9 brain-dead stupid ways people made money on YouTube

All right, guys. Today I'm going to be showing you nine brain deadad stupid ways that people have made money with YouTube. Now, this video is going to shock you. It's probably going to make you laugh and hopefully it's also going to inspire you. And these methods are so simple, so basic, they actually work. It's like so dumb that it works. We're talking about people making thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars from the most basic ideas that you can imagine. And when I was putting this list together, I kept shaking my head because some of these numbers are just insane. So, with that being said, if you appreciate me making this type of video, let me know by gently tapping that like button. And let's jump into it right now. All right, first up is drinking water. No, I am not kidding you. And I know what you're thinking, Shane, how in the world do you make money drinking water? Well, let me show you. This guy, his channel is the Danish [ __ ] and he has around 178K subscribers. Not huge, but decent. And the crazy thing is he has a video where he got 55 million views and it's called 1 second water drink. The thumbnail just him about to drink water. That's it. No fancy edit, no crazy effects. And the video got 55.7 million views. And you want to know how much money he made from this video? Well, there are cool tools like Vid IQ as well as view stats and they can guesstimate how much money you make from different types of videos. And usually they guesstimate on the low end. So the actual amount of money he made is probably a lot more than this. But it's $79,000. $79,000 from one video about drinking water fast. Now, like I said, this is probably a low guesstimate. For instance, a lot of the times these tools were saying that my channel was making like $20,000 a month from AdSense when I was actually making $50,000 a month or more. So, he probably made far more than that from this video. In fact, I would say there's a very good chance he made over $100,000 in AdSense from this video alone. But wait, there's more. If you think he's the only guy making money drinking water, he's not. There's also Adam Cunningham. Now, his channel has under a thousand subscribers. No profile picture, nothing fancy. And he made a video called 1 second water bottle chug. 838,000 views just from drinking water fast. But you might be thinking, Shane, those videos were 10 years ago. It was a flash in the pan. Nobody has done it since. Nobody's getting views like that since those videos came out. It's a saturated niche. Well, let me introduce you to this saint right here, Jana, who posted a video called How to Drink Water Tutorial, and it got 4.3 million views. You know, God bless Jana, right? Imagine how many people would have died from dehydration if it wasn't for her tutorials. And it gets even better. Even doctors are jumping on this water trend. For instance, there's Huberman Labs, right? Andrew Huberman himself, and he made a video called How to Properly Hydrate Each Day. Now, to be fair, that's probably actually a pretty good video to watch. But he's not the only doctor doing this. There's also Dr. Carlos, and he made a video called, "This is the right way to drink water. Six common mistakes you do drinking water." Apparently, a lot of people are making mistakes with how they drink water. And I think this is just a really good sign for people out there when they think that their niche is too simple, right? They think like, "Oh, everyone knows how to do that niche, right? It's so simple. I could do it in my sleep. There's no way I could make money teaching other people how to do it. Well, they're making money teaching people how to drink water. I can almost guarantee you your niche is probably more complicated than drinking water. Oh, and this video Dr. Carlos made $4.8,000. So, people are literally making thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars teaching other people how to drink water. Oh, and it's not just water. Oh, no, sir. No, it's not. You could say that certain creators have been milking this trend, like this one who's teaching us how to drink milk. God bless Jenna, keeping all of our bones strong. And she's not the only one doing it. This creator right here got 3.6 million views with a video titled, "Five reasons you are drinking milk the wrong way." And here's a new video right here posted just a few months ago. Are you drinking milk the wrong way? 10 common mistakes that can harm you. So, like I said, if you think your niche is too simple or it's saturated or anything like that, you're going to like the channels and the videos I talk about in this video right here. But, let's move on to number two, which is chopping fish. And it comes from a channel called Mr. Fish. And the crazy thing is, this channel hasn't uploaded in an entire year. So, they're passively making $6 to $18,000 a month. But when they were uploading, they were uploading videos like this. Delicious world famous Hilsa fish cutting and cleaning skills in Bangladesh. Now what does he do? He cuts fish. That's it. Nothing fancy. No special effects. And he's from Bangladesh. He just records himself doing his daily job that he would have been doing anyways, cutting fish and cleaning fish. And his most popular video is delicious world fish hilsa fish cutting and cleaning skills. 3 million views from cutting fish. And the thumbnails aren't anything special. They're just the pictures of the fish. No clickbait, no crazy text, just fish. And when you watch this video, it's him standing there, knife in hand, cutting up fish like he's done it a thousand times before, which he has. And he's literally just filming himself doing the same job that he would have done anyways, and making bank from it. You know how much $6 to $18,000 is in Bangladesh? Dude is basically like a passive income millionaire there. All right, quick break. This Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, I'm hosting a free live workshop called How to Finally Profit from YouTube with AI. It's happening live on November 11th, 2025. So, make sure to mark that down right now. So, if you've been struggling to find your niche or you don't want to spend months or even years creating videos in a niche that's not profitable, then this workshop is for you because for everyone who shows up live, I'll be giving away my niche validator 2.2. This is the newest version of my AI powered niche validation tool that helps you to instantly test and uncover profitable YouTube niches before you waste time creating content that doesn't convert. And 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 will be turning this into a full software product at some point in the future. So, this version may not be available for free much longer. So, if you've been waiting to get it, this is a good time to do it now. So, attend the free live workshop by clicking that link down the description in the pin comment below to grab it. 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, but this one isn't anywhere near as much fun as the next one, which is shooting watermelons. Now, this one blew my mind. There's this channel called Hickok 45. He's an English teacher from Tennessee, and he collects guns as a hobby. and he's got this grandpa vibe, right? Very chill, very familyfriendly, just a nice old guy who likes shooting things. For instance, he's got this video right here, 460 Magnum versus Watermelons. Now, this is a 44 second video and it has 45 million views. That's a lot of people watching watermelons get destroyed. And the crazy thing is this video with 45 million views, which is just him shooting a watermelon, made $227,000. That's a house, especially in Tennessee. That is a house from one 44 second video where he just shoots a watermelon and records it. And he probably had a lot of fun doing it as well. I mean, this looks really fun. I kind of want to do it myself. And it's not just that one video. He's making about $10 to $29,000 a month. And he doesn't even upload all that regularly. I mean, this guy's an English teacher. He just does this stuff on the side. He just records himself doing cool stuff on the weekends. and he's making more than most people make in their full-time jobs. Man, sometimes I look at this stuff and I think, bro, I'm in the wrong niche. Maybe I should be shooting fruit full-time instead of making YouTube videos about how to do YouTube or alternative education or how to make money online and stuff like that, right? And his channel gets 5 million views a month, right? 10,000 new subscribers every month at age 70s something. It's actually inspiring and it's brain dead simple. All right, the next one can be used in almost any niche, and that's just copying video ideas. Now, notice I didn't say copying the video. I said copying the video idea. And let me give you an example of this because I actually just helped my brother start and grow his YouTube channel just a few months ago. And we found this video right here, highest paying trades jobs that no one is talking about. And it was from a pretty small channel, about 44,000 subscribers, and it had 1.6 million views. So, what did I have Zach do? Well, he copied the idea of the video straight up, but he was smart about it. Highest paying trades jobs that no one is talking about 2025. And then he made his own version of that video. Different thumbnail, different intro, different script, everything. And the video absolutely blew up. Right now, it has over 777,000 views. And this is just getting to the 3month mark. Now, the craziest thing is this was uploaded May 26th, 2025. And 29 days after starting his channel and uploading his first video, he had a $214 AdSense day. And this video has now made over $4,000 for his channel just a few months later. So, we were able to get his channel monetized and get him to making $214 in a single day in 29 days. So, that just shows you how easy and realistic this is if you know what you're doing. So, yeah, basically just copying winning video ideas on YouTube is a valid and legitimate way to grow. And it's actually one of the best ways, which is what I teach. But you might be thinking, Shane, I love what you did with your brother, but I don't want to actually show my face. Well, you can actually make faceless content. Now, there is AI slop videos, which is what we're going to talk about here, but the ones I'm going to show you are actually pretty well-made AI channels, and I wouldn't consider them to be AI slop. Now, there are definitely some AI slop channels out there. There's actually quite a few of them, but I don't recommend making that type of content cuz there's a very good chance that YouTube will actually remove the channel. So, the channels I'm showing you here, just to be very clear in case the creators of these channels uh see this, I think these channels are actually pretty good. These are not AI slop channels, but it just goes to show how easy it is to make channels like this that in some cases are AI slop. So, the first channel is going to be Dumbbell Desk. Now, this channel has only 7,000 subscribers and it makes short fitness videos. For instance, the truth about dead hangs or what happens when you take creatine daily. and his video, Science Behind 3 Minutes of Dead Hanging Every Day, got 495,000 views. And he's making about $1,000 to $4,000 per month from a channel that only has 7,000 subscribers. Now, remember, these tools usually underestimate how much they're making. So, there's a good chance he's actually making more than that. But that's not bad for a channel that only has 7,000 subscribers and there's nobody showing their face. Another example of this is The Modern King. This channel is making 19 to $58,000 a month. They got about 203,000 subscribers. And basically what he usually does is he takes dramatic Tik Tok clips or short form clips and then he adds 30 second AI reactions. That's it. Now, most of his videos are quite controversial and he probably does that on purpose. But yeah, this guy is making tens of thousands of dollars a month with a very simple channel that is very obviously created with AI. Now, another very interesting channel also kind of goes the outrage or controversy route is China Unvarnished. And this channel has about 60,000 subscribers and they're making about $2 to $7,000 a month. And it's just drama Chinese drama clips with dramatic titles. And they upload about nine times per week. It's relatively easy to make and they basically find dramatic clips or drama related clips that are in Chinese and then they sort of translate what's happening in English. They add a dramatic title and then they upload and repeat. Now, the thing is, I don't know if they're actually accurately translating what's happening in English. It could very well be that they're just showing random clips and then they're just making up some sort of dramatic narrative with those random clips. I honestly don't know. I It could be good or it could be bad. I I truly don't know. But with that being said, it is kind of like reality TV, but Chinese related reality TV, which is pretty fascinating to a Westerner. And so I can see why this channel is making thousands of dollars a month. And it is very clearly almost 100% AI created. So you don't have to show your face. You actually don't have to do that much work. A lot of these channels are mostly AI created and you can make thousands of dollars a month. It's as easy as opening a door and stepping through. Speaking of that, that's our next niche. How to open a door. This probably is the most brain dead one yet. I'm not even kidding. This guy, how to basic, which is he's a legendary YouTuber by the way, made a video called How to Open a Door. No voice over, no explanation, just hand opening a door. That's the entire video. Door is closed, hand grabs handle, opens door, door opens. The end. And this simple 15-second video made over $31,600. But here's what gets even more brain dead. Some guy named Paul saw this and thought, I can do that, too. no profile picture, brand new channel, nothing going for him. And his videos are titled how to open a door, how to close a door, how to open a cabinet. And his 11 second how to open a door video that probably took him about 30 seconds total to make made over $971. So that's a good $120,000 an hour activity. Not bad. So if you think these types of videos don't work anymore, well, he actually uploaded this within the last year. And just one of these videos has already made him $971. And again, this probably took him about 30 seconds to a minute to make the entire video. So, not bad. I mean, this is just like the most basic human action turned into content and it worked. I truly do not understand YouTube sometimes, but I respect the hustle. 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? 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. This 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. Now, the next one was very recent and this one is absolutely hilarious and that is making pickle Pepsi at home. So, if you didn't know, pickle Pepsi is a drink offered by KFC in certain areas. I think it's just Canada in certain areas of the US right now and it's gotten a little bit popular in the last few months, but the problem is it's overpriced and you can only get it if you go to KFC. So, this guy M andJ Metal, who was basically just making random videos for a long time and none of his videos really took off, made a video called How to Make Pickle Pepsi at Home for Free. And at the time we first discovered this, it was 7 days ago and he had over 600,000 views already. Now, the production quality looks like a Skype call from 2010 recorded on a webcam that he got 20 years ago. Basically, it was created with a potato. And he is just some elderly guy sitting there explaining how to mix pickles and Pepsi together. It's a 4-minute video, completely unedited. No music, no graphics, nothing fancy. And at the time that I first discovered this, when I was writing the script, he'd already made $2.7,000 from the video. And now, just a few days later, the video has 1.8 8 million views and he's made almost $10,000 from it. So, tell me again your excuse for why YouTube won't work for you. I mean, this gentleman, no offense to him, he's older, probably isn't very good with technology, not necessarily very good on camera. He's using a potato to record his videos, doesn't edit them at all. His thumbnail is just a still shot from the video. And this man has made $10,000 from this video, and it's only going up from here. He's probably going to end up making multiple tens of thousands from this video. Oh, and his channel also blew up. He has almost 100,000 subscribers now. So, unrelated to pickles or pickle Pepsi, this kind of a trend that I've noticed lately on YouTube. If you are an older person, it is like 10 times easier to grow on YouTube. You can post almost anything. Like, it is significantly easier to grow on YouTube because if you think about it, advertisers want to advertise to people who have money. 50 and Above has 80% of the wealth in the United States and it's similar worldwide. 50 and above also likes to watch content from people that they can relate to, aka other people that are 50 and above. So, if you are an older creator and you make content, it is significantly easier if you use the right system. Live training this Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Check it out in the description in the pin comment below. I look forward to seeing you there. Don't miss out on it. Also, put it on your calendar so you don't miss out. But yeah, if you use the right system for making content, it becomes significantly easier for you to actually grow on YouTube if you are an older creator. And that's what I've noticed over and over again. And this guy is just another example of that. So yeah, congrats to him. Really cool story. Absolutely love what he's doing. Now, the next one is a really fun and creative way of using AI and that is making fun of people in the form of a song using AI. So there's a bunch of these that they've done, but basically they find memes or funny videos on the internet and then they take the comments from those videos and then turn them into a song. So, just as an example, this guy right here, bros built like the Snapchat logo. And this video alone got 4.2 million views. Now, here's how it works, cuz you might be thinking like, "Oh my gosh, I don't think I could do this." You take a video of someone that went viral on the internet where a lot of people are making jokes or they're roasting it or something like that. And then you turn those roasting comments into a song using a tool like Suno AI. So, you hear comments like, "Ignore the haters, keep your chin up, bro." Turned into actual music. And the channel is making $5 to $16,000 a month doing this. And finally, last one on the list is making boring content teaching job skills. So, you probably do a job yourself and you probably have to train people occasionally, like new people that come into your job. You train them how to use the cash register, how to use the phone, stuff that's insanely simple to you. It's brain dead simple for you. But for someone new that's coming in, it's not as simple, right? It's actually kind of difficult. They don't know how to do it. And so your job is brain dead easy, brain dead simple to you, but to other people who are just coming in and trying to learn the job, it's not. And so there is a ton of different channels out there that train other people how to do the basics of their job as well. One of them is the financial controller. This guy teaches accountants how to become what's known as a financial controller, which is a very high level accounting position. Now, this is probably quite boring for most people. It's probably even boring for him, but he's making multiple six figures per year making this boring content because people will pay for skills that makes them money. And career advancement is worth a lot. Josh Matakor is another example. He's teaching people how to do basic IT stuff, basic cyber security stuff in many cases. And he started off making about $1,000 a month. Then he got his dream job with his channel. Then he grew it to 5,000 a month, then 10,000 a month. And eventually he had $186,000 month. That's over $2 million a year. And my brother Zach is doing the same thing. He's been in the trades for 29 years. And he just teaches people about the trades. And after 29 days, he made it to $214 in a single day. And less than 3 months later, about 2 and 1/2 months in, he had a $447 day. And again, it's just teaching people stuff that's insanely easy to you. Stuff that you've probably known for like 10, 20 years. Oh, and by the way, all those people that I just showed are my current or former students. They all learned how to do this from me. And if you want to know how to do it as well, attend the live training down in the description and the pin comment below, and I'll show you exactly how to do it. I'll also give you an AI that makes it a lot easier, and I'll answer any question you have about growing and making money on YouTube. So, do not miss out on it. This is a one-time training. The AI I'm giving away one time as well. Make sure you put it on your calendar. Tuesday, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Do not miss out on it, and I look forward to seeing you there. Additionally, very rarely, probably one in a 100red people, maybe even one in a thousand people that watch my videos want to work with me and my team one-on-one, right? They want one-on-one coaching. Now, obviously, we are very limited with how many people we can work with one-on-one. But if that is you, go ahead, sign up for a call down the description and the pin comment below, and you can apply to work with us. 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. If not, totally understand. just enjoy my free content, attend my free live trainings, and you can get a ton of value out of that as well. But if you want to see how I grew this channel that you're watching this video on right now, then I actually made a video on that, and you can check that out by clicking right here.