The New Rules For Faceless Channels in 2026 transcript

If you run a faceless channel, and it feels like your videos are getting ignored, you're not crazy. AIs made these videos so easy to make, and everyone's got one now, and they all look the same. >> Write a script with ChatGPT for content ideas. >> To generate the script, we use ChatGPT. >> We can ask ChatGPT to write a short story based on it. >> And most of them are getting buried. But, I have found five channels that are actually killing it in this space, [music] and I'm going to give you the five rules that they follow.

What they all figured out is that a face does a job on a channel. Trust, personality, the reason someone comes back. And it didn't need a big budget, either, to do it. One of them is 3 months old and hosted by a gorilla, and already pulled over 647,000 views on a single video. And the last one comes from a channel that is literally an hour of PowerPoint slides. [music] No, PowerPoint slides. And that one proves the whole thing.

Rule one, give the narrator an opinion. One of the biggest problems with faceless channels is they're easy to replace. There's no one person on the screen, so if the voiceover sounds like every other voiceover, the viewer can't tell the difference between your channel and the last one they skipped. So, look at Gorilla Bomb. This channel launched in May of 2026, and the belly fat video is sitting at 647,000 views with a 21-times breakout score, which means it did 21 times what a channel that size is supposed to do on a brand new channel.

That's kind of crazy. And here's the thing, you know what the advice is. There's nothing groundbreaking, shoulder press, lateral raises, rows, the same stuff that you've probably heard on every fitness channel for the last 10 years. Not necessarily anything new, but what is new is how he presents the information. >> Gorilla has been running and doing crunches every single day, and his belly is [clears throat] still sitting there like it pays rent. >> Gorilla talks in third person.

Any traditional coach maybe would soften that, you know, being worried about being liked, but Gorilla doesn't. And the viewer can start to predict what Gorilla is going to say or his POV because he has one. And that prediction is the reason that they stay. That engaging character with a perspective is the retention device. So, for you, before you write your next script, write down one opinion that your [clears throat] narrator holds that your viewer can begin to predict or finish for you.

Your face doesn't have to be on your channel, but your unique POV must be. But just having a perspective doesn't necessarily mean that people will watch, which brings us to rule two, turning information into a show. Most faceless health channels narrate, you know, walking lowers your blood pressure, which is true, you know, and nobody stays for it. Cassio Creativo made a video about, you know, walking 10,000 [clears throat] steps, and instead of just listing out facts, they created a story.

The brain makes the walking plan, the bladder sabotages it day two, the knees got arthritis and predicts the rain, and the liver is the patient in the hospital that everyone's trying to save. >> The plan is to walk 10,000 steps a day for only 30 days. >> Every fact has a character attached to it, and every character wants something, and there's something in the way of what they want. And the actual lesson that 10,000 steps was basically a marketing step, and every extra step helps you lands in the last scene as a plot twist.

The takeaway you normally put in a bullet point is the ending of the story. That video is sitting at over 2 million views in 2 weeks. And that title formula that they have, your organs when you blank, that's not one video, that's a reoccurring premise with a reoccurring cast, which means it's a show in a much more engaging way to share this information. So, the question for your topic is, what is the most engaging way that you can share your POV?

What is the sitcom version of that? Who wants what and why can't they get it? And what does the viewer learn the moment it resolves? And if you can answer that, you have got yourself a script. So, you have a POV, you're looking at the most engaging way that you can share that POV, which brings us to how do you make your POV and content easily recognizable? Only look that they recognize with the sound off. One of the jobs that a face does is continuity.

You see the person and you know what channel you are on before a word is even said. Zach D. Films does that job with a style. One frame sound off and you know exactly whose video this is. >> If you dropped a steak from really high up, could the air resistance actually cook it leaving you with a perfectly seared fillet? >> That's 28 million subscribers and he added half a million just this month. And Caleb Zach is a long-form version of the same rule.

Now, listen, I'm not necessarily telling you to go learn and create this unique, you know, 3D style. You can if you want to, that's optional. The discipline part, the rule, that stays right. Pick one visual decision and stick with it, whether it's one color, one font, the way you frame the screen recording, the similar structure to your thumbnails once you find one that works. Small channels break this consistently. Every video looks like it was made from a different channel, so the viewer never builds a connection to a consistent experience with your content.

The look almost has to be boring to you really before it becomes recognizable to them. look with nothing behind it is like YouTube wallpaper. So, rule number four is where the personality actually lives. The writing is the personality. Magnet Media tells business history like a heist movie. Three acts, somebody wants something, it goes wrong, the end pays off the beginning. There are running bits that come back video after video and you can hear the writer's voice throughout all of it. >> If you asked the majority of people what Tencent does, you'd be met with a confused look.

The truth is that Tencent does everything. >> 1.86 million subscribers, 255 video. That's years of reps, and those reps went into the writing, not even necessarily posting every day. And you'll have to put in the reps, too. And for a small channel, that is actually good news, because you can't out-volume the AI farms anyway, right? But you can out-write them. So, two things. First, one running bit that keeps across your video.

A phrase, a reoccurring joke, a way you always open, so that the writing actually has your unique fingerprint. Second, before you explain everything, put something at stake. What goes wrong if the viewer doesn't get this? [music] So, one, you must have a POV. Two, you must think about what is the most engaging format to share that POV. After you have that engaging format, what is the reoccurring, recognizable experience for your audience?

And how do you add personality into that? And rule five, substance in a unique format. Perun has 640,000 subscribers. Hour-long PowerPoint slides about defense economics. Bullet points, charts, a dry voice reading them, zero animation budget, and it works. Because nobody else on YouTube knows as much about the subject, and in a weird way, the simplicity of the content makes it novel. Nobody's making videos like this anymore.

At least not on purpose. >> You don't need particularly advanced math skills to figure out that even just this four and a half billion is going to buy you an absolute crap ton of drones. If you spend it all on FPVs, you might be looking at something like nine million. >> The format looks like a mistake, and that's the point. It's different and full of substance. This one doesn't have a lot of fancy production. It's just a person who knows more than most of his audience in a novel format, in this case almost nostalgic.

So, actually so what do you know more about than most people in your lane? And what is the unique format that only you can make? So, here's what I told you at the top, right? A face does a job. It builds trust. It makes you relatable. It gives the channel continuity and it carries the personality. And it's the reason that somebody picks your video over the next one. Every one of these channels that we looked at did a job that a face normally does.

They just did it in a different way. Faceless doesn't mean effortless. None of these jobs were skipped. And that's the difference between faceless channels that are getting buried right now and the ones that are getting watched. And notice that every one of these rules comes back to being original, which happens to be the same thing that YouTube looks for when it decides whether or not a faceless channel keeps its monetization.

Rob actually went deep on that exact subject of how to build a faceless channel that YouTube won't demonetize. So, if you are building one of these faceless empires, then that video is the next step for you. All right, love and appreciate you guys. Peace and blessings. Out.