YouTube Automation Examples: 12 Ideas to Try in 2024 (+Tips)

Creator burnout on YouTube is real.

You won’t always have the time, energy, or creativity to make high-quality videos for your audience. Sometimes video creation may clash with other everyday life activities, making it a tough gig to balance.

Luckily, you can automate your channel’s content to improve your workflow, save time, be productive, and pump out new videos fast.

This guide shares real-world YouTube automation examples and best practices to set you up for success.

What is YouTube automation?

YouTube automation is a faceless way of running a YouTube channel that relies heavily on stock footage, images, or animations with voiceovers.

With this online business model, a YouTube channel owner has minimal interaction in the content creation, outsourcing daily tasks like:

• Video creation, editing, and uploading

• Thumbnail generation

• Voiceover creation

• Social media scheduling

However, the channel owner can still manage or monitor the channel’s performance and make money from it.

Successful YouTube automation channels generate ad revenue for their owners. Take Noah Morris, for example. He runs 18 faceless YouTube automation channels with 2.5 million subscribers to boot.

In an interview with VidIQ, Morris says he made $500,000 in 90 days from his faceless YouTube channels in niches ranging from sports to crime-related content to celebrity stories, and more.

For instance, Morris’s Court Cases, a YouTube channel for crime-related content, boasts a little over 50,000 subscribers. He spent about $250 to produce the second video on the channel, which got 5 million views and produced $20,000.

Entrepreneur David Omari also produced a video on his faceless YouTube channel. The video garnered 500,000 views in just two weeks, earning him about $5,000.

For Omari, running a YouTube automation channel would involve going on freelance digital marketplaces, like Fiverr, and then hiring and building a content team comprising professionals, like scriptwriters, voice actors, video editors, thumbnail artists, and a channel manager.

Some creators rely on YouTube automation tools for video creation and publishing tasks. Others hire a team of people to create the channel and build out quality content for their channels.

This team may include professionals like:

• Video editors

• Graphic designers

• Voiceover artists

• Social media managers

You can also combine your human creativity with artificial intelligence (AI) tools to automate your YouTube channel.

12 YouTube automation examples

Want to join the ranks of YouTubers earning money from automated YouTube channels? Check out these examples of YouTube automation channels below to get inspired.

1. Interesting facts

Need a quick way to create a YouTube automation channel? You can’t go wrong with facts. They’re limitless, easy to find on any topic or subject, and entertaining to watch.

Create a channel dedicated to sharing interesting facts, like Discoverize, which dives into unbelievable things in the world, from ancient artifacts to scientific theories.

Discoverize on YouTube

Facts keep your audience engaged, entertained, and educated, while boosting video view count and ad revenue.

2. Games and quizzes

Like facts, you can create quizzes, trivia, and games on any topic in video format, and challenge your audience to put their knowledge to the test. Add a timer to make the content more engaging, like what The Quiz Show channel does in this video:

The Quiz Show on YouTube

3. Travel guides

Unlike travel vloggers who need video recording gear to capture their travel experiences, faceless YouTube channels use stock imagery and footage to show exciting places around the world. These videos are entertaining and often go viral, boosting viewership and profits.

Here’s a prime example from MojoTravels, which gets millions of views with their viral tour guides of beautiful destinations in different continents:

MojoTravels on YouTube

4. Unboxing videos

You don’t always have to appear on camera when making product unboxing videos. You can still open the product packaging to reveal what’s inside—with or without narration or voiceover.

A good example is this MacBook Air unboxing video by The Relaxing End channel, which only shows the creator’s hands unpacking the box's contents.

TheRelaxingEnd on YouTube

5. DIY crafts

DIY crafts and projects are popular on YouTube because they show viewers creative ways to craft items using basic or inexpensive materials. Some content creators, like Slick Slime Sam—a dedicated YouTube channel for kids that teaches DIY crafts—or Kuti Bari, don’t show their faces but engage the audience through human dialogue.

Other YouTube channels, like Five Minute Crafts, have no faces or dialogue, yet still earn millions of views and decent earnings from ad revenues, brand deals, or sponsorships.

6. Music

Music is another excellent source of YouTube content for faceless channels.

For instance, you can make a channel dedicated to instrumental, classical, ambient, or even lo-fi music, like Yoni Charis, who creates continuous streams of relaxing, lo-fi music for his audience.

If you’re a musician or instrumentalist, you can create covers of popular songs or your own music.

Alternatively, focus the camera on your hands while playing an instrument and create music videos around it or create an animated, virtual version of yourself singing or playing instruments.

7. Silent day-in-the-life vlogs

Yes, you can make a vlog without talking or appearing on camera.

Silent vlogs remove the chatter, giving the audience an unscripted and unspoken view of the creator’s daily life. Instead of talking through every activity in your day, you’ll use visuals that walk viewers through your journey from the moment you wake up to when you rest in the evening.

Like what thisisMy’s channel does in this example:

thisisMy's on YouTube

8. Science experiments

Science experiments are perfect for YouTube automation because it doesn’t require you to appear on camera.

You can record yourself creating the science experiment without showing your face or create a compilation of science experiments to engage and entertain your audience—like what Spacebound Universe did in this video:

Spacebound Universe on YouTube

9. Motivational quotes, tips, and explainers

Running out of YouTube video ideas? Use graphics, stock footage, and voiceovers to create a series of videos filled with motivational quotes. Or create videos that provide tips and explanations to different concepts and topics, like MagnatesMedia’s mini-movies about money and finance.

Magnates Media on YouTube

You can hire a narrator to talk about the subject of your videos without turning on the camera to share their perspective. The channel has gained over 4 million subscribers and millions of views on their videos.

10. ASMR

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response aka ASMR is one of the most popular YouTube automation niches you can try for your channel. ASMR involves making sounds that elicit feelings of calmness, satisfaction, and happiness, like unwrapping a package, whispering, scratching, and more.

You don’t need to show your face to make an ASMR clip, which makes it a great idea for YouTube automation videos. But you’ll need a good microphone to capture sounds clearly.

Here’s a good example from Talisa Tossell’s YouTube channel:

Talisa Tossell on YouTube

11. Tutorials

Got a useful skill? Use it to start a YouTube channel and make money online. There’s a slew of ideas you can try, from software to art to cooking to teaching languages to DIY repair videos, and more.

Mr.Electricity YouTube channel is popular for its tutorials, like this one that shows how to restore a super loud active subwoofer system:

Mr. Electricity on YouTube

12. Documentaries

Documentaries take the focus away from you so your audience pays more attention to the content, making it an easy way to automate your YouTube channel.

While documentaries are based on facts (and sometimes rumors), you can add B-roll and voiceover to make videos without ever showing your face.

Free Documentary is one example of a YouTube channel that holds a lens to different things that happened or are happening in the world. The channel brings high-class documentaries to its audience, ranging from engineering to crime to history to nature, adventure, and survival.

Free Documentary on YouTube

Before you run off and set up your YouTube automation business, let’s look at some best practices you can use as a jumping off point.

Best practices for creating a YouTube automation channel

Pick the right niche

The topic you cover on your YouTube channel could make or break your potential subscriber count, views, and earnings.

Some niches are extremely profitable, raking thousands of dollars or more per month owing to their high revenue per mille (RPM). For instance, niches like sports, true crime, or celebrity-related content, targeting audiences in bigger markets often lead to higher RPMs as advertisers pay more to capture their attention and money.

Identify content gaps

Next, niche down by identifying content gaps you can easily break into.

A quick and easy way to identify content gaps in your chosen niche is through keyword research, which you can do using tools like Ahrefs or Semrush. Then, pick out the YouTube channels with high view counts and a few subscribers. This may mean viewers enjoy the content but very few channels provide it, giving you an opportunity to make your content stand out and grow your channel.

Conduct a competitor analysis

Like any other business, you’ll need to study your competition to learn how they make entertaining and engaging automated content and why they perform well on YouTube.

Watch competitor channels’ videos, noting what makes their videos successful—good storylines, emotional appeal, or quality video editing. Then, incorporate what they do well into your videos, adding your unique twist to make your content stand out.

You can also find out what non-competitor channels whose content is related to yours and experiment with those ideas on your channel.

Build out your team

Armed with a lucrative niche and some video content ideas, the next step is to build a team that will run your YouTube automation channel.

You don’t need a large agency-size team. Start with a few experts, like scriptwriters, voiceover artists, and video editors, all of whom you can find on Fiverr.

Alongside your team, include AI tools like Synthesia, ChatGPT, Canva, and other content creation tools to speed up the content development process.

Improve your content

Running an automated YouTube channel doesn’t mean you’ll sit back and watch the earnings grow.

Monitor your channel’s performance through YouTube analytics to review audience engagement, subscribers, views, watch time, and other metrics to:

• Improve your video quality and content

• Boost search engine optimization (SEO) efforts

• Get more watch time

• Understand your audience’s needs by reviewing their comments

• Influence the YouTube algorithm to recommend your content

You can also repurpose videos into YouTube Shorts. Or share snippets of the full videos on your website or social media platforms, like TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, to capture a larger audience and increase your view count and earnings.

What are the benefits of YouTube automation?

YouTube automation can help content creators and brands further engage and boost brand awareness with their target audience and customers.

But it has more benefits to offer, including:

• Privacy: YouTube automation allows you to run and manage a channel without showing your face on camera. This keeps your personal life separate from your content, protects your privacy on social media, and circumvents unwanted attention.

• Flexibility and control: You have more flexibility to create videos your way and express yourself, and have control over your audience’s perceptions of your appearance, posture, and personality.

• Focus and engagement: Your audience will focus more on the content you’re sharing, rather than on your appearance or demeanor.

• More time: YouTube automation channels save you time as you outsource the content creation and development process to other experts. This also gives you time to work on more creative content and automated YouTube channel ideas—not makeup and props.

• Income stream: YouTube automation takes less time and offers additional passive income streams with less effort and experience, like affiliate marketing, selling merchandise, and sponsorships. Some faceless YouTube channel owners, like Morris and Omari, have small budgets and extremely high-profit margins, turning their automated YouTube channels into viable income streams.

What are the drawbacks of YouTube automation?

Automating a YouTube channel can be a viable option, but it’s not without its potential pitfalls and challenges, such as:

• Limited audience connection: You can’t convey emotion and nuance in your YouTube videos through facial expressions and body language. Your audience also won’t feel a connection with you as they would if they could see your face.

• Lack of trust: Viewers may be less likely to trust an anonymous, faceless creator, perceiving them as less authentic or transparent. This also makes it more challenging to build a unique, recognizable, and memorable creator brand and add a personal touch to your video content because your audience may feel they’re watching machine or AI-generated content.

• Requires more editing time: With a faceless YouTube channel, you’ll need to include more visuals, like images, stock videos, text, and graphics to make up for the lack of face time. So, you may spend more time editing your YouTube videos.

• Limited collaboration and monetization opportunities: Unless your content is superb, you may struggle to secure brand deals and sponsorships to beef up your ad revenues. Plus, it may be difficult to establish a connection and collaborate with other creators or YouTube influencers.

Express your creativity with YouTube automation

YouTube automation offers a quick and easy way to run multiple channels, without the laborious tasks of scriptwriting, recording voice-overs, or video editing.

The above YouTube automation channel examples are broad, but you can make them your own by tweaking and molding them to align with your brand, business, and content.

If you’re not sure how to get set up, turn to Fiverr for all your outsourcing needs. The digital marketplace is a great place to find and hire talented professionals in a variety of fields, including scriptwriting, social media marketing, and business management. Plus, you can manage everything—freelancers, projects, and payments—in a single dashboard, for free.

Sign up for Fiverr to find and hire experts for your YouTube automation channel and explore everything the platform has to offer.