How To Pick a YouTube Niche That Can Make You Rich (With Claude AI)

The richest YouTubers right now are the ones who picked a profitable niche from day one. And today, I'm going to show you how to do that with Claude AI. But first, look at this guy. Luke Korns released a video saying that he has 2 million subscribers, but he's broke. So having a huge channel does not mean that you're making real money. Meanwhile, I was able to start a second YouTube channel from scratch, and it got to over $30,000 in the first month just by picking the right niche. And even on my main channel with 1.5 million subscribers, I've been making multiple six figures a month for years now. And there were long stretches where I wasn't getting that many views. But the right niche means that you can make real money with just a few hundred or a few thousand views per video. And in this video, I'm going to give you a how-to guide to pick a YouTube niche that can make you rich, and we're going to be doing it using Claude AI. And if you appreciate me making this type of content and you want me to make more of it in the future, then gently cheers that like button, and let's jump into it right now. Okay, so before we get into how to do this with Claude, first, we need to understand what makes a niche profitable, right? Like what actually makes a niche profitable? And here's the golden rule. Good niches solve real problems for real people with real money. That's it. If your niche does not check all three of those boxes, there's a very good chance that you're going to struggle. Now, some people get hung up on that third one. When I say real money, I do not mean that you have to target rich people. What I mean is that a first world English-speaking audience is generally going to have a lot more money than many other countries in the world, right? They have this thing called disposable income. Now, a friend of mine had an Arabic channel and an English channel a long time ago, and he was teaching pretty much the same thing on both. And I warned him that he shouldn't put that much effort into the Arabic channel because it would be significantly harder for him to grow and monetize it. Now, don't get me wrong. There are plenty of people who speak Arabic and have a lot of money, but you have to really dial in your targeting if you want to reach just those people, and he was not doing that. He was appealing to beginners, and he found it to be about 10 times harder to make money Now, let me show you the exact opposite of that, because I do not want you to walk away thinking English is the only option. There's a community member of mine named Thomas, and Thomas does not make content in English. He helps wealthy French dads, who are typically executives, CEOs, and high performers that are 40 plus years old, lose belly fat so that they can get their energy back so that they can spend more time with their families. So he's not helping French speakers in general. He's not just helping dads in general. He's helping executives, CEOs, and high performers who have money and no time, and that is a much smaller pool of people than the entire French-speaking internet, and it makes far more money because he dialed the targeting all the way in. And Thomas was able to get this business to eight figures a year, and almost all of it came from the content that he makes. So the rule is not that you have to speak English. The rule is that the people that you're talking to have to actually have money. So what are you actually looking for? Well, number one is a valuable problem that people are actively trying to solve. In many cases, this is going to be a painful problem as well. Number two is an audience with money, meaning employed adults and not kids. And number three is a clear way to monetize beyond just YouTube ads. Now, you can absolutely make money just from adsense alone. Last month, we made about $33,000. But if you do that, you're putting all of your eggs in one basket, and you're leaving a ton of money on the table. So on my second channel, Shane Hummus, the content growth engine, I made about $37,000 in a month. And that channel got about 10,000 views. So I made about $3,700 per 1,000 views on that channel. And the average entertainment channel out there makes about $5 per 1,000 views if they're lucky. So I can make a full-time income at 10,000 views. In fact, I could make a full-time income much less than 10,000 views because I am targeting the right people, solving painful problems for them, and those people actually have money to spend. Our community member, Carla, is the exact same way. She had a tiny channel with about 1,500 subscribers, and she was posting videos that would get 100 to 200 views per video if she was lucky. And yet it didn't matter because she was targeting the right audience, wealthy business owners that wanted to outsource certain processes within their business. And because of that, she was able to land a $106,000 contract from a video that just got 100 to 200 views. So what should you avoid? Avoid oversaturated niches like gaming and generic fitness. Now fitness is really good. Also avoid entertainment-only content. And generally speaking, avoid audiences without money. Now, there are exceptions to that as well. For instance, some of the highest-earning channels on YouTube's platform ever are kids' channels. And so obviously they're targeting kids. But the people actually buying the stuff for the kids are their parents. So sometimes you can target one audience as long as there's another person who's a stakeholder who will actually buy stuff for that audience. So if you're selling something very cheap, sometimes you can go the mass market route and target audiences without money. But that route is an endless hamster wheel because you always have to get millions of views to make a decent amount of money. And if your channel ever falls off and you drop from millions of views to only hundreds of thousands of views, it becomes significantly harder to make anything. So if you are in that situation right now, do not panic because you can pivot to a more profitable audience. And here is the mindset shift. You do not need millions of subscribers. I have over 1 million subscribers on my main channel, and I'm telling you, that is not what makes the money. What you need is the right audience. A small audience with money beats a huge broke audience every single time. Okay, next step. Most people tell you to look inwards, and then they leave you there. So let me be more specific about what you are actually looking for. You need to figure out what you are actually good at, even though you are probably convinced that you are not good at anything. And that is the real block. It's not that you have no niche, it's that you cannot see the one you already have. And I have seen people waste over 5 years picking a niche before. In fact, I've seen one client waste over 10 years picking a niche. And we even got a comment on the last live I did from someone who spent over 20 years picking their niche. And here's the reason that it takes people so long. They think their niche is outside of them, somewhere out there waiting to be found. And for over 90% of the people that I help, it turns out the niche was already inside of them the whole time. It's already in your past. So you are a living, breathing human being, and you have to center your niche about what you have already achieved, or the problems that you've already overcome. Now here's the part that still shocks me. I'll talk to somebody who's been doing one specific thing for 10, 20, sometimes 30 years, and I ask them what they're good at, and they say, oh, I don't know. And it's honestly bizarre. They have decades of hard-won experience sitting right there, and they cannot see it, because to them, it is just normal. Now let me give you a real example of what this looks like when it gets fixed. This is a community member of mine named Joaquin. When I first talked to him, he was making videos about productivity and study hacks, kind of in the style of Ali Abdaal, and he was targeting basically everybody. And it was not working for him. And so I sat down with him, and the only thing I was trying to do was find out the one thing that he was so good at that nobody else could copy. It turns out he was a foreign exchange student who got into an elite university in the United States. Now listen to that one more time. He was not just someone who got into an elite university in the US. He was a foreign student who got into an elite university. And that is extremely specific, and it's extremely valuable to the right person. So we reworked his entire niche around helping foreign students get into elite universities in the US, and it worked incredibly well. He made it to $80,000 in a single month very shortly after starting this offer, and then something funny happened. He got so oversubscribed that he had to put people on a wait list, and he had to stop posting videos for a while because he had too many customers coming in. And the craziest thing is, guys, Joaquin was 18 years old. So if you're watching this and you're 30 or 40 years old, I guarantee you, you have a valuable niche. You just aren't thinking about it because Joaquin was confident that he did not have a valuable niche at 18 years old, and it turned out he did have one. You just have to uncover it. And that niche was sitting inside of him the entire time. So he just could not see it because to him, being a foreign student who got into an Ivy League school was just his life. So let's find yours. Use these three filters, and by the end, you should have three to five ideas written down. Filter number one is what problems have you overcome, right? What have you overcome in your life? Because the best content comes from real experience. What problems did you solve? What did you struggle with? What would people pay to solve faster or better with less effort? Some examples here is maybe you lost weight, right? You were overweight, and then you lost the weight. And maybe you did it in a very specific situation. Like you have a job where you travel a lot. Well, hey, there you go. You could make a niche about helping people lose weight even if they're traveling. This is actually a problem that I have a lot because I travel a lot and I do tend to gain weight when I travel. Or maybe you switch careers into a higher paying job. You could help other people get into that high paying job as well. This is actually one of the most common niches that we've helped people with. And this is great because there's literally tens of thousands of different types of jobs and sub jobs and sub careers, et cetera, out there. Maybe you started a side hustle, and that would be the make money niche, right? You could teach other people how to make money with that side hustle as well. Maybe you rescued a marriage that was headed for divorce. Okay, great. So you can help other people rescue theirs. Maybe there was a time in your life where you were an alcoholic and you overcame it, so you could help other people overcome alcoholism. Every single one of those is a real niche from someone that I have either met or I've worked with directly that's in my community. So the point is that you are the proof that it's possible. And this is where people undersell themselves the hardest. So let me give you one more example. There's a community member of mine named Guy, and he is retired. Now, he was not trying to build an empire. He just wanted something to supplement his income during retirement. He also has tinnitus, which is that constant ringing sound in your ears. And it is very debilitating. My dad has it as well. A lot of veterans have it, and it is really hard to deal with. Now, most people would file that under problems, not assets inside of their brain. But he built his entire niche around helping other people get relief from tinnitus. And the way he monetizes is by doing product reviews on hearing aids. And his goal before he joined our community was to make $1,000 to $2,000 extra a month. And he was able to get to that goal before he even had 500 subscribers on YouTube. Now, $1,500 a month is probably not going to impress anyone on this channel. But he just wanted enough to supplement his retirement, and that's what was going to make a massive difference in his quality of life during his retirement. Think about what that actually is. He took the thing that annoys him every single day and turned it into a reason that people trust him. When life gave him lemons, he turned it into lemonade. And the thing that you are embarrassed about or the thing that is too small is very often the perfect niche for you. Now, filter number two is what do you already consume? Check your YouTube watch history and go back a long way. What do you binge watch, right? What are you naturally curious about? You're probably going to make 50 to 100 videos in this niche, so you need to pick something that you will not hate a couple months from now. And I'm not giving you a generic advice to follow your passion, okay? But at the same time, I also do not want you to pick something that bores you to death. So if you are interested enough in something to binge watch content about it, you're probably interested enough to make content about it. So filter number three is what are you naturally good at? What do people ask you for help with? What comes easily to you but seems hard to everyone else? Write down at least five things for each one of these filters. And I recommend you literally pause the video and write these down right now if you have not already. Now, let me give you two frameworks to help you dig these out. Framework number one is the time machine. If you could go back in time and you had 15 minutes to tell the younger version of yourself something that would save them a massive amount of time, effort, and or money, what would you tell them? Maybe there are several things you would tell them. Write all of them down because there is a very good chance one of those things is going to be your niche. Now, I did this exact exercise myself, and it was obvious. I would have gone back and told myself to be very careful about which college degree I picked and which career path I went down. And if you look at the earlier videos on my channel, this is exactly what I was talking about. Picking the right college degrees, avoiding the wrong ones, and choosing the right career path. That is how the Shane Hummus channel and the Shane Hummus brand started. Now, framework number two is something that I stole from Naval Ravikant, who I think is a very smart guy. He says that the best way to pick a niche is to pick something that feels like play to you, but looks like work to other people. Let me repeat that because it's important. It feels like play to you, but it looks like work to other people. If you can find something like that, there is a very good chance that you have just found a winning niche. Now, I am not the only person who has sat down and run through these exact exercises. My own brother, Zach, did the same exact exercise. When he started, he could not tell me what his marketing angle was. He genuinely did not know what made him different. And he came from a skilled trades background, so he assumed there was nothing there. But there was something there. He worked with the same filters that I just gave you, and we landed on a niche that was already in high demand, and he had real experience in it. And his very first video ended up at 800,000 views. And he made $214 in a single day, just 29 days after he started. 29 days. So he did not get better at making these videos in 29 days. He just stopped pointing the camera at the wrong niche. Now, here's the honest problem with everything that I just told you. Doing this on your own is hard, right? Most people go through those filters, they stare at a blank page, and they write down nothing because the thing they are good at is invisible to them. Like I said, I meet people with decades of experience in one specific thing who cannot name a single thing that they are good at, right? So you probably have a million-dollar niche sitting underneath all of your experience, and I really do not want that experience to go to waste. You have already solved lots of problems for yourself. You're an expert on certain things. You can give a ton of value to the world, to other people, to the market, by helping other people overcome the problems that you've already overcome yourself. So I built a Claude skill that pulls it out for you. It's called the Niche Validator. And let me walk you through how it works because it's really simple. You open up Claude, and then you run the Niche Validator skill. Then it interviews you. Now, it's going to ask you what you're good at, it's going to ask you what you actually have real experience with, and it's going to ask you what you have gotten good at over the past few years, and then it's going to keep digging because your first answer is almost never the real one. Your job is just to answer the questions honestly. Don't try to steer it in a certain direction or be biased or anything like that. Just answer it honestly. And here's the rule that matters. The better answers you put in, the better the niche you're going to get out. So do not give it one-word answers. Give it messy, specific, embarrassing details because that's where the money is. And you can easily just talk to it, by the way. You don't have to type. You can literally just talk with voice command. And Joaquin, being a foreign exchange student, is exactly the kind of detail that most people would never think to mention. Now, there is a lite version of this Claude Niche Validator down in the description in the pinned comment below, and it is completely free. It should be the third link in the description in the pinned comment. You can click down there to check it out. And I'm going to be giving away the pro version that can be personalized and customized to you and instructions on exactly how to pick your niche and do that, plus how to get started step by step in the live training that I'm doing this week. You can click the first link in the description in the pinned comment below to check that out. And that one is the full build and is trained on a lot more data from real profitable channels. And like I said, it can be personalized to you. So go grab whichever one fits where you're at. And I look forward to seeing you at the training. And if you're seeing this in the future, still click on that link because it'll send you to a waitlist so that you can attend the next training that we do. YouTube and building your personal brand just got 10 times easier and nobody's talking about it. And the reason it got 10 times easier is because of AI and specifically Claude AI. And that's what we're going to be talking about in this week's live training that we're doing. Click the link down the description in the pinned comment below. I will be there. I'll be answering questions before, during and after. We'll also be giving you an AI that's been designed to help you pick your niche if you don't have one in the first place. Or if you already have one, it's going to help you make it 10 times better. So we worked very hard on this AI. People absolutely love it. We've literally gotten hundreds of comments from people that love it. So you do not want to miss out on it. And if you're watching this in the future for whatever reason, or it's already past the time of the live training, still click on that link because we will be having more live trainings in the future. And you will be the first person to know because it'll put you on a waitlist for that. But with that being said, it's completely free. No reason not to attend. Click that link in the description in the pinned comment below, and I'll see you on the other side. All right. Step three is to see it in action. So let me show you what actually works. First, the winners. This is a community member of mine, Felix and Friends. And when we were working together, he had 155,000 subscribers, and he was making over $700,000 a month. And that was ads, plus his community and program revenue. And almost all of it came from the program side, not from the ads. And he makes stock market content. And specifically, he talks about options trading. And a lot of people who follow him are older people who want to learn how to invest their money intelligently. So he solves expensive problems for people who actually have money. And here's another one. And I thought this story was interesting because he told it himself on a podcast. This is Thomas Frank. Now, Thomas Frank has a main channel with around 3 million subscribers, and I've actually been following him for years. And he was making decent money with it, but it was not steady. It would go up and down. So he started a second channel, Thomas Frank Explains. And at the time of that podcast, the second channel was around 100,000 subscribers. And very quickly, he got that channel to over $100,000 a month. And that was far more than he was making from the 3 million subscriber channel. And here is why. The second channel was hyper specific. It is just Notion tutorials, right? He sells digital products, specifically Notion templates. And so the money is templates first, ads a distant second. And he was targeting people who want to optimize their productivity using one specific tool. So he solves a specific problem for specific people. And those people have money to spend. Now, let me show you the other side of this. Peter McKinnon has 6 million subscribers. And you would assume he's making $10 million a year. But he's making somewhere around 1 million a year. And that's in ads, plus sponsorships, plus his presets and product line. So it is a great business. But look at the ratio. Felix was doing close to what Peter McKinnon does in a year in a single month with a fraction of the audience. And that's because photography is oversaturated and it's hard to sell into. And so if you're going to go into a niche like that, you have to niche down. You cannot just do general photography unless you want to have to get literally millions of subscribers to make really good money. And here's one more, and this one's extreme. Now, this guy is not someone that I've worked with, but he has a solar installation business where he installs solar systems for large businesses. And every time he installs a system, he makes tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars on a single contract. And he has a tiny channel with less than 1,000 subscribers. And his videos get almost no views, and he barely ever posts. And yet he reported that he made over $500,000 of his money from YouTube. And that did not come from ads, obviously. It came from contracts that walked in through those videos. And that is an extreme example, but it demonstrates exactly what I'm talking about. So the next step is to understand the money. Now, there are two ways to make money on YouTube. Way number one is the passive way, which is YouTube ads and maybe some affiliate links in the description. Way number two is the non-passive way, which is basically every other method. And the main one is selling your own stuff. Now, in a lot of cases, way number two makes you 10 times or even 100 times more money than ads alone. Digital products are things that you create once and sell repeatedly. And you could sell those for like $50. Online courses can go anywhere from $200 to $2,000. Templates can go from $10 to $100. Ebooks can go for $10 to $100. Coaching can go from $500 to $5,000 or even more. And memberships can go from $20 to $200 per month. So how does this actually work? You make free YouTube videos that solve small problems for people. Those viewers get to know, like, and trust you. And then you offer them a problem that solves the problem faster, more completely, or with more support or with less hassle. And that is when a small percentage of those people will buy from you. Now, the clearest example of this is Thomas Frank's Notion channel again. He gives away free tutorials on how to build really good Notion setups for different situations. And then he sells the templates for $50 to $200. And he makes more money with that small channel than he does with his 3 million subscriber one. So for a niche to make you rich, you need three things. Your experience, meaning did you actually overcome the problem? Your interest, meaning will you still enjoy this long-term? And money potential, meaning does the audience actually have money? And if you are doing something and you are not making money from it, that is a hobby. And there's nothing wrong with hobbies. Hobbies can be great, but they are not sustainable. Because making videos is work. So if you are not making money from the work you are doing, you will quit. And it will also kind of ruin your hobby as well. So when all three of those circles overlap, that is going to be your goldmine. So here's what that actually looks like in real life. A community member of mine named Bill teaches accountants who are making $50,000 to $100,000 a year how to get a job as a financial controller. And financial controller is a high-level accountant. And that role pays six figures, sometimes multiple six figures a year. So look at what Bill is actually selling. He is selling somebody a $40,000 raise. And that is why he can charge what he charges. And that's why he was able to make $70,000 in a single month. His niche is not accounting. His niche is accountants who want a specific promotion. And that difference is worth tens of thousands of dollars a month to him. So let's talk about the best money niches. Specific fitness, dating, self-improvement, and specific hobbies. So the reason those work is high CPM, meaning you make a lot of money per 1,000 views. You're targeting working adults with income, and you're targeting products that are easy to sell. And the niches you want to avoid, unless you're okay with needing tens of millions of views, are gaming, entertainment, vlogs, and anything with an audience under 18. And here is the fastest gut check that I can give you. Does your niche relate to wealth, health, or relationships? And those are the three big money categories, because almost everyone on earth has a problem with at least one of them. So if your niche touches one of those, you are probably fine. If it does not, that's okay. But monetization might be a little bit harder, and you might have to do a little bit more research, right? But the whole point is, if you're not sure about what to pick, pick something under those three categories, health, wealth, and relationships. Now, again, if you're having trouble selecting your niche, that's exactly what I'm going to be covering in this week's live training. Click the link in the description in the pinned comment below. Or even if you already have a niche, we're going to help you make your niche 10 times better. We're going to help you select what's known as the niche 2.0 and create your niche hypothesis statement like never before. Do not miss out on it. Looking forward to seeing you there. And I'll be answering questions before, during, and after too. All right, now the next step is to evaluate your niches, right? So take those three to five ideas from earlier. You can run them through the Clod Niche Validator to pressure test them, or you can just take action right away and start making content on all of them. And that second option is actually what I did on my main channel. I made content on career stuff, college degree stuff, grant writing because I used to write grants, personal finance, several other topics. But the one that took off was the college degree and the career content. So I went with that. And here's the thing that you absolutely have to understand. You are the niche. So I'm having you pick a specific topic, but the overarching principle is that you are the niche. Because I have pivoted so many times, right? My channel has evolved as I have evolved. And you are a growing, changing human being. And the beautiful thing about a YouTube channel is they can evolve right along with you. So yes, pick a specific niche to start or pick a few and just go with whichever one takes off. But know that later on, you can pivot because once your audience gets big enough, they start watching for you instead of watching for the topic. Now, when someone picks a niche, it's usually either too broad or too specific. Too broad is by far the most common mistake that I see. That said, I have definitely seen people pick niches that are too specific as well. So you are always going to have to adjust a little bit. You will tinker with it, test different ideas inside of it, and eventually you will find the sweet spot where you are not too narrow and not too broad. But by attending a live training, we can help you dial that in much more quickly, right? So click that link in the description and comment below. Now, before I let you go, I want to kill the objection that I know some of you are sitting on right now. You are thinking this only works if you are in one of those big, sexy money niches, right? So let me just rapid fire some people at you, okay? There's a community member named Steven who teaches one specific piece of CAD software called Siemens NX. And he does not teach engineering and he does not teach CAD in general. He teaches one piece of software that engineers have used at work. And within a couple months of starting, he made $12,000. And one of the people who purchased his program was a meta-engineer. Bill teaches accountants how to become financial controllers. And he made $70,000 in a single month. Thomas helps wealthy French dads in their 40s lose belly fat and have more energy. And he does it in the French market. And he made it to eight figures a year. Guy is retired. He has tinnitus. And he reviews hearing aids for other people who have tinnitus, which got him to $1,500 a month before he even hit 500 subscribers. Now he's making far more than that. Joaquin helps foreign students get into elite Ivy League universities. And he hit $80,000 in a single month. Felix teaches options trading to older investors. And he was doing over $700,000 a month. Thomas Frank teaches one productivity app. And he sells templates for it. And he made it to $100,000 a month. The Solar Guy posts almost nothing and closed over $500,000 in contracts in a single year. And my brother Zach came out of Skilled Trades. And 29 days after posting his first video, he made $214 in a single day. That's a $70,000 plus a year run rate. So he went from zero to a full-time income in less than one month. Damian and Kennedy make a full-time income teaching Christians how to find their ideal partner and people who are already married how to have an ideal Christian marriage. And I can just go on and on and on. Now look at that list. Options trading, notion templates, accounting promotions, CAD software, belly fat, hearing aids, Ivy League admissions, and solar panels. Those have almost nothing in common with each other. Not one of them is a big, broad category. And not one of them required millions of subscribers either. Every single one is a specific person with a specific expensive problem and the money to solve it. And that is the whole game. And it works in any niche, including yours. So here's the bottom line. You do not need millions of subscribers to get rich. You need three things. The right problem to solve, an audience with money, and a way to sell them solutions. Your experience plus a specific focus plus an audience that actually has money equals wealth. So remember the lessons. Specific meets general most of the time. A money audience beats a big audience. And your experience is your advantage. And most importantly, action beats perfection. And I promise you that if you just make a bunch of videos, your niche will find you. The worst thing you could do is waste five or 10 or 20 years trying to pick the perfect one. But if you want help pulling it out of your head, grab the light version of the Clawed Niche Validator down in the description in the pinned comment below. Get the full version as well as personalizing it to yourself by attending the live training this week. That's the first link in the description in the pinned comment below. And I know that for the vast majority of you, you're going to watch my free content, get a ton of value out of it. You're going to grab my free resources that I spend lots of time on and get a ton of value out of those. And you're going to attend my live trainings, which are completely free and get a ton of value out of that. And we are never going to end up working together, right? Even though I get hundreds of comments, emails, DMs from people saying how amazing all these free resources are, I do it all for free. With that being said, there's going to be 1% of you or even 0.1% of you out there that want a one-on-one mentorship experience, right? You want one-on-one handholding, or you just want us to literally do the work for you. If that sounds like you, click the link in the description in the pinned comment below. Should be the second link down there to book a call. 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. Only book the call if you're very serious about growing and making money on YouTube. We are very limited in the amount of people we can accept. Right now, we're only accepting five people into this current cohort. And historically, we've only accepted about 18% of people who apply for a call. And the types of people we typically work with are going to be people who have at least 10 years of career experience, or they're overachievers in their profession. Basically, people who have had life experience, they have wisdom, they have problems that they've solved, and they can help other people solve those problems. But we also help business owners that want to use YouTube to get more views, get more leads, and make more revenue, as well as growing their brand. We also help YouTubers who are getting views and struggling with monetization. And we help YouTubers who are crushing it, but they want to crush it harder. And we help people who are big on other social media platforms, but they want to bring that audience over to YouTube, because they know that YouTube is the best. So if that sounds like you, click the second link in the description in the pinned comment below to book a call. But only do it if you're very serious about growing and making money on YouTube, as obviously, working one-on-one with people is very expensive for us to deliver, and it's going to be very expensive for you to buy as well. With that being said, if you want to check out another video on exactly how we helped my brother go from zero to a full-time income in less than one month, then go ahead and click right here to check that out.