we could do to make more money from them. A week later, Kirill could be simpler than toys in the form of balls with eyes? We had built up a large, vibrant audience that needed these products. And maybe not only ours, because the niche of Space and Country Balls was very large. We started to develop Bloptop channel with their toys as an example. Slap, dove and products that sold well thanks to their content. We program and agreed on favorable terms. We decided to launch on simplest and most convenient platform for our audience. For our English-speaking viewers, we created a separate website where they could place an order to anywhere in the world. And after 4 months of hard work, avs, marriages, we launched our own merch. I'll tell you about the results and turnover our products generated at the end of the video. Day 680. To increase our revenue from our channels, we not only format on States Balls. This is a retelling of the entire history of the country in the form of mapping. We saw that this author's videos were getting millions of views, and he had one drawback that we decided to use as a basis. He released his videos very rarely. We already had enough animators to start such a heavy format and release it much more often to competitors. And the very first video from Japan immediately garnered a million views. And the following videos from the USA, WWII and Russia also flew. The video lasted 8 minutes. They were quite dynamic and satisfied the audience. YouTube gave good recommendations, and we Z channel? To keep it from disappearing, we started that weren't shown on our main channel. We helped promote it through end screens and community posts. And they also started to fly in. Our channels with countries flew above space and brought in very good income. So by the end of 2024 we would have earned around $50,000. something new and unexplored, but we noticed that a lot of YouTubers making any money. And we decided not to lag behind and started making shorts for ourselves for fun. Perhaps we already felt something back then. Unlike Solorball, we ran a long and short format. And it turned out that this made us stand out even more and captured this market. We put out the Shors every day, since they weren't particularly expensive. Only 1,500 rubles. for the video. See for yourself how simple they are and how many views they get. make a schedule so that they come out systematically, every day or every other day. , but for the sake of aesthetics we came up with something unusual. You visible in the shorts. And tags can also be ignored. They don't play a role in the success of the video. We are setting up a division not for children. We set the time to 15:00 Moscow time and it’s ready. This is the average time that Americans and other countries watch your videos. But in general, you can find out this in your video analytics. After a month of systematically running shorts on our channel, we received this special payment had arrived from YouTube in the form of a fund. And we realized that you fund. And we realized that you can now earn 750 a day on shorts. With this motivation in mind, we created another channel purely with shorts and called it States Balls Shorts. That same day we started posting two shorts daily, and 's why our short channel took off right away. After some time, videos on this channel. Some of them collected, while others brought nothing at all. And the turning point came when we started spamming five stupid Shors a day. Many of them reached 30 million views, reaching 60 million views. After seeing how much money the shorts were making, we added them to all our channels. And all 10 channels started generating a ton of content in shorts. The thousandth day. We haven't changed anything to this day gigabytes of content, shorts and long formats. We've taken over this fandom. And in essence, the niche of balls became entirely ours. And it was we who began to dictate the rules of the game. All our channels went down at once. We've long since surpassed all of Solorbol's channels in terms of subscribers. And in just a year, they completely captured the sphere niche, creating a network of more than ten channels in just one niche. Now we are the top one, not Solor, having gained a total of more than 20 million live audience. Now these channels consistently bring us several thousand watched this far to find out how much we earned from all these channels. And our merch brought us. I will leave information about this on my Telegram channel. But the channels brought in a total of more than $500,000, not including advertising and other paid projects. I'll also tell you about this in my Telegram. In essence, But behind all these results are hidden three long years of sleepless nights, crises, frustrations, failures, quarrels and refusals. You have to understand that YouTube is not easy and projects don’t last forever. You come in, you're having fun, you're creating content, you're making money, the project is chewing itself up, it's getting used to it, and you need to look for something new. This is what happened to us too. He who does not take risks does not risk and does not get the result for which he could have taken the risk. Now these channels are closed, because we understand We've reached the ceiling and we can't get any more money out of them . But I personally wanted to and the decision remains yours. Some people might get motivated and learn something new, excuses and say that nothing works. We decided to tell you about the Bols channel and put an end to it here. Everything on YouTube is cyclical. Do it and enjoy it. Here are some of my other videos you might also like.