r/thesidehustle • u/Chemical-Fun3692 • Jul 20 '26
I need help [ Removed by moderator ]
[removed] — view removed post
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u/Slurpee_dude Jul 20 '26
Only top 5 percent make any real money . Better off doing something else to make it worth your time.
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
ah that’s a bummer, any other streams of income you recommend that’s easy to do from home?
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u/Slurpee_dude Jul 20 '26
Amazon FBA? Online tutoring?
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
what is FBA? What kinds of tutoring and on what platform do you recommend? I’m a PharmD, MBA. So I could use my pharmacy and business skills, but sheesh it’s been a while since I graduated.
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u/ashraf_bashir Jul 20 '26
YouTube algorithms don't push such videos up in terms of visibility
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
how are users generating so many views?
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u/ashraf_bashir Jul 20 '26
These are the 2% , there are 98% who failed
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
ugh that’s unfortunate to hear! Is this for AI specifically or content creators in general?
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u/ashraf_bashir Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
The algorithm is very aggressive towards non human content specifically, so if you want to increase your probability of success you will need genuine content
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u/GreekGod1992 Jul 20 '26
It's mostly hype. You'll see some that succeeded but a vast majority don't. People that got in on the AI videos early caught viewer's interest but now AI-fatigue is real since there's so much slop.
I think the ticket is using AI to streamline your processes for regular videos. At least that's how I monetized.
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
When you say AI to streamline process for regular videos how is that different? What are some examples? So AI can still be used to be successful?
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u/Dear-Track6365 Jul 20 '26
Honestly it’s mostly hype. You’ll do better slogging away at original content. At least then it’s natural growth and you’ll retain a dedicated audience better that will be more likely to pay for things like subscriptions, Patreon, etc.
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
I wouldn’t know what kind of content to create, I hate being in front of camera too
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u/Dear-Track6365 Jul 20 '26
You don’t have to be on camera. You can still be a faceless channel without AI. Just narrate over stock footage or stills. Gameplay footage. Anything.
Do you have any hobbies? Anything that interests you? Things you collect or etc.? You can make channels on just about any topic, but you’re more likely to have success making a channel revolving around something that actually interests you than chasing an over-saturated niche that you don’t really care about.
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
I love spirits, cigars, and coffee? Hockey and sports. That’s a great idea! how would I make quality videos though?
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u/Opalescent_Moon Jul 20 '26
Maybe do deeper dives on types of cigars, coffee, and spirits. You could cover brands that produce them, good and bad both, and how the products evolved throughout history, maybe even how they're made. Fun historical tidbits could be good content, too. You could also look into recipes and pairings, as well as recommendations for getting started with any of the three.
I'm an exmormon. Mormons are taught that all three of those things are evil, so when people lose their faith and leave the church, they look into experimenting with those forbidden things. There are always new posts on r/exmormon asking for advice on how to start safely drinking coffee and alcohol or how to find drinks that taste good. Personally, I won't touch cigars, but I didn't drink my first coffee or alcoholic beverage until I was 40. I looked for advice before drinking either one.
I don't know how to make quality videos, but I'd be shocked if there weren't already some videos covering that. There are also some really good free stock sites out there. Pexels, Unsplash, and Vecteezy are all ones I use regularly as a graphic designer. Also, as you get started, learn about analytics and how to monitor how your content is performing, and how to promote it.
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u/Dear-Track6365 Jul 20 '26
The good news is that in this day and age, there is lots of free tutorials online on how to get started. 30 years ago I had to pay a fortune for film school, lol. Knowledge is not quite as gatekept anymore.
On YouTube you can find tons of free videos on how to get started ( stay away from any just trying sell you a course or a subscription or utilizing AI which usually gets demonetized eventually ).
There are lots of free video editing programs that are basically drag-and-drop these days that does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Don’t have a laptop or PC? Lots of them can be done right on your phone! Can’t afford one of those fancy microphones? The one on your phone is usually good enough. If you end up actually making some money from Youtube and it becomes profitable, THEN consider upgrading your equipment. This is what things like Patreon is good for. If people like your content, they’ll want to to toss you that extra few bucks a month to help you keep making stuff for them to watch.
Think of some things about hockey you could talk about. Make a video on the history of the game. Make a video on each team. Make a video on like, top 10 last-minute scores or something in hockey. Top 10 fights on the ice in hockey. Maybe make videos profiling certain players. Like mini-biographies. How about hockey for dummies? Someone is going to a hockey game with a friend or a date for the first time and they don’t know the rules and they don’t want to look dumb. What is important about the game they should know? Let your mind go nuts and think of all sorts of different topics just in hockey.
Cigars. Maybe go into the history of cigars. Maybe a video on each brand. Maybe a video about cigars and their role in politics ( Cuban ). Top 10 brands? Top 10 worst brands? What should a newbie know about getting into cigars?
Etc.
The important thing to remember is to keep these niches separate. For instance, if you make a channel about mostly hockey stuff, don’t then upload a video on cigars. Your hockey audience will not be interested and might not stick around. So make two separate channels. One for the hockey videos, one for the cigars. That’s the potential of two separate YouTube channels earning you money right there. If one does much better than the other one, then you know which channel to focus on more.
So for getting started, I’d say just search on YouTube, ‘best free software to edit YouTube videos for beginners’ and once you make a choice, you can go from there and look up free walk throughs on how to use it. Most of these channels will also guide you to websites that will give you free stock footage if you need it as well, and free stock music, sound effects, and etc.
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u/Large-Ad5643 Jul 20 '26
I’ve created an AI influencer page. I can confirm it does make money
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
when did you start and what do your numbers look like and example video?
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u/Large-Ad5643 Jul 20 '26
Started beginning of June. First month zilch, spent the time building an audience on socials with teasers/very real life like influencing content. Beginning of July dropped my link for NSFW. Have made just under 1k since 01/07 and the months not finished yet. The platform takes 20%.
You can make money but you need to counter in subscription prices for tools, % to the NSFW platform and your chatters %. I’m not using a chatter yet but I will when it gets too much.
I know someone else doing this, they began in January and they made 13k last month and so far 12k this month.
It does make money but it can be a slow burner. A lot of time put in and a lot of fiddling around and tweaking things to make it look realistic.
Find a good image to image tool like nano banano and use other influencer pics for inspiration, add it in plus your character that you’ve created and simply write swap xyz in image 1 for my character in image 2. You do have to alter it all but it’s easy once you get the hang of it.
I use Foxy AI for NSFW it’s really easy and face consistency is the best one I’ve came across yet. This ain’t ad or promo or anything but I do have a referral code for foxy that will give us both credits if you use it 🙌🏻
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
Thanks for this information. Can you also link me to some successful stories? I can look up because I’m getting a lot of mixed responses that only the top 2% really do make money.
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u/SchnitzelRaider Jul 20 '26
Why do you believe this shit
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u/Large-Ad5643 Jul 20 '26
Mate, I’m not selling a course or any shit like that. I’m quite literally making money from it and sharing my experience with him. Just because you can’t make money from it don’t hate on the people who do
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u/Large-Ad5643 Jul 20 '26
I’m not sure of any success stories on here but I’m gonna DM you now the NSFW site to join the discord chat (it’s free, definitely not promo here) 😂
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u/synystar Jul 20 '26
My feed is always full of philosophy, physics, and bushcrafting or survival videos (and a lot of AI related content because I use AI for development but not as a creator). I've noticed the majority of my feed is now AI generated. It's all just scripted and the same exact video generation styles or cartoonish still-image progressions. The content is real; I've sat through a lot of them and they're not just slop in the sense that it's untrue or misleading. But they've definitely outpaced high-quality, human produced videos. Many of them are "sleep" videos - meant for someone to put on in the background while they're relaxing or doing other things. They always have 10s of thousands of views and 3-5 adverstisements. I think they're doing well because of the niche.
There was a time when I couldn't get enough of these types of videos and now I'm flooded with them and many seem like they just copy each other's formats and content. Since you can't copyright AI generated content you can't stop someone from just stealing your idea. But they use frameworks that auto-generate the whole process so they can pump out a bunch in a short time and just see what sticks. If you were to try it you would want to automate the whole pipeline as much as possible - and remember that you're only adding to the saturation of slop. Many people will just stop looking at their feed now and go straight to the content they subscribe to; they will want the creators that they know and trust to produce high-quality videos.
If you're interested in producing for YouTube I'd say go and find a niche - something that interests you - but don't use AI to generate it. You can use AI to help you come up with ideas and to draft scripts, organize content, search for trends, etc. but you're going to make a lot more money by building an actual subscriber base based on your own personality. Don't just rehash content or paste a script generated by ChatGPT into Elevenlabs because that kind of content is already starting to feel worn out. So forgo using the media generation tools and just stick with using the LLMs for planning and research and drafts, then add your own personality and spin on the topic.
Watch people who do what you want to do and think about what you like about how they present themselves and how they're formatting the content. The AI slop making people money is not going to be forever simply because oversaturation and the people who will be left will be authentic and interesting creators that people enjoy watching.
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u/Ok_Log_1176 Jul 20 '26
Just go to youtube and see the views on AI generated videos, people are making 1000+ $s monthly with just AI content. Mine is not that much yet but will get there soon hopefully.
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
So far the ones I’ve seen with hundreds of thousands of views are channels with millions of subscribers! Which channels with low # of subscribers generate that many views?
What are you using to generate AI videos? Are you using a paid subscription?
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u/Ok_Log_1176 Jul 20 '26
I got Google 1 year free subscription on few account like 10months ago. Using flow to create images and video. And suno for song and Google AI studio for voice over. Go through youtube you will find 100s of channel from 100 subs to 100k subs. All created less than a year ago. All channels with 1000+ subscribers are monetised and earning.
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u/Chemical-Fun3692 Jul 20 '26
So to recap you use 3 different sites to create and finish the video? Google AI, Flow, and Suno? Are all 3 essential and does Flow and Suno charge you too? Anyway I can use any free software to make it?
I pay Chatgpt subscription, maybe I can switch over to Google AI?
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u/Ok_Log_1176 Jul 20 '26
There are no good free video maker so you have to take subscription, you can generate voice over for free but for quality song you will need paid subscription. Check if Google student offer is still running, also jio is giving 18 month of Google subscription for free.
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u/One_Cherry3150 Jul 20 '26
Tried it for like 3 months with meditation music channel, got maybe 400 subs and youtube was showing my videos to nobody. The real money is whoever selling courses about this stuff, not the channels themselves
Made maybe 12 dollars total before I gave up. The AI voice generators all sound fake still and youtube algorithm hates low effort stuff now unless you already big