5 Painfully Simple YouTube Niches Making Thousands a Month
Chapters16
The video teases five simple YouTube niches that can be lucrative with minimal effort, setting the stage for a niche-focused strategy.
Discover five ultra-simple YouTube niches that quietly earn thousands monthly, plus practical tips on monetization and niche selection.
Summary
Shane Hummus highlights how ridiculously simple ideas can fuel profitable YouTube channels. He cites ice cream melting timelapse, which grabbed 121 million views and yields an estimated $35k–$106k per month (per VidIQ figures), demonstrating that a basic concept can scale with the right audience. He also points to Google Earth-based channels that find surprising stories, like the Titanic wreck, earning roughly $14k–$41k monthly from straightforward screen captures. Emmy, a creator who posts short, personal 2-minute clips, shows how minimal production can still attract serious views, though her AdSense-only revenue seems modest at $1k–$4k per month. Shane stresses that the core driver is the idea itself—strong concepts beat flashy production every time—and teases a live workshop where he’ll unpack monetization, niche validation, and growth strategies. He also discusses how many creators monetize beyond AdSense and shares real-world results from clients and his own projects to illustrate how boring, useful niches can be highly profitable. The video rounds out with calls to action for joining a live training, using a GPT-powered niche validator tool, and scheduling a channel audit, underscoring that actionable guidance is part of the package."
Key Takeaways
- A winning idea matters more than production quality; simple concepts like time-lapses can amass hundreds of millions of views.
- [00:02:10]"they literally just set up a camera and watched ice cream melt... got 121 million views"
- [00:02:40]"this channel is making 35 to $106,000 a month"
- [00:04:20]"Google Earth videos... Titanic wreck... over 400,000 views" they monetize at $14k–$41k monthly"
Who Is This For?
Aspiring YouTubers and online entrepreneurs who want fast, proven paths to monetization by picking simple, high-potential niches and leveraging smart monetization beyond ads.
Notable Quotes
""All right, guys. I found five painfully simple YouTube niches that are making thousands of dollars a month.""
—Opening claim that simple ideas can be highly profitable.
""the most important thing by far is the idea. both the idea of your channel as well as the ideas of your videos.""
—Core thesis: idea quality over production.
""If you monetize correctly, you can make a lot more than just AdSense alone.""
—Emphasizes multi-stream monetization beyond ads.
""Zach of All Trades... first video actually blew up. Got 800,000 views""
—Concrete example of fast growth through simple content.
""If you attend live, you'll also have a chance to be the one person I pick for a realtime channel audit""
—Promotion of live workshop and interactive component.
Questions This Video Answers
- What are the easiest profitable YouTube niches to start with in 2024?
- How can I monetize a simple YouTube channel beyond AdSense?
- What is the niche validator AI and how does it help YouTubers pick ideas?
Ice cream melting timelapseYouTube niche ideasGoogle Earth contentGRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) career channelsNiche validation toolsMonetization strategies on YouTubeLive training and channel auditsNiche validator AICase studies of zero-to-hero creators
Full Transcript
All right, guys. I found five painfully simple YouTube niches that are making thousands of dollars a month. And of course, we got to start off with melting ice cream timelapse. So, they literally just set up a camera and watched ice cream melt, recorded it, posted to YouTube, got 121 million views, and this channel is making 35 to $106,000 a month. And that's according to Vid IQ. According to view stats, they're making less 12 to $39,000 a month. And that ice cream video, which probably took them about 5 minutes of work to make, got 121 million views and made $172,000.
Not bad for filming ice cream melting. And there's a lot of other time-lapse channels. A lot of them are, you know, watching grass grow or watching plants grow, you know, all kinds of different stuff like that. And they're all making money, too. And one of the points that I want to make with this video is that when it comes to YouTube, the most important thing by far is the idea. both the idea of your channel as well as the ideas of your videos. If you have a winning idea, your content can be super basic and it's going to crush.
If you have a losing idea, your content can be incredible with the best editing, the best thumbnails, the best everything, and you're probably not going to do very well. So, the idea matters more than anything else. Here's another channel. Let's start exploring. This channel basically explores typically using Google Earth. For instance, they found the Titanic shipwreck on Google Earth. That video got over 400,000 views. And this channel is making 14 to $41,000 a month according to Vid IQ. And they're doing all this with dead simple videos where they just scroll on Google Earth. And usually it's either with their laptop or an iPad.
All right. Another channel, this girl right here, Emmy, just saw her blow up very recently. She's making about$1 to $4,000 a month. She's really not posting all that often, but basically she posts these insanely simple little 2-minute videos where she just talks about what she's doing in her life. For instance, life without social media. And it looks like they're recorded with her phone. And some of these videos have blown up and she's gotten a lot of views and she's continuing to get a lot of views. And by the way, just because she's only made 1 to 4K per month according to Vid IQ, and this is just from AdSense alone, that doesn't mean she's not monetizing in other ways.
Now, to be fair, most YouTubers are pretty bad at monetizing. But if she's monetizing correctly, she could be making a lot more than this. Just as an example, on my channel, I make about $10 to $20 per 1,000 views just from AdSense alone. So, just from the ads that pop up on my channel, but I make over $400 per 1,000 views from all other sources. So, if you monetize correctly, you can make a lot more than just AdSense alone. That's also something I'm going to be talking about in my live training that I'm doing this week.
So, click that link in the description in the pin comment below. All right, guys. In the editing process right now, and I just wanted to mention that if you're struggling to grow on YouTube, you're having trouble getting views, subscribers, making money, or even picking a niche. I'm going to be hosting a free one-time live workshop that goes over exactly how to help with that. How to finally profit from YouTube.com. So, make sure to mark that down and also make sure to click the link in the description and the pin comment below so you don't miss out.
And if you attend live, you'll also have a chance to be the one person I pick for a realtime channel audit once we move into the interactive portion of the workshop. And if you feel unsure about what niche to choose or you're worried that your niche might be too broad or it's not profitable enough, then this workshop is for you because I'll be giving away the niche validator pro 2.2 completely free. This is the latest and most optimized version of my GPT powered niche validation tool. And it helps you instantly test and uncover profitable YouTube niches before you waste time creating content that doesn't bring in leads, sales, or money.
It's smarter, faster, and trained on even more data from real profitable channels. And I'll be giving it away completely free, but only at this live workshop. And just a heads up, this might be one of the last times I give this tool away for free because I'm planning on making into a actual software. So, if you've been on the fence, this is definitely a good time to pick it up. Now, during the workshop, there's a full presentation on how to grow on YouTube, followed by Q&A where you can ask me questions directly on Zoom. And people do ask a lot of questions the majority of the time about niche.
And many people walk away with niche clarity during the session itself. And the same strategies I teach are the ones that help clients like Nicole, who went from 85 subscribers to $85,000 in a single month. Seth, who went from years without a viral video to immediately getting 300,000 views right after starting working with us, or Davis, who scaled from 100K a month and was able to remove himself from recording. And even people who aren't clients, like Isaiah, were able to make $20,000 only using the free content and live workshop strategies. So, make sure you show up, click the link in the description or the pin comment to register, and add it to your calendar so you don't miss the chance to grab the niche validator AI.
And if you miss the date, that's okay. Check the link still to see when the next workshop is happening or to sign up to a list that will tell you when the next one does. So, see you Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Now, back to the video. Monetization is really important, too, because you do not want to be someone who's getting views but not making money. And you also don't want to be someone who has to get millions of views to make money. You want to be a channel that can make money even if you're not getting that many views.
Cuz let's be honest, most YouTube channels don't get that many views. And it's not just her, by the way, who's getting these views. This guy right here started posting very recently on YouTube. And he even made this video right here that YouTube replaced his disability income and now everything's changing. And it's just a simple video where he's recording it outside. I think it was taken all in one take probably with his phone camera and he just posts it and throws it up on YouTube. I am sitting on my butt making a video talking for 15 minutes.
So, he's making a full-time income from his channel and he basically just started on YouTube and he's posting dead dead simple channels where he just records with his phone, talks off the cuff for 15 minutes, throws it up on YouTube, takes a still shot from the thumbnail, and then puts a little bit of text on it. That's it. Speaking of that, one of my other clients does something very similar. This is Nicole from GRC for Mere Mortals. And basically what she does is she helps people, usually people in IT or cyber security careers, get into a very specific cyber security career called GRC or governance, risk, and compliance.
Now, this is a super highpaying cyber security career that's very sought after as well. And for her, it's probably dead simple and dead boring to talk about this, but she's helped a ton of people get into the career. And I've actually worked with her and many other people that are in similar niches where they basically educate people about certain subjects or they educate people about careers and whether or not they should go into it. Or in some cases they actually help them get into the job itself and sometimes it's a very specific job. And so you might see her account, you might think, "Oh, she's only making $40 to $121 a month.
Why is she even bothering uploading? You know, she's only getting, you know, 4,000 views in the last 7 days." But actually, I know for a fact she's making a full-time income. When she did a testimonial for me, she told me that she had an $80,000 month, and it was actually over $80,000. Now, I don't know if she's making that much now, but she's definitely making six figures from this channel, probably multiple six figures. I'm going to go over what exact roles exist within GRC. And she's doing a great service helping people get in to GRC.
And there's a bunch of these simple, boring niches where you just help someone do something that's boring and useful out there that are insanely profitable. And by the way, I'll go into exactly how to select these niches, especially ones that are good for you specifically in the training that I'm doing this week. Click the link in the description, the pin comment below. But I was so confident in helping people get into these niches that I actually had my own 50-year-old brother start a channel called Zach of All Trades. He's been in the trades for 30 years.
I helped him start a channel about the trades. And by the way, he's a 50-year-old tech illiterate person, right? So, his very first video actually blew up. Got 800,000 views, blew up his channel. Everyone out here is talking about the same damn trades. He was making $214 in a single day one month after posting his first video. And he's making money from other stuff as well. Plus, since then, he's had over $500 days, and he's absolutely crushing it. So, in the live training, I will be giving you an update. So, make sure you click that link in the description in the pin comment below to see an update on how Zach is doing.
He might even show up to it. And most importantly, I'm going to actually be giving you guys a free niche AI that we worked really hard on that's going to help you select your niche, select the ideas for your channel, select how you should make the videos, like the types of ideas for the videos that you should make, which is the most important thing. And I'm only giving it away this one time, this most updated version. So, click the link in the description, the pin comment below to get that. Now, Zach obviously worked directly with me and my team one-on-one, right?
He got one-on-one coaching and that's how he was able to go from absolute zero to blowing up incredibly quickly on YouTube. And I know that most people watching this video are never going to work directly with myself or my team. And that's completely fine. I always give a ton of value away. 10 times 100 times the value that I receive, I like to give away. And so I do these free videos and I do these live trainings where I help you guys out, which you can, you know, check it out by clicking the link in the description, the pin comment below.
Completely free. With that being said, if you do want one-on-one coaching, if you want that hightouch experience where you can actually get results significantly faster and easier without the headache, the heartache, wasting a bunch of time, etc., then go ahead and apply for that by clicking the link in the description in the pin comment below. Should be the second link down there. If it's not down there, it'll be in the about section on my channel. Now, this is only for people who are very serious about growing and making money on YouTube, right? So, that's the first type of person, someone who's serious and they want to treat it like a professional and they want to start right now.
Second type of person we work with are business owners who want to grow and make money on YouTube, use YouTube as another traffic source and a source for nurturing their leads so that their sales team turns into a bunch of cashiers because everyone is already pre-sold. Three is YouTubers who are crushing it and they want to crush it even more. And four is YouTubers who are getting views but they're struggling to monetize those views. Those are the types of people we like to work with. So if that sounds like you, click that link in the description and the pin comment below.
We look forward to talking to you on the call. But make sure you follow all the instructions because we're very picky about who we work with and we only want to work with people who we know we can get results for. And also check out this video right here of someone we were able to work with and we got amazing results for them.
More from Shane Hummus
Get daily recaps from
Shane Hummus
AI-powered summaries delivered to your inbox. Save hours every week while staying fully informed.



