5 Ways Small Channels Are Making Money On YouTube In 2025

All right, guys. So, I want to talk about five ways that small YouTube channels are making tons of money in some cases. And I'm also going to give you multiple examples for each way. And these are not going to be the typical types of YouTube channels or the typical ways that you usually see people making money on YouTube. I'm going to be going over some very motivational, inspiring, interesting, and niche examples of different people that are making money from YouTube. And there's a very good chance that one or more of these examples might inspire you or they might relate to your situation and give you a good idea of how you can make money as well. 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. All right, so the first one I thought was very interesting is Abigail Stacy and she has this channel called The Life of a Cruiser. Now, if you look at her channel right away, you might not think much of it. It's about 2.2K 2K subscribers and the channel likely isn't making very much money from AdSense or the ads that show on the channel. However, the reason I decided to show this one is because I found a very interesting article on Business Insider about this channel where they talked about how a 23-year-old woman has gone on 53 cruises thanks to a side hustle and one lucrative hack. And basically what she's done is she's been able to pretty much pay for all of her expenses going on all of these different cruises just by making YouTube videos about the cruise, right? So she basically just makes YouTube videos where she does a review of the cruise and she covers it. And in many cases, she either has brand deals or sponsorships where she's able to get all of her costs taken care of on the cruise. And she's not the only one doing this. For instance, Trek Trendy posted this video right here. I tried a luxury Disney cruise and although I can't confirm it 100% I'm pretty sure he didn't pay $40,000 for the suite. He likely got a massive discount or it may have been paid for completely altogether. And there's other channels like Life Well Cruised that go on a bunch of different cruise ships as well or Poverty to Paradise who has basically made an entire series of videos talking about how she basically lives on cruise ships. And I would again be willing to bet that she is getting brand deals or sponsorships or getting the cruise ship cost comped either partially or completely. And it's not just cruise ships. There are many channels such as Lost Leblanc that have talked about how they would get hotels comped or restaurants comped, etc. just for including it in their videos. So yeah, this is a way to make money because once your channel gets big enough, not only will they have to comp you, but they're probably going to have to pay you even extra because your time and the attention that your channel gets makes it worth it. All right, so the second channel I'm going to cover is actually personal to me and this is my own brother, Zach of all trades, or as I like to call, Zot. So, Zach is my brother. He's been in the trades for nearly 30 years now, specifically HVAC. And basically, he came to me and he's like, "Hey, bro, you know, the trades are kind of hard on the body. Like, I kind of want to retire soon." Now, don't get me wrong, the trades pay really well, but they are hard on the body. And so, he came to me and he's like, you know, "Hey, what do you recommend? I want to retire soon. I want to do something that isn't as hard on the body, but I can still make an income from. And I told him, why don't you do YouTube? And so he's like, well, I'm not good with technology. I have no idea how to use a camera, and I don't think I'm going to be very good on camera either, but if you say I can do it, I'll do it. And I was like, yeah, I think you can do it. You don't really need to be that good on camera. You don't need to be good at technology, and you definitely don't need to know how to use a camera these days. So, we started this channel about 3 months ago. Literally, the very first video we posted blew up. It's got like 700,000 views now. By the time you see this, it might have a lot more than that. It might even hit like a million. But yeah, literally the very first video we posted, it blew up and he was able to make it to $214 a day within 29 days of uploading his first video. Now, that was the money he was making from AdSense. But on top of that, he started getting affiliate sales as well. So, we hooked him up with some really good affiliates and he started getting affiliate sales, too. And each one of those is several hundred. So, all he really did is just talked about what he already knew. like he literally just shared information that is common knowledge if you're in the trades world about stuff that he already knows. It's that simple. His videos are dead simple to make. They're super easy. And the very first video we posted literally blew up. Oh, and I just checked yesterday and he had like a $300 plus dollar day. All right, quick break. This Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, I'm hosting a free live workshop called The New Way to Make Money with YouTube and AI. It's happening on November 4th, 2025. So, make sure to mark that down. Now, if you're struggling to find your niche or you don't want to commit months or even years to a niche that ends up not being profitable, then this is for you. Because at this workshop, I'll be giving away the Niche Validator 2.1. This is the newest version of my GPT powered niche validation tool designed to help you instantly test and uncover profitable YouTube niches. Before you waste time creating content that doesn't convert, it's been updated and improved based on thousands of data points from real channels. And I'll be giving it away completely free only at this live workshop. And just so you know, I'm planning to turn this into a full software product sometime in the future. So it might not stay free forever, but you'll lock it in if you get it at this workshop, but that's something to keep in mind just in case you've been wanting to grab it. So attend the free live workshop by clicking the link down the description in the pin comment below. Oh, and by the way, you'll also be able to ask me questions live. So I look forward to meeting you. See you this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern time. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming. All right, so another example of a channel is anything financereated. Like if you start a finance channel, even if you don't get that many views, even if you have no idea how to do marketing or sales or anything like that, you're going to make a ton of money. Like finance channels just have insanely high AdSense money, for instance. And there's so many really good affiliate products where you just put it in the description and it just does all the work for you. So Kelly Anne Smith is an example of this. She had a profile on Business Insider and this was actually a while ago and she was already making about $3,000 a month. Now, my guess is she's making significantly more than that now, right? So, that was like March of 2022. She was making $3,000 a month and she barely had any subscribers at that point. And so, now with 50,000 subscribers, I would be shocked if she's not making at least $10,000 a month. In her case, she's making money from sponsorships, affiliate marketing, and of course, the AdSense on her channel. And she is not the only one making money from finance. For instance, this is a faceless AI channel that posts about the economy, finance, real estate, etc. And they post around three times a week. And View Stats says they're making about 1.7K to 4.7K per month. And I can almost guarantee you View Stats is well off here. Just as an example, they say my brother's making like less than $1,000 a month, and that's not true. He's making well more than that. In fact, over $300 in a single day. And the finance niche has really high CPMs. So, usually they're making at least $10 per 1,000 views. In many cases, they're making $20 or even $30 or more. So, I'm going to say at at least $10 per 1,000 views, that's about $6,350 a month based on these views right here, then chances are they are making over $10,000 a month with this faceless channel. And that's just from AdSense alone, which typically faceless channels do make most of their money from AdSense. All right, guys. For one month only, we are accepting people into our coaching program, Content Growth Engine, where we help you to grow and make money from your personal brand. Now, this can apply to people who are just trying to get a better job. Just grow their personal brand to get a better job. Literally, the best way to do this, for instance, one of our clients, Josh, was able to get an offer from two different fang companies, which are the hardest companies in the world to get into, even harder than Ivy League universities, uh, using his personal brand or just as a side hustle, right? it just as a way to make a little bit of extra money on the side. We teach people how to do this or people who are already making money to make more money or people who already have a full-fledged business and they're crushing it and they're, you know, already have a successful YouTube channel and they want to optimize their YouTube channel and make even more money. So, we've worked with literally every one of those types of people. And what makes our system so good is that we combine all of the best practices of building a personal brand, but we use AI to scale things to make it 10 times more efficient. is something that no one else has ever discovered. It's an amazing opportunity and that's why I'm so excited to share it with you. So, we are accepting three to five people into the first cohort. You need to be very dedicated, right? Do not apply if you're not super dedicated to growing your personal brand. So, you have to be serious. You have to be dedicated. You have to be willing to put in the time, effort, and money that it takes to grow a personal brand. So, if that's you, go ahead, apply in the description in the pen comment below, and hopefully we get to work together. Have a good one. Bye. >> All right. So before I reveal the next example, I want to tell you something and that is most of these channels that I just showed you are not monetizing very well. My brother's channel just started and so we're just starting the monetization process right now. We're just focusing on getting the videos out, getting views, but pretty soon we are going to start focusing on the monetization side of things. And he's still monetizing pretty well, but a lot of these channels aren't monetizing that well. And this is very common with YouTubers. Most YouTubers have no idea how to monetize. The only thing that they're good at if they have a successful channel or a semi-successful channel is getting traffic, but they have no idea how to market or how to sell. And I work with a lot of clients, many of them actually want to remain anonymous for obvious reasons that have tiny channels that are making a ton of money. Just to give you a couple examples, I have one client who only gets 100 to 200 views per video and he's making $2 million a year. I have one client I consulted with who gets about 500 to a,000 views per video somewhere around there and he's making over $10 million a year and this is directly from YouTube. Okay. Now those clients I cannot reveal their niche for obvious reasons. They don't want competitors and so they wouldn't want me to reveal their niche and of course I respect my clients and I would never do that. However, once in a while at business conventions or YouTube conventions or just from friends, whatever, I hear of somebody who's making a ton of money with a tiny channel and they aren't my client and so therefore I can actually reveal their channel. So, I'm going to be doing that right now. Do-it-yourself solar help desk. This channel right here only has about 735 subscribers. And I can tell you that this channel makes over $500,000 a year with 735 subscribers and only getting about $1.6,000 views per month. Now, you may not believe me and there's no way that I can prove to you that they are making $500,000 a year. I just know because that's what they said. And they said that they get $500,000 directly from YouTube. So people that end up purchasing their solar installations, which basically what they do is B2B solar installations. So they're doing solar installations for businesses. And so if they get like one contract, it's probably worth six figures. And so you only need a few contracts per year to get to $500,000, right? And so basically, they looked at their data, they looked at their analytics, and they found that over $500,000 worth of revenue was coming through their tiny little YouTube channel. So yeah, this is an example of a channel that is monetizing really well. So, this is a business owner who just happens to use YouTube and so they know how to do the sales and the marketing side of things, but they're actually not that good at traffic. So, those are the two types of business owners I typically work with. I work with big YouTubers who are terrible at the business side, and then I work at business owners who want to start on the YouTube side. They're not good at the YouTube side yet. So, those are examples of a lot of the business type people that I consult with. But, I also work with personal brands that are just getting started on both. And again, if you want to attend my completely free live training, it'll be 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time down in the description and the pin comment below. Don't miss out on it. However, if you are very serious about YouTube, or if you're a business owner who wants to grow your YouTube channel, or if you're a YouTuber who's getting a lot of views, but you're struggling with monetization, book a clarity call with myself or my team down in the description and the pin comment below. 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 a good fit to work together or not. This will be a call that we'll give you a lot of value from. However, it will be a call for us to assess you on whether you'd be a good client and for you to see if we would be a good fit to work with you as well. So, only book the call if you're serious about growing and making money on YouTube cuz it would result in direct coaching from myself and my team, which is very limited. Additionally, check out this video right here where we go over a bunch of boring channels that are making at least $10,000 a month. And you can check that out by clicking right here.