How To Dominate YouTube When You’re Over 40: The Nicheless Approach

So, I just saw this post on Reddit and this person is a bit older and they basically said that it took them 20 years to find their niche. 20 years of burnout, 20 years of trying different things, 20 years of confusion. And I'm here to tell you that that is complete BS, especially if you're someone that's over 40. And I can say that because I've helped a bunch of people over 40 grow on YouTube incredibly quickly. and not just grow views and subscribers, but actually make a full-time income from YouTube and start and grow businesses. And one of those people that I've done an extensive case study on is my brother Zach. So my brother Zach is 50 years old. He spent 30 years in the trades, 20 years of having his own business in the trades, but he wanted to get out of the trades and make money in another way because it was starting to get hard on his body. So, we started his YouTube channel, posted the very first video, and less than 30 days later, he was making $214 a day just from AdSense alone. So, I can definitely speak on this, and I'm going to be using examples of people that I've worked with and some people that I just saw on YouTube that I think are great examples of older people doing content on YouTube. Because the truth is, if you're over 40, you actually have a massive advantage and you can completely dominate YouTube if you do it the right way. And in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to do that. So, if you appreciate me making this type of content, let me know by gently tapping that like button and let's jump into it right now. But right before we jump into it, I always like to give a disclaimer that most people who start on YouTube, probably 99% never make a full-time income from it and don't have success. Now, a lot of those people are probably just uploading for fun. They're not even trying to make money. But with that being said, most people who start on YouTube do not have success. So, there's absolutely no guarantees here and you should always do your own research. But one thing that really helps is if you have somebody to show you how to do it correctly, which is why I put out so much great free content on this channel. And I even do free lives, which I'm doing the next one this Tuesday at 900 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Click the link in the description and the pin comment below. What's up, 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, etc., I'm hosting a free one-time live workshop that goes over how to help with that called Why YouTube is the greatest business to start in 2026. And make sure to click the link in the description now or the pin comment below in order to lock your spot in. And if you attend live, you'll also have a chance to be the one person I pick for a real time channel audit once we move into the interactive portion of the workshop. So, if you're not sure what niche to choose or you feel like the niche you're currently in may not be profitable or targeted enough, then this is going to be for you because at this workshop, I'll be giving away the 60-second niche validator 2.2 completely free. This is the newest version of my GPT powered niche validation tool that helps you instantly test and uncover profitable YouTube niches before you waste time creating content that doesn't convert. It's been refined and updated based on real channel data. And I'll be giving it away completely free, but only during this live workshop. And just a quick heads up, I'll be turning this into a full software product soon. So this version may not be available free for much longer. So if you've been waiting to get it, this is a good time to do it now. Now, during this workshop, there's a full presentation on how to grow on YouTube, followed by a Q&A where you can ask me literally any question you want directly on Zoom, and people ask a lot of questions. The majority of the time, it's about stuff like how to pick your niche. And many people walk away with clarity on their niche during the session. And the same strategies I teach in these sessions are the ones that help clients such as Josh who scaled from 1K a month to 186K per month. Alex who built up to 15K per month. And Sean who went from 30K a month all the way up to a high of over $500,000 a month. And even people who weren't clients like Isaiah were able to make $20,000 in a single month just from attending my live and applying what I taught there. So do not miss this live workshop. Click the link in the description of the pin comment to register and then add it to your calendar so you don't miss the chance to grab the 60-cond niche validator 2.2. If you missed this date, check the link to see the next scheduled workshop if we're going to do another one. And I'll see you Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Now, back to the video. All right, so I'm going to go over some truths here. And the first truth is that you almost certainly already have the niche inside of you. If you're over 40 years old, you have a massive amount of life experience. You've probably encountered many problems in your life. There's been many hard times in your life. There's probably been a lot of different things that you've done, things that you've gotten good at, things that you're naturally good at, and things that you were really bad at, but you were able to overcome. And because you were able to overcome those problems, and you had those experiences, you can help other people overcome the problems, and other people have those experiences as well. So, your past experiences are the niche. Your stories are the niche. you don't need to fit into a category because you and your life is the niche. The way I like to put this for people that are having trouble picking their niche is make content for the younger version of yourself. And by the way, there are exceptions to this for some people out there. Just as an example, let's just say you're a female dating coach for men. Obviously, you wouldn't make content for the younger version of yourself in that case. But the vast majority of people who are solving problems, doing educational content, giving value on YouTube, make content for the younger version of themselves. So, you really want to think about that whenever you're making your niche. Now, another thing that you want to keep in mind is imagine if you had a time machine and you could go back to the younger version of yourself and you could help them overcome different problems that they've had quicker, faster, or by saving a bunch of money, right? Think of all the time, effort, money, and headache you could save yourself if you could do that. And chances are most of you would say, "Yeah, I could save myself a lot of time, effort, headaches, money, etc." And if that is so, then you can teach other people how to overcome those same things and give them a lot of value as well. So, think of problems that you've had in your past as like gold, right? Problems that you've had that you've had to overcome, those are absolute gold. And you can also combine different interests that you have as well. put them together and make a channel out of it. Now, one really good example of that is Cowboy Kent Rollins. Now, this channel has absolutely blown up over the last five years. It's got about 3.4 million subscribers, and he likely makes tens of thousands of dollars a month, probably even just from AdSense alone. And if he's properly monetizing, he's probably making a lot more than that as well. So, typically what he does is he teaches people how to make these different types of food in the old style of making food. So, a lot of the time he either cooks over a fire, he grills outside, or even uses what's known as a Dutch oven where it's an oven that's outside and it uses live fire. And so, he makes a bunch of historical dishes in many cases. And he makes them in the way that they used to be made, which is super cool. And his production team is just his daughter with a camera. That's it. No fancy crew, no big budget, and he is getting millions and millions of views a month. And he's got over 3.4 million subscribers. Just as an example, this video right here, uh, the Big Mac, cowboy style, homemade Big Mac recipe, got 8.5 million views and made him over $42,000. So, he basically just made a cowboy style Big Mac and made a bunch of money from it. Now, he's also monetizing by selling cowboy cooking essentials. So, all kinds of different, you know, food items or different ways of cooking or seasoning or tools, etc. on his website. So, I think he's probably monetizing in a really smart way for his audience. Now, if this gentleman uh Mr. Cowboy Kent Rollins would have done YouTube in the typical way that most people try to do it, he probably would have tried to fit into a cooking niche that is not him. But in his case, he is the niche, right? He just combined a bunch of his past experience, problems that he solved in the past and his personality and made a channel that is not only fun for him, but it's also highly profitable. In other words, he is the niche. His channel is cowboy cooking. That's his life. That's his identity. That's his content. And honestly, your daily life in many cases can also be content. You don't need to discover some hidden passion. You don't need to become somebody that you're not. Because the person you are right now, that's enough. Your job, your hobbies, your background. Chances are your hidden gold mine niche is already inside of you right now. So, stop overthinking which direction to take and start documenting what you already know. With that being said, picking your niche is one of the main things that we're going to be focusing on in the live training this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. So, check that out. Click the link in the description and the pin comment below to check that out. And after the live training, which is super valuable, you'll get to ask me questions for as long as the questions last. So, if I have to stay an extra hour, then you can ask me questions for an extra hour. If it's an hour and a half, hour and a half, etc. I always answer every single question when I do these live trainings. All right, the second lesson is forget algorithms, just speak to real people. Now, something that a lot of people get backwards is they try to please the algorithm. They chase trends. They do the same thing that big YouTubers do. And that usually doesn't end up doing all that well. But here's the reality. The algorithm doesn't watch your videos. Humans do. The algorithm doesn't subscribe to you. Humans do. And the algorithm certainly doesn't buy from you, but humans do. So, what you need to have is a crystalclear audience. And again, typically that audience is going to be the younger version of yourself. And whenever you're thinking about making a video, you're trying to write content, etc., you need to imagine that you are making that video for the younger version of yourself or for whoever your audience is. And in some cases, it's a good idea to literally come up with a name for them. So, you might call them Frantic Fred or Lonely Lucy or something like that. So, here's a pretty good example of a channel that's really blown up lately. This is Solo Second Half. So, she creates videos about life after 50 for women, being alone, basically not being married, and not having a partner. And many of her videos talk about grief, loneliness, love, and aging, and also rebuilding a sense of purpose in the second half of your life. Now, her early videos were super super simple. Soft lighting, minimal editing, and she's basically just talking to a camera from her office. But those videos connected with people deeply because they were experiencing the same thing or they were, you know, maybe a few years back from where she is right now. And her breakout video was called the truth about ending up alone as you age. It got over 945,000 views. Another one of her breakout videos was relationships over 50, don't become a victim. Now, these were not flashy videos. They were just brutally honest. They're kind of emotional reflections delivered with heart. And she wasn't trying to be an expert. She was just sharing her lived experiences. So, you don't need credentials. You don't need polish. And you don't need a studio to move people. You just need a story that feels human. And she's grown incredibly quickly. And she's making thousands of dollars a month from her channel, which she probably spends almost no time on. And her most viewed video, The Truth About Ending Up Alone as You Age, made over $5,000. So, the lesson here is to talk to one type of person. Imagine them sitting across from you. What would you tell them? What would you help them with today? Answer that and the views will come. All right, the next point is there is something that you need to get good at, but it's probably a lot easier than you think, and that is title and thumbnail mastery. Now, I know this can be scary for people, so I'm going to show an example of a channel that's absolutely crushing it. Jeff Hansen over 330,000 subscribers didn't start all that long ago making thousands and thousands of dollars a month from his channel. And you can see that his thumbnails are dead simple and his titles are dead simple as well. So his thumbnails are basically just a still shot from the video itself. No words on top, no fancy graphics, nothing. And the titles are basically just information about what he's teaching. So it's super straightforward and there's no tricks, no clickbait, no super fancy thumbnails, none of that. In this video, for instance, statics lesson 59, sheer moment diagram, the graphic method, got about 1.4 million views and made about $7,000. Now, by the way, I am not recommending that you make the same thumbnails as him. In fact, Jeff, if you're seeing this, if you work with me, I could literally get you like five times more views and probably make you about 10 or 20 times more money than whatever you're making right now. Because, with all due respect, these thumbnails and titles are absolutely atrocious. But the point that I'm trying to make here is if you're covering the right topics, if you have the right niche, which in his case he's basically helping people study really difficult mathematical related or science related concepts, then it really doesn't matter, right? Uh if you're covering the right ideas, the right topics, it really doesn't matter what your thumbnails look like. So this works for him because the value proposition of the video is that he's going to teach you these topics, right? That's the value proposition of his video. And if you look at even some of the previous ones that we were talking about like solo second half her most popular videos often times the thumbnails are quite simple as well. Usually it's either a still shot of her from within the actual video or maybe an enhanced photo from within the video and then a few words and that's about it. So I basically call this like a raw authentic style and it's working incredibly well now on YouTube because the truth is a lot of people are kind of tired of seeing AI videos, right? AI videos, super high production quality videos where it's like an entire team of people. It basically makes people feel like they're not really talking to you or they're not really listening to you. Uh if you have a YouTube channel, they're more listening to either AI or whatever production team that you have like your script writers or your video editors or something, right? And so this raw authentic style that doesn't have a lot of edits, has pretty simple thumbnails and titles. A lot of the time it's actually just, you know, from the video itself is extremely popular right now and it works incredibly well. And I actually call the thumbnail, the title of the intro the holy trifecta. And to be honest with you, it's way too much to go into in this video. And that's why I highly recommend that you actually attend my live training this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Click the link in the description in the pin comment below cuz we will be going over that in the live training. Now, the next thing I want to go over is the minimal setup rule. This is so incredibly important because this is something I've seen probably hundreds of people get caught up in. Okay? And basically what it is is you need to start your channel with a minimal setup. Like this is you. This absolutely needs to happen. Do not even think about buying extra stuff to start your channel. buying a super nice camera, buying lighting, buying a lens for your camera. Assuming that you already have like an iPhone that's within, you know, the last 2 or 3 years or even an Android or a Google Pixel or anything like that within the last 2 or 3 years, you have more than enough to start a channel. The only thing I might consider buying would be a microphone cuz people will forgive you if you have mediocre video, but if you have really bad audio, that's probably going to be something they're not going to forgive you for. So, there's a million videos on YouTube of how you can buy really simple microphones. The road wireless mics are really good, just as an example. And so, if you're going to buy anything, that would be the thing I would invest in because chances are if you have a computer with a webcam or if you have a phone, you have enough to start right now. And there are many people that have made million subscriber channels or even million-dollar businesses without buying any equipment whatsoever. So, just as an example, here's an interesting channel called Charlie Gross. And the whole idea of the channel is this is a 79-year-old gentleman who used to be able to dunk in 1965 and he wants to dunk again. So he's obviously a taller guy and he wants to dunk again. So he made a whole channel basically talking about that and his setup is so minimal. He's basically just using his iPhone and the natural light that happens to be in the room or outside if he's filming. And he basically posted this video, I'm 79 and I want to dunk again. That was the very first video he posted on his channel and it got 400,000 views and made over $2,000 and he's just getting started. So, super minimal setup, nothing fancy about the video at all. And honestly, almost all the channels I revealed today have super simple setups as well. And even big channels that use super complicated setups and they have big studios and they use really good cameras, like mine for instance, I use really good cameras. If you look back at my earlier videos, I had a super simple setup as well. The big mistake that people will make is they'll always be like, "Oh, I can get started when I have that lens or that camera or that lighting or I can when I set up my set. I'll get started then." And that is just your brain making an excuse. And so instead of coming up with excuses for why you can't start making videos, I want you to start coming up with excuses for why you can. Because chances are you can. Mr. Ballin grew a 5 million subscriber YouTube channel by just using his phone. Okay? So you can absolutely get a ton of subscribers and get started without buying any fancy equipment and you absolutely should. Now the next thing I want to talk about that's very important is being authentic. So the example I'm going to give here is my brother Zach and his first ever video that he uploaded to YouTube. Now I talked about this a little bit earlier and his first ever video was highest paying trades jobs that nobody is talking about in 2025. Now this is his first video ever. got over 800,000 views and within one month of posting this video he was making $214 in a day. Then a few months later he hit $447 a day and then eventually he was making it all the way up to over $500 a day. So he's absolutely crushing it with this channel. But the point that I want to make here is if you go back and look at his first video and he will agree with me uh on this by the way. Like this is not me making fun of him or anything like that. He'll totally agree with me. In fact, he would probably be the one who says it. His first video was pretty atrocious. That was the first video he's ever made. He didn't know what he was doing. He was super unnatural and he was trying to use a script, which I'm kind of trying to get him to not do that because he's pretty good talker without scripts. And it was super unnatural for him, but it didn't matter because he was talking about topics that people actually cared about and he was helping the younger version of himself. And I'm going to be going over more about what we did with Zach's channel to help it grow, how we blew up the channel with the very first video in that live training in that workshop this Tuesday, click that link in the description and the pin comment below. And sometimes Zach actually shows up as a guest, so he might show up as a guest as well and you can ask him questions. But yeah, just upload, be authentic. If it's awkward for you or if you're not having a good time or it's like your first time recording, just be open about it, right? Just just do it anyways. And you know, you'll look back on it and it'll make you cringe. It'll probably make you laugh a little bit, but that's totally fine. You'll see all the progress that you made since the beginning. And to be completely honest, it doesn't matter nearly as much as you think it does. Now, one thing I will say, highly recommend that you check out this video right here of me interviewing one of my clients who we helped grow their YouTube channel tremendously because we go over a lot of the tactics and the strategies that we use. So, click that video right there and I'll see you in the next one.