7 Weird BUT Simple YouTube Channels You Can Start Today

Shane Hummus| 00:14:14|Mar 25, 2026
Chapters26
This chapter introduces several unconventional YouTube channel ideas, outlining how they gain views and how creators monetize to ensure sustainability.

Shane Hummus breaks down 7 odd, low-effort YouTube channel ideas that can start today and still make real money.

Summary

Shane Hummus highlights seven unconventional YouTube ideas that require surprisingly little production but can attract big audiences. He digs into real-world metrics for each channel—from Mr. Nightmare’s tens of millions of views and potential seven-figure yearly AdSense, to Tug’s viral single video that drove months of ~3–10k/month revenue. Shane also shares practical monetization angles, like AdSense, affiliate links, and personal branding, and he stresses sustainability and scalable strategies. He candidly discusses faceless channels versus personal brands, offering a “hybrid personal brand” approach as a way to eventually reveal a face and unlock higher earnings. Throughout, he uses examples from Zach of all trades, Bridge Mind, LS Author, and Jonah Who to illustrate how simple formats (story compilations, live coding, single-song daily clips) can explode with minimal gear. The video doubles as a call to action, promoting a free live workshop and a limited-time AI tool giveaway for those ready to take action. Shane also emphasizes that success doesn’t require being famous or highly polished, just consistent, monetizable content. The overarching message is clear: simple concepts, smart monetization, and strategic branding can turn everyday topics into profitable channels.

Key Takeaways

  • Mr. Nightmare can reach over 10 million views in a month with straightforward storytelling and decent editing, potentially earning seven figures annually from AdSense alone.
  • Tug’s breakout video (Doing Push-Ups While My Parents Fighting) hit 5.8 million views, helping the creator consistently earn roughly 3–10k per month.
  • Jonah Who’s simple format (singing one word of All-Star every day) amassed around 7 million views and about $35,000 for that video, proving minimal-effort ideas can pay off.
  • Bridge Mind’s vibe coding series shows live-streams can boost earnings, with an estimated monthly AdSense range of 1–4k but likely higher due to live views and related monetization.
  • LS Author leveraged a high-impact, simple thumbnail and provocative title to drive a viral hit (The most dangerous mindset I see as a therapist) and could realistically earn well above $24k from that video alone.
  • Zach of all trades demonstrates how a seasoned expert can monetize quickly on YouTube by talking about accessible topics (trade careers), achieving significant early AdSense revenue and affiliate sales.
  • The video encourages a ‘hybrid personal brand’ approach for faceless channels to transition into a face reveal later, balancing privacy with long-term monetization potential.

Who Is This For?

Aspiring YouTubers and content creators who want quick-start channel ideas, simple production setups, and clear monetization paths. Great for beginners exploring faceless formats, personal-brand strategies, and low-cost video concepts that still have real earning potential.

Notable Quotes

"So, how much money they're making because let's be honest, you don't want to do YouTube if it's not sustainable, right?"
Shane frames the monetization focus and sustainability theme of the video.
"Just keep in mind this is just AdSense alone."
Reference to earnings mostly from ads on the channel.
"I've been working on this AI really hard and I'll only be giving it away free this one time and I'll be answering literally any question that you have about YouTube."
Promoting the workshop and the Niche Validator Pro 2.1 tool.
"If you are going to do Faceless, I highly recommend that you do it in this way where you have an avatar that represents you because people still feel like it's another human being when there's an avatar that represents you."
Advice on faceless channels and the avatar strategy.
"He basically talked about the pros and cons of each one and which one would be best for, you know, different types of people."
Zach of all trades example and how he chose topics.

Questions This Video Answers

  • How can I start a low-effort YouTube channel that still makes money?
  • What is the hybrid personal brand approach for faceless YouTube channels?
  • Which simple video formats have actually gone viral on YouTube?
  • How much can I expect to earn from a niche YouTube channel in the first 6 months?
  • What are the best monetization strategies beyond AdSense for new YouTube creators?
YouTube monetizationAdSense revenuefaceless YouTube channelspersonal brand on YouTubehybrid personal brandlive streaming monetizationsimple video formatscase studies Mr. Nightmarecase studies Tugcase studies Bridge Mind
Full Transcript
All right, guys. I got some weird but simple YouTube channels that you can absolutely start today. There's literally nothing stopping you from starting these channels today. We're going to go over the channels themselves. We're going to go over how many views they're getting and how they're getting those views. And also, we're going to talk about how they're monetizing their channel. So, how much money they're making because let's be honest, you don't want to do YouTube if it's not sustainable, right? It's just not going to happen if it's not sustainable. you need to focus on the money making side. So, the very first one on the list is going to be Mr. Nightmare. So, this is definitely a weird YouTube channel, but it's actually surprisingly simple as well. So, this channel has gotten over 10 million views in the last month, about 3 million in the last 7 days, and their estimated monthly earnings is about $25 to $75,000 a year. Now, I forgot where I discovered this channel. We do a massive amount of research discovering these things, but I think I might have discovered the channel on a website where they're actually trying to sell it. But View Stats says that they've got about 13 million views in the last month, and they've made about 36 to $100,000 in the last month. And usually View Stats is more true on this side than it is on this side. So, usually it's on the higher side or sometimes it's even over the higher side. So, I wouldn't be surprised if this channel is making seven figures a year just from AdSense alone. Just keep in mind this is just AdSense alone. Like those are just the ads that pop up on your channel, right? Just like when you're watching a YouTube channel, the ads pop up. They make money from that. It's called AdSense. Now, their most popular video ever on their channel is three creepy true school lockdown stories. Uh that video got over 29 million views, almost 30 million, and it made at least $148,000. So that is a pretty good ROI on their time investment, whoever owns this channel. Now, the videos really aren't that complicated. A lot of the time, they just take interesting stories from across the internet, put them together with a good narration, have some decent editing, not even that complicated, just decent editing, and that's it. And they're making absolute bank from this channel. I mean, the channel as a whole has 1.5 billion views, and just in the last year alone, they've gotten about 181 million. So that's about 10% of their total views or a little little bit more. Let's say like 15% of their total views. And it says they've made 400 like 500,000 to $1.3 million and it's probably towards this side. So chances are they've made pretty close to $10 million from this channel. So that's pretty solid. Now that might seem pretty good, and I think it is. It's great. But typically, I don't recommend doing faceless channels, unless you do it in a very specific way, which I call the hybrid personal brand method, which I'll be going over this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time in a free live workshop called The New Way to Make Money with YouTube. Click the link in the description and the pin comment below to attend that. So, do not miss out on this workshop, by the way, because I'll be giving away an AI that makes literally everything about YouTube significantly easier called the Niche Validator Pro 2.1. I've been working on this AI really hard and I'll only be giving it away free this one time and I'll be answering literally any question that you have about YouTube. So, if you are going to do a faceless channel like Mr. Nightmare, what you want to do is what Whiz of Ecom did. This is one of my clients and when he first started on YouTube, he was posting anonymously faceless. Every agency that I'm going to tell you here is in demand right now. But he used this sort of avatar to represent him, right? So, he used this avatar. He actually scaled his YouTube channel and his personal brand in general to over a million dollars a year. So he scaled it to seven figures a year. And then eventually he did a face reveal. So he revealed his handsome face right here. Right. Let's cut the suspense. Hello. Hello everybody. My name is Moo. So he was already making $150,000 a month when he did this face reveal. Now he's making multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars a month as well with a personal brand. So I prefer personal brand. I think it's better. It's easier to make money. It's easier to get views. It's just like everything about it is better for the most part. But if you are going to do Faceless, I highly recommend that you do it in this way where you have an avatar that represents you because people still feel like it's another human being when there's an avatar that represents you. So, I'm going to go over exactly how to do that the correct way where you're not going to set yourself up for failure and how to make it to where you can easily do a face reveal later on on your channel and it'll actually work this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Click that link in the description and the pin comment below to check it out. And we might also have another live training down there. So, click the link even if it's past the Tuesday time. Now, speaking of another person who did a personal brand channel, it's actually Zach of all trades and he happens to be my brother. So, basically what happened is last year he came to me and he basically told me, "Hey Shane, I'm 50 years old now. I've been doing the trades for 30 years. I've had my business for 20 years and I want to figure out how to make money without using my body cuz my body is starting to break down and I want to preserve it. Then he asked me, "What do you think I should do?" And of course, I told him, "YouTube." He was pretty shocked by this because he's not tech-savvy. He's not really particularly artistic and he doesn't really spend that much time on YouTube. He's really more of a TV and Netflix type person. But he trusted me. He did it. And literally his very first video that he posted blew up. Right? Very first video he posted using my methods blew up. and he was making $214 in a single day less than one month after uploading that very first video. And past that, he started making tons of money in other ways as well. In fact, he was making over $500 a day just from AdSense alone less than 6 months after starting his channel. That's just from AdSense. He was making lots of other sales from affiliate marketing and other ways of monetizing as well. And if you want to know how we helped him grow his channel and also get an update on how he's doing now and maybe he might even drop into the live training um maybe um then go ahead and click the link in the description and the pin comment below and he will be a part of the workshop as well. And by the way, Zach grew his channel just talking about stuff that's so unbelievably easy to him. He basically just talked about the different trade careers cuz almost all of his friends are in trade careers and he talked about the pros and cons of each one and which one would be best for, you know, different types of people. All right, getting back to the weird stuff. Let's talk about this channel right here that we saw, which is Tug. Now, this channel uploaded a video about 11 months ago. It was the second ever video on their channel, and it was called Doing Push-Ups While My Parents Fighting. And this video got 5.8 million views and totally blew up his channel. Frank and Casey and all the other guys had a REASON OR SOMETHING YOU DIDN'T LIKE, DO THEY? And it says now that he's making about 3 to10,000 a month just from this channel alone. Obviously, you know, hopefully that's not something that happens all the time in his house. That's a kind of a sensitive situation. With that being said, you know, when life gives you lemons, sometimes you can turn it into lemonade, right? And that's exactly what this young man did. He's making3 to $10,000 a month from this channel and most of his views came from this one video. And he made at least $8,000 from that video, but probably quite a bit more. So, yeah, pretty interesting channel. Um, making 3 to 10,000 views. Uh, most of it's probably coming from a video he posted like 10 months ago. He's barely even uploading that much. Like, there's nothing stopping you from starting a channel like this today. I mean, it's just an iPhone he's using probably or or just like a simple phone. And here's another funny channel, Jonah Who. He made this video that popped on on my radar called I sang one word of All-Star every day for a year. And it's yeah, it's a that Allstar song. And by the way, before we look at that video, according to Vid IQ, he's making about $2 to $6,000 a month. According to view stats, he's making about $3 to $9,000 a month. And if you look at that video that got around 7 million views, it made about $35,000. just a very simple video where he recorded himself singing one word of the song every single day until it was done and then just stitched all the clips together. Again, I hope you get inspired. I'm not saying that you should do this, right? I'm not telling you should like copy him and do that. I just want you to get inspired and just know that you don't need to be some kind of superstar. You don't need to be famous. You don't need to be some kind of influencer or a genius creator or some sort of worldrenowned expert or anything to do really well on YouTube. You also don't need super expensive equipment. You don't need any of that stuff that you think you need to do well on YouTube. Just look how simple his stuff is. And he was able to blow up. That's my whole point with this. I'm not telling you to make content like this. My whole point is you can blow up with very simple equipment. Now, this next channel is so epic. I absolutely love this channel. It's called Bridge Mind. and he first popped onto my radar because he had this series called vibe coding an app until I make $1 million. And these were actually live streams. So he would literally vibe code on live stream until he made $1 million. And then he made follow-up videos on YouTube that basically expanded upon that. And it says that his channel is making about $1 to $4,000 a month. But with that being said, live stream views typically pay more than other types of views. And so he's very likely making a lot more than that. It's probably extremely underestimating how much money he's making per month. And the only reason I know that is because I'm a YouTube expert and I see these types of channels all day long every day. So he's making probably at least $10,000 a month from AdSense here. And more importantly, he has a website and he's got a Discord and he's got an email list and he's got a lot of other things where you could promote products and services. even something as simple as just promoting affiliate links for some of the different products that he tries out, he could make a ton of money doing that. And he kind of started his vibe coding series very recently. He was making a little bit of content before that, but he started a lot of his vibe coding series very recently and he's absolutely crushing it now. So yeah, really cool channel. I'm kind of, you know, keeping track of how he does as well and I just love the channel idea. Now, the next channel is LS Author, and this channel popped on my radar a few weeks ago when I saw this video right here pop up. The most dangerous mindset I see as a therapist. Now, this video popped off, got a ton of views. It's very simple video as well. There is a tendency that I'm seeing more often uh in my work as a counselor, and this channel is currently making about 5 to$14,000 a month. But let's check out this video a little bit more. So, this is his most popular video ever on his channel. He has been uploading for a while very sporadically. For instance, he uploaded this one like six years ago, Cobra Kai training montage, but he wasn't really trying to make it as a YouTuber. It was just like he was just uploading it just to have a funny video on there or whatever. Probably just a video to send to his friends. But recently, he actually did start taking YouTube seriously. And this video was his first real banger video that got a million views and popped off. Now, as you can see, the thumbnail is dead simple. It's just a still shot from the video itself. Then the title is the most dangerous mindset I see as a therapist. Now, if we go to the handy little view stats plugin, it is going to say that he made about $3,000 from this video. View stats almost always underestimates educational content. And I'm going to say he made at least $10 per 1,000 views from this video. So that means he made at least $24,000. Plus, he's got a lot of other stuff that he can actually promote. So, for instance, he's actually a published author and so a lot of people are probably buying his books and I'm sure he's got other stuff he's promoting on his channel. If he knows how to monetize even a little bit, he should be making a heck of a lot more money than that. So, yeah, very solid one. This just goes to show that you can make extremely simple content with zero editing. Don't even have to make the thumbnail. It can just be a still shot from your video and it can absolutely blow up. Now, for 99% of people that see my videos, they're going to watch them. They're going to get a lot of value out of them. They might even attend my live training, my workshops, get even more value from those workshops. Please do not miss out on it. Click the link in the description in the pin comment. It's only going to be this week, this particular workshop, but they're not going to work with myself or my team one-on-one, and that's totally okay, right? We love to give 10 times more value than we receive. And we know that not everyone's going to be a good fit. But for the 1% of you that actually do want a handholding type experience, you do want to work directly with somebody who helps you with your strategy, helps you with implementation directly, and basically just handholds you and carries you to the finish line of being successful on YouTube. So, for instance, if you're a business owner that wants to be successful on YouTube, you're a YouTuber who already has views, but you want to monetize better, or you're a YouTuber that's crushing it, but you just want to crush it even more, or if you're someone who just wants to treat YouTube like a business, you want to go pro on YouTube and make it a full-time income, right? If any of those are you, then go ahead and book a link in the description and the pinned comment below. But only do it if you're very, very serious about starting on YouTube and starting right now. This will bring you to a page where you should watch a video and it will allow you to book what's known as a strategy call with myself and or my team. On this call, we'll figure out where you are right now, where you want to be. We'll make a plan to get there and we'll see if we're good fit to work together or not. Again, only book if you're serious. We only accept about 18% of people who apply. But with that being said, if you're very serious, this could be a great opportunity for you. Just like Sean, for instance, who booked a call with us. We helped them go from 30,000 a month being stuck there for years as well to scaling all the way to over $500,000 in a single month. So that's just an example of one of our clients. We've had all kinds of different clients all the way from beginners, but people who took it very seriously to people who are already making seven figures and we help them scale to eight figures. And I've even worked with like nine and 10 figure companies on their social media brands, but I typically don't do that. So if that's you, book the call in the description. It might also be in my about section as well, so you can look there if it's not in the description. And also check out this video right here of us talking about what we did to help Shawn scale from 30,000 a month all the way up to over $500,000 a month.

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