Don't Become A YouTuber Over 40 In 2026 - DO THIS INSTEAD

Do not become a YouTuber or an influencer if you're over 40 in 2026. And here's the reason why. This is Zach. He is my 50-year-old brother. He's never made a video in his life until May of 2025. He was a complete beginner that was not tech-savvy at all and barely even watched YouTube. He posted his first video May 26, 2025. And 29 days later, he had a $214 AdSense day. And the last time we checked, he was making over $500 a day just from AdSense alone on YouTube. Now, most people come to YouTube and say, "I'm going to be a YouTuber." And that is the worst decision that you can make. But Zach understood something different. He treated YouTube like a business from day one. Not a hobby, not a hope to get views, a real business model. And in this video, I'm going to show you how you can do it as well. And I'm going to show you a bunch of examples of other people that are doing the same thing. And this is especially relevant to people over 40. So, if you like this type of content, gently tap that like button and let's jump into it right now. Now, a quick disclaimer before we jump in. I'm always going to be brutally honest with you. Probably about 99% of people who start on YouTube do not have success. They're not able to make a full-time income on YouTube. However, my brother was able to do it in less than a month. With that being said, there are no guarantees here. My brother had the fortune to have a brother who is a YouTube expert and could tell him exactly what to do. And that's why his very first video blew up. But I cannot guarantee you that you will have the same results. And in reality, most people who start on YouTube don't have those results. And this is exactly why I'm running a one-time workshop this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. All right, guys. is 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. It's going to be the YouTube content advantage for making money. 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 60-second niche validator 2.3 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 it 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 a 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 60-second 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. All right, so here is the harsh truth about being a YouTuber, a creator, an influencer, etc. Especially if you're over 40. A lot of people basically just try to copy viral YouTubers and they basically think that that's the only way to make it, right? But that path actually burns you out fast. cuz I'm going to show you example here in a moment. But the truth is YouTube rewards consistency and clarity. You don't need to act young. You don't need to have super fancy editing like Mr. Beast. And then on the other end of the spectrum, you don't need to post every day. You just need a simple smart system, a system that actually fits into your real life. So here's the example. Act two from Peter Fritz. He is a landscape and car photographer and he created this channel for people around 40 to 70 years old. And a lot of these people feel a slow drift into invisibility, but are determined to carve out a second chapter of their life. Now, he just got started very recently on YouTube. And within a very short period of time, he's already making $343 to $1,000 a month, and he has this video right here that likely made well over $1,000. Now, this is just from AdSense alone. And when I was talking about my brother earlier, that's just the money he's making from AdSense. There's many other ways to monetize outside of AdSense on YouTube. Just as an example, per video, I probably make about $20 in AdSense per 1,000 views. But on this channel, the Shane Hummus channel, I make well over $300 per 1,000 views overall. So, I'm making at least 15 to 20 times more than just from AdSense alone. And so, if you're properly monetizing, that's what you should expect to be making as well with a similar type of channel. And so chances are if he's properly monetizing, he could be making a full-time income with this channel that he just started, which is pretty epic. Now, let's talk about what to focus on because I want you to forget fancy cameras. I want you to forget complicated editing software and complicated edits in general. And I want you to focus on your message. Here's what you actually need. A phone that's within the last few years. iPhone 15 and above is fine. A lot of the newer Samsungs are great and Google Pixels are really good too when it comes to their cameras. Then you need decent lighting. Now you can just use natural lighting for this or you can just use a room that's well lit or a light that you set up. But you want to have decent lighting and then you need a clear point to make a clear idea to make your videos about. That's it. Nothing more. Let me give you an example. M&J Metal. This gentleman made this amazing video called How to Make Pickle Pepsi at Home for Free. Now, before this, he had posted over 300 videos and he had basically zero traction on YouTube. But he posted this video about how to make Pickle Pepsi, which is a type of Pepsi that kind of tastes like pickles, I guess, a little bit, at home for free. And it has gotten 7.9 million plus views. And it's made over $39,000 just as one video alone. And it also catapulted his channel to over 400,000 subscribers. And many of his follow-up videos are also crushing it as well. And the reason for that is definitely not his camera quality. If you look at this, the camera he's using is actually terrible. It's definitely not his lighting. Even his lighting is pretty bad. It's certainly not his audio. It sounds like the audio is coming straight out of the camera, which is a huge mistake. And it's certainly not his editing because there is no editing in this video. And it's also not his skill as a YouTuber because this is a tutorial video. And as he makes the pickle Pepsi in the video, he actually doesn't even show the jar. So, he's kind of explaining what he's doing, but he's not even showing the jar. So, it's kind of like really really badly made. No offense to him. I actually love this guy. I think he's amazing and I respect what he's done. No offense to him, but the video is pretty badly made. So, why did this video do so well? It's because of the idea. This particular subject was really big at the time. You know, KFC was spending a ton of money marketing Pickle Pepsi. Pepsi was probably spending money, too, doing it. And there was a bunch of promos going on. And he just happened to make the video at just the right time. And it was all about the idea. The idea is king on YouTube. If you have the right idea where there's a massive amount of demand and there's very little supply, your video is going to do well. If you have the wrong idea, even if you make an amazing video, there's a very low chance that it will do well. It's just that simple. Now, there's several ways that I teach to come up with video ideas. But my favorite one and the most consistent one by far is called the icon method, and I also call it the hot dog method sometimes, which I will go over in great detail this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, if you click that link in the description and the pin comment below. But one thing I want you to realize is that it's never too late. Here is a picture of me and my brother. We are hanging out at a resort in Mexico. We do at least one vacation together every year cuz I travel around a lot and I'm very close with my brother and we want to see each other. We were hanging out at a resort in Mexico. My brother's 50 years old and this was almost immediately after he launched his channel. And while we were hanging out at this resort in Mexico, his channel started taking off. Okay. And if you rewind a few months before that, my brother had basically come to me and he'd been like, "Hey, I've been in the trades for about 30 years now. I've owned a trade business for 20 years and this is really starting to wear on my body. I don't want to do this forever. I'm starting to have back pain. You know, I don't want to crawl under houses. I don't want to lift heavy furnaces. Shane, what do you think that I should do to make money in a way where I don't have to use my body? And he was probably expecting me to tell him some sort of remote job or something like that. But I very quickly said, well, YouTube, of course. And he was really surprised by that because he's not techsavvy. Never made a YouTube video in his life. Barely even made videos in his life. hardly even watches YouTube really. He's really more of a TV guy cuz he kind of came from that generation. But I told him, just do it. Trust me. He posted his first video. One month later, that video had blown up. He's making over $200 a day. That video now has over 800,000 views. And the reason is is because he followed the systems that I tell people to follow. And because he treated YouTube like a business where he focused on solving people's problems. You see, the channel that he launched was helping people get into the trades. And so, he was focusing on solving people's problems. And I'm actually going to give updates on him and go over like how he's doing right now in the live training this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Check that link in the description in the pin comment below and go over what we did to help him. Plus, you can ask me any questions as well. And once in a while, Zach actually shows up to my live trainings, too, which is great. Now, another thing I want to address here, guys, is everyone is chasing huge view counts. Everyone thinks you have to get a ton of views in order to make money. And that is one strategy. Don't get me wrong. I have a mass market channel. It's this channel you're watching right now. I do get a ton of views. I get millions of views a month. I think at its peak it was getting like 6 7 8 million views a month. And that is one way of making money. But you do not have to get a ton of views. I started a second channel and originally it was called Shane Hummus Unfiltered. I think I changed the name to Shane Hummus the content growth engine. Now, on that second channel, it's really more dedicated towards business owners and helping business owners grow and make money on YouTube or advanced YouTubers basically, right? So, it is a much more niche channel. And in that channel, the very first month we launched it, we made over $30,000 literally the very first month we launched the channel. And I think I only got maybe 10 or 20,000 views. So, we were making somewhere around $1.5,000 per 1,000 views. And recently, I put almost zero effort into that channel whatsoever. And we're typically making anywhere between $3 to $5,000 per 1,000 views. And I get usually around 5 to 10,000 views per month. So, we're still making about I think last month we checked it was about $47,000 from the channel. And it's a tiny channel. I think we still have less than 10,000 subscribers. And I put almost zero effort. I think the last time I recorded videos for that channel was like 3 months ago or 4 months ago, something like that. And it's mostly just me ranting about random YouTube related topics and just trying out random different formats and stuff like that. Just throwing stuff against the wall and seeing if it sticks. It's way less me actually trying to make money and way more me just, you know, putting stuff out there that I think is interesting. So the point is you do not need to get a ton of views to make a ton of money. And here's another example of one of my students who embodies that. So Allan Urizar, he started the coaching program just recently and he followed all of our strategies and he implemented everything in his videos. And when he posted his first video, he only got 20 views right away. Now, you might think that that video is a flop. You might think the strategy doesn't work. But what actually ended up happening is out of those 20 views, somebody booked a call with him and he actually was able to close a $2,400 a year deal from that call. So 20 views, he made $2,400. It was basically $199 for 12 months, which is almost $2,400. So you absolutely do not need to go viral. What you do need is the right people watching your videos. So, you can do the mass market strategy. For some of our clients, that works. But for most of our clients, especially when you're first starting, it's usually a good idea to just do the niche strategy. And then decide later on whether you want to go mass market and get a lot more views and target a lot more people. Most of them are probably not qualified for whatever you're selling, but you still get a wider amount of people. So, you might end up making more money depending on your niche. So, yeah, you absolutely do not need to get a ton of views to make money. I have some ridiculous client examples. Most of those clients do not want me to reveal their channel. But just to talk about a few people, one of my clients is in the tech recruiting niche. He recruits like highle tech positions. Typically, he's working with like CEOs of software companies, for instance. And his channel gets about 100 to 200 views every single upload and he makes over $2 million a year. Another client gets about 500 to a,000 views per upload on average and he makes over $10 million a year. So yeah, you don't need a lot of views to make a lot of money. Please stop thinking that. Can you make a lot of money with a lot of views? Of course you can. I've done it before. You know, many other people have done it. But that is not the only way to make money. And please stop thinking that it is. You do not need to be an influencer. You don't need to be a typical YouTuber or a content creator to make money. In fact, this leads into the next point, which is you need to treat YouTube like a business, not a social media app. You know, most beginners treat YouTube like Tik Tok or Instagram, and they're chasing views, likes, trends, and quick hits. But YouTube isn't about going viral. It's not just a social media app. It's part social media app and then it's really a hybrid search engine. Okay? So, it's half search engine, half social media, which makes it a lot different than the other social media apps because in my opinion, some of the most profitable and some of the easiest types of content to break into is educational content. Because every single time you make an educational content video, it's like you just created a little soldier, right? It's almost like you hired an employee but for life. And this employee or this soldier, their only job is to go out and make you money, get you views, get you subscribers 24/7 for the rest of their life. That's it. So, here's an example of another person that I've worked with, R.J. the unretired. So, he started on YouTube and several of the very first videos that he posted absolutely blew up. And he talks about topics that appeal to an older audience, which it's a lot easier to appeal to an older audience when you are a part of that audience, right? Birds of a feather tend to flock together. Older people like to watch content from other older people because it's just much easier to relate to those people and to that content. And so he was able to have incredible amounts of success on YouTube very early on by making content specifically for the older demographic. So a lot of the stuff he made was on being retired, hence the name R.J. the Unretired. And within just a couple months of starting YouTube, he was already making tens of thousands of dollars a month. And this was just his side hustle gig. He's got a lot of other stuff going on. So, I expect him to do much, much better going into the future. So, if you want to learn how to do exactly this as well, go ahead, click that link in the description, the pin comment below, attend my completely free live training where I'm going to be giving away the best knowledge on starting on YouTube. I'm also going to be giving away some AI, some GPTs that make starting on YouTube significantly easier, going to help you pick your niche, going to help you pick video ideas. All the stuff that stops people from getting started, all that's going to be solved with this live training. Plus, at the end, I will literally answer any question you have for as long as I need to, even if it's an extra hour, hour and a half, whatever it is, until you're satisfied. And I guarantee it's going to be a great experience. So, do not miss out on it. Click that link below. Put it on your calendar. do not miss out on it. And also make sure to check out this video right here where I go over a very successful client and I actually interview them. And I'll see you next time.