10 Risky Faceless Niches & 5 Safe Bets — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:01] channels right now, and most of them had no idea that they were even doing that a lot of these channels were getting millions of views. They were huge businesses before they disappeared overnight. Now, my name is Matt Parr.

[00:13] I've been doing YouTube for a decade. I run a bunch of different channels myself. I've helped over 11,000 people start their own channels. And in that decade, I've seen that YouTube cracks down super hard on certain types of

[00:25] channels. So, in this video, I'm going to be showing you 10 faceless niches that you need to avoid at all costs. And I made a video like this a couple years ago, but that was before AI completely took over. And I'm making this video to

[00:37] be an update to that because some of the niches that were working perfectly even get your channel deleted. And I'm not just going to leave you hanging with video, I'm going to be showing you the absolute best five niches that are

[00:51] working right now and that will into the future with the AI revolution so you can build a real and long-term business with it. And now, niche number six that I'm going to be showing you on this list of niches to avoid is kind of personal to

[01:04] me because my channel almost got deleted being in this niche. I almost lost my watching this video are considering this niche. And a lot of people might already stick around for number six because I'm going to show you exactly how you can

[01:19] did. So, let's get straight into it. Now, the first niche to avoid might probably seen tons of channels like this on YouTube getting millions upon nothing wrong with doing a channel like this. And that niche is true crime

[01:34] but only if you do it in the wrong way. You see, if you do true crime content talking about a real crime or a real event that has happened, you could too graphic and as long as it's something that advertisers aren't going

[01:48] I'll talk more about that a little bit later in this video, and that's incredibly important. So, make sure you stay tuned for that. But in early 2025, a channel called True Crime Case Files was getting millions of views every

[02:00] single month producing documentary-style videos about crazy crimes that have happened. It looks super professional. The narration sounded legit. Everything was they made this video about this crime that happened in Denver, Colorado.

[02:13] It was this horrific crime, and people started contacting the Denver Post story. And then they started investigating, and it turns out the crime never happened. The creator of the channel, they were just using ChatGPT to

[02:25] that never happened. And as a result, YouTube terminated this channel for multiple violations of their guidelines. Now, you might be saying, "Okay, Matt, Because at the end of the day, we go to movies, right? We watch entertainment

[02:39] that we know is fake. And that is the problem that we know is fake. When potentially involve real people, especially in real locations, and you don't make it clear that it is a scary story and that it is in no way real,

[02:55] that is when you can start having problems. And right now is a really good due to the fact that YouTube is going to be looking really closely now at true have potential legal problems or anything else. You can 100% do fictional

[03:10] scary stories on YouTube. I actually have a bunch of people in my communities who do that and make tons of money from them. However, you need to make it clear that it is a scary story. And even just saying this supposedly happened would be

[03:22] a lot better, at least in my personal opinion, than making a documentary-style violated YouTube's misinformation policy, and the channel creator lost their entire business, which they could have saved if they just did true crime

[03:35] true crime stories wouldn't have gotten as many views, which in some cases you have made it clear that it was a scary story. Now, staying on AI, this next something that might surprise a lot of people, and that niche is faceless

[03:50] sensational entertainment. Now, I don't know if this has happened to you before, you see a video that looks like an actual movie trailer for a new and trailer, it looks completely real, and then you go and Google it, and the movie

[04:04] doesn't exist. And that was because that trailer was made purely using AI. And a lot of these trailers, they use real studios' names, real actors' names, and shut down a lot of these channels that were generating AI-generated movie

[04:18] trailers for movies that didn't exist. Because obviously, Disney, Marvel, or is going to have a massive issue if people are advertising movies that don't exist. And of course, YouTube, in an act of self-preservation, they don't want to

[04:32] going to shut those channels down. And it is totally fine to make movie trailers, for example, using AI. However, you cannot be using the names of the actual companies. You can't use, for example, actors who are actors in

[04:46] real life or any real thing that could cause an issue. You just have to think about it through YouTube's lens. If it causes an issue for YouTube, then it Now, this next niche is one that you might think is totally fine because

[05:01] everybody on YouTube uses clickbait, right? They use a thumbnail that's typically kind of a little bit of an exaggerated version of their video in an Everybody on YouTube does this already, and all the top creators do it. So, why

[05:15] me show you an example and tell you what the niche is. I don't know if you situation thing, but there was basically a couple channels that covered this that made about 900 videos and that got almost 70 million views in just 1 year.

[05:29] And they were AI-generating thumbnails of celebrities like Jay-Z, Oprah, Brad Pitt, Usher on the witness stand for these thumbnails with completely fabricated quotes. One thumbnail showed Jay-Z crying with this text right here.

[05:42] Another claimed that Brad Pitt testified against P. Diddy even though that never None of the events happened. And YouTube terminated 16 of those channels and demonetized several others, in which case they're not making any money

[05:55] anymore. And the niche is celebrity news. And the problem isn't the niche in general, it's what 99% of people within this niche do, which breaks one of YouTube's rules known as deceptive metadata. Metadata includes your titles,

[06:08] your descriptions, your thumbnails. And while most people on YouTube do stretch an effort to get people to click, when you're doing that in a way to make people, actual real-life people or businesses or companies, say or do

[06:23] things that they never did, that again creates a legal problem for YouTube that if you do want to cover celebrity news, it's a very viable niche. There's huge channels doing this like Nikki Swift, for example, but they use real images

[06:37] commentary. And now, this next niche is writing scripts for a channel like this that got millions and millions of views. They made tons of money from it. And then one day, they woke up to find out

[06:50] the whole channel is deleted. Everybody working for that channel immediately lost their jobs. And that niche is news and political commentary. Basically, example, an election, it would make sense if you're a news channel, you want

[07:03] to cover every little thing about what's going on in relation to that event. But you might have a team. You might be using AI. You might be writing the many views as possible. You might hire somebody who makes somebody say

[07:17] thumbnail. And if you use AI, it might mess something up. And so, if you're commentary, then you should either be doing all the research yourself to make huge team to help you, which is why for 99% of people, I would not recommend

[07:32] this niche. And then you couple that with the fact that the news stories that go the most viral are typically the most sensitive for advertisers. You're when you can just play it on easy mode and do one of the niches that I'm going

[07:45] this niche, you've got everything going against you. And of course, if this is your passion, if this is what you truly want to do, feel free to do it. I just many channels that I've seen have had problems within this niche. All right.

[07:59] Now, this next niche has been around for years, and I've been warning people about this forever. I've seen people selling whole courses teaching people to make channels within this niche when maybe you make a little bit of money,

[08:11] but then your channel gets taken down or it gets demonetized. And I keep seeing people fall into this trap over and over. And this is compilation videos unfamiliar, there's something on YouTube known as fair use. And this is basically

[08:24] a legal doctrine that states that you can use other people's clips from places online, from other YouTube videos within your own YouTube video, but only if you add significant transformation, you make it different in nature from the

[08:37] original, and you make it educational. Now, this is not legal advice, but this is my understanding of this, and I run a bunch of channels that rely on fair use. TikTok compilation channel, animal compilations, fail compilations, you

[08:51] these channels out there that are doing this exact same thing that are getting why can't I?" The thing that you don't see is in the back end of most of these channels, they're mostly demonetized, meaning

[09:05] some of the ones that are monetized, For example, you take a look at a channel like Daily Dose of Internet that significant transformation at all, but you'll see that people actually submit

[09:20] their clips to be shown on his channel. And so, therefore, he has full permission to use those clips. And the problem isn't as much of YouTube having an issue with this as it is the original people who own those pieces of content

[09:33] having an issue and then filing a copyright claim or a copyright strike or YouTube's automated system detects that content from another video and then claims your video automatically. And really, this is a commoditized type of

[09:45] content anyways. This is going to be so easy to just generate with an AI software, and you're not building any real brand IP with it that I would not recommend getting into this niche whatsoever. The only exception that I

[09:57] might give would be if you have, for example, a character be kind of the face different videos and basically react to them and everything else. That could might be okay. And another way you can do this is by making compilations of

[10:12] your own videos. This is actually a huge secret that not many people know about, but I've done this several times even just on this channel right here, where I make a compilation of multiple different videos that I've done in the past and

[10:24] then combine them all into a super long official guide for, for example, getting combined of my videos about how to get 1,000 subscribers, how to get 4,000 hours of watch time, and a few other videos that were related to that all

[10:37] into one. So, if you combine multiple of your videos to make a new video out of content that you already own, that could potentially be okay given that that content doesn't break fair use policies. And now it's time to get into the niche

[10:50] beginning of this video that hits really close to home. This is the one that almost got my channel deleted. And that niche is make money online. And now, out. I'm not saying that you can't do make money online content, but what I am

[11:05] saying is that you need to be extremely careful about how you do it. So, midway through last year, I almost lost this channel you're watching right now when I got hit with two strikes on my videos, which I immediately appealed and they

[11:18] were denied. And I was one strike away from this entire channel being deleted. And I wasn't the only one. Another huge channel in this space called How to AI, they lost their entire channel. They got three strikes and their channel's gone.

[11:30] He was making over a million dollars per year from that channel, completely gone. is this happening?" Well, basically, it's because a lot of channels in the make money online space make unrealistic claims about if you just watch their

[11:43] video, you're going to instantly be able to make a thousand dollars a day. And legitimate strategies, and even if you're genuinely helping people, if your packaging looks like every other type of get rich quick channel, YouTube's AI

[11:56] moderation systems are going to flag you. And that's the thing, this isn't a human reviewing all of these videos, it's an AI that looks for patterns. So, videos, where I even just use the words or make a specific amount of money

[12:10] or make a specific amount of money online in the titles of my videos, those YouTube's not going to just look at titles either, they're going to look at also even look at your thumbnails. And so, my thumbnails also had make this

[12:23] amount of money online. to give a bunch of value within these videos, but the AI doesn't know that. It looks for patterns, and if your content falls into one of these patterns, you could have an issue. And so, I actually privated every

[12:35] single one of my videos that had make money online in the titles or mentioned thumbnails on a lot of them. And a huge tip I also did was I created a custom GPT where I copy-pasted YouTube's entire terms of service into it. And now,

[12:50] I just run my title and thumbnail through it and it'll show me if there's 5 minutes to set up and it could save your channel. And so, you can absolutely do make money online content, but take a look at my channel now and see what I'm

[13:04] business. Instead of doing a video how best method, instead I'm making sure that my content is more so along the lines of how to build a YouTube business. And by the way, if you want me

[13:17] this, there's a link down in the description to book a free call with my where you get direct access to me, my entire coaching team, the people who content team. So, feel free to click the link down below, book your call, and I'd

[13:32] now, this next niche might surprise a lot of people because you probably see videos within this niche getting millions of views and you think, "What's the problem with it? This seems like a actually very beneficial, helpful niche

[13:45] that helps lots of people and it doesn't seem to break any of YouTube's policies, so what's the problem?" And that niche is meditation [music] affirmation videos. And the problem is what most people do within this niche,

[13:59] music from the YouTube audio library, put it over some royalty-free video from Pixabay, and then call it a meditation video. And the problem with this is that it's not original enough. YouTube does not consider that to be original

[14:12] a result, they never get monetized in don't really get any views. But let's say that you're super passionate about meditation, you want to help people with it, you want to make a channel around

[14:25] this, you 100% can do that. All you have to do is have a real original meditation guided meditation voiceover within the video. And then you can either be doing a guided meditation or affirmations. And if you're doing that, you can use some

[14:39] royalty-free music in the background if you want. But let's say you produce your own music, then that could potentially be uploaded to YouTube as a meditation music with no voiceover. But it needs to be original. Now, this next niche is

[14:51] completely crazy. I had this guy in my community, he was getting tens of millions of views per month. He was doing incredibly good in terms of views. However, in terms of the amount of money he was making per month, it was only a

[15:05] why was there that huge discrepancy between how many views he was getting and how much money that he was making? And that's two words, kids content. And why doesn't kids content make that much money? Another two words, COPPA

[15:20] compliance. COPPA is also known as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. It essentially limits the types of ads that can be run on content that's made for kids, which will absolutely tank your CPM if you're making kids

[15:32] content. On top of that, you also have to label if your video is made for kids or not and if you improperly do that, you could also have a problem and get a huge potential fine from the government. And a lot of features like comments,

[15:44] notifications, and personalized ads are not available for kids content. And if this anyways, I personally wouldn't put it towards a kids channel. you could argue you can sell things yourself like you could sell merchandise and other

[15:57] things like that. And there are kids channels succeeding doing that. I just there, I personally wouldn't even bother with it. And now, this next niche, it should seem pretty obvious, but you'd be surprised how many times I see people

[16:10] trying it. And that is music and lyric videos. If you re-upload copyrighted flagged immediately under YouTube's copyright system. And the money from that video then is going to go to the person who owns the music and not to

[16:24] just has to be music that you personally yourself made. And whenever you use any music in any of your videos, I recommend making sure that it's copyright-free music. Now, if you're using an AI video generation software like my software

[16:38] called vid.ai to help you with generating faceless videos, that can work incredibly well in a lot of niches and we use completely royalty-free music for the backgrounds of those videos. And now it's time for niche number 10 and

[16:51] and it's more of a rule that applies to every single niche on YouTube. And that is non-advertiser-safe content. And this might seem broad, however, it's actually very simple once you understand what advertisers want to

[17:06] this, it's going to make perfect sense. Essentially, what advertisers can do when they decide to put an ad on YouTube, and I know this because I run a bunch of ads on YouTube myself, is you can choose something called the expanded

[17:19] inventory or the limited inventory. And most people who are setting up ads on one. They don't even put too much thought into this because you have to go deep into the settings even just to find this. So, almost everybody does the

[17:32] between them is that the limited inventory is content that YouTube is certain doesn't include anything that isn't advertiser-unsafe. Whereas the expanded inventory are all types of content on YouTube that could

[17:45] potentially include swearing or violence or anything that advertisers wouldn't want to put their ads on. And so, this means that if you do any of those things, that puts your content into the expanded inventory, then your CPMs are

[17:59] going to be so much lower and even worse, you could get demonetized. And here's some specific examples of what could get your content into the expanded inventory, which again is where you don't want to be, or get you demonetized

[18:11] drugs, even if they're educational, graphic violence, anything related to weapons, inappropriate stuff for all audiences, content about controversial events like natural disasters or tragedies, and even topics like

[18:24] gambling, alcohol, or anything that a big brand like Expedia or Coca-Cola or Apple wouldn't want their brand to be associated with because they don't want to harm their brand. And so, if you put yourself in the shoes of an advertiser

[18:38] to benefit your company as much as possible, you'll start looking at your content that's advertiser-safe, which will make your channel a lot more money. the niches that I showed you today because there are some right ways of

[18:53] doing them. And also, feel free to do them if you don't care about making monetizing in a different way, but the thing is that if you're even monetizing we went over today are not good niches for selling products from your channels.

[19:08] And I say this from someone who's sold over 10 million dollars from YouTube. Matt, then what is the best way to monetize and what are the niches that I what not to do." Well, here are the five best faceless niches that I actually

[19:23] recommend right now. Number one is personal finance and investing. Number two is health and longevity. Number three is AI tools and software tutorials. Number four is travel. And number five is self-improvement. And

[19:36] now, if you go to secret number three at about 26 minutes into this video right these niches and I show you a couple other really great ones as well. And I crushing it within these niches. And then more importantly, in secret number

[19:52] five in this video right here, after that, I'll show you how to monetize it to the next level and actually make tons of money on YouTube. You would be insane not to watch this video if you haven't already. My name is Matt Par, and I'll

[20:04] already. My name is Matt Par, and I'll see you there.