It can seem difficult to remain faceless in a time in which videos are the dominant format for everything.
Short-form video remains the most popular kind of content, and even things like courses are often done using videos now.
For many, having to be on camera can be uncomfortable for any number of reasons. Even if you’re comfortable with being on camera, you might run into issues like not having all of the equipment to make it look professional, or you might just not feel like getting fully dressed up each time you want to make a video.
By utilizing AI, however, you can create a wide variety of videos that either don’t show a person at all – or still show a face, just not your own. If you’re uncomfortable with your voice, that too can be AI generated for the voiceover.
In tandem, these tools can be used to generate a ton of different videos with no prior knowledge required, allowing you to break into a few different niches and start generating profits with relative ease.
Launch Profitable AI-Generated Video Courses
If you’re proficient in any skill, whether it be business related or just a hobby, it’s worth making some courses about it to share your knowledge in a way that you can profit off of it. Many people are looking for trustworthy sources of knowledge, and you can easily put together a strong video course without appearing on camera.
One of the most popular forms of video courses is actually very simple, and doesn’t typically require a camera at all. Many video courses are screen recordings of slide shows, in which you go slide by slide, use your cursor as a pointer, and discuss the content on each slide.
If you don’t feel comfortable or confident using your own voice, this can be done using an AI voiceover. There are a wide variety of different platforms available, so just use the one you feel is the best suited for your content. As long as the voice lines up with the slides, which may take a little bit of editing, it should come out just fine.
Another great way to make your video courses faceless is by having AI generate little animated scenes for the videos. There are plenty of courses out there that are entirely done in a flat 2D or even simple 3D animation, and AI is capable of producing these with the right prompting.
Animated video guides are great for children and adults alike, as they feel more relaxed and less stern. This would be preferable for things of a less serious nature, like a course on how to get started with gardening. However, it can and has been used in serious courses as well, such as those on growing your business.
Some people, however, prefer serious content for serious topics, and respond better to platforms like the video slideshows.
No matter what option you choose, you can create these quickly and easily by finding and using the right AI platforms. ElevenLabs, for example, is a great AI voiceover tool, and it’s free to try. For the commercial license, however, you do need to pay, but it’s just $5 per month for the cheapest commercial license tier.
Slide shows can be made and synced with voiceovers with ease using Canva, and there are tons of different AI tools for making animations, such as ChatGPT’s Sora.
If you combine these, you’ll be able to produce plenty of video courses with ease, and then sell them on websites like Udemy or Teachable, or even your own storefront.
Prompt Tip: When scripting AI voiceovers for slide-based video courses, don’t just ask the AI to “explain the topic.” Prompt it to “write as if speaking to someone brand new to this subject, using plain examples and numbered steps.”
Turn Existing Content Into Monetized Audiobooks and Podcasts
If you’re interested in breaking into faceless videos to further spread awareness of your brand and niche knowledge, there’s a high chance that you already have a decent amount of content. Whether it’s your own articles or some PLR you picked up, this text-based content can be repurposed into monetizable audio-only content, such as audiobooks and podcasts.
Many people typically associate audiobooks with only being for fiction, and podcasts only being for entertainment or group discussions. However, these can both be used in a similar fashion to the video courses, giving people important information regarding how to improve their skills in certain regards.
Just like with the voiceovers, though, you might not feel comfortable recording long-term audio content, especially without all of the right tools like a microphone or audio mixer. These, too, can be made using AI voiceovers with your scripts. If you want, you can simply throw the existing content you have into a voiceover program and get it to read it out line-by-line.
However, you might consider either rewriting it somewhat yourself or having AI help you rewrite it into a way that sounds a bit more conversational and natural, making for a better voice-only experience for your listeners.
If you want to make it even more natural for a podcast setting, you can even turn it into a bit of a conversation, using multiple different AI voices to bounce questions and discussions off of one another, making a more realistic conversation that listeners may find more intriguing.
Once it’s done, you can either upload it to a platform like Spotify or iTunes to get paid per listen, or you can put it behind a paywall on a platform like Patreon or Gumroad. A monthly subscription from a website like this would allow viewers to get a consistent flow of content, and allow you to have a more consistent flow of income.
Another way to profit off of these over time is by getting sponsorships. If your podcasts or audiobooks become popular enough, you might get the attention of various brands who will pay you to do an ad placement for their brand. This gives you a secondary source of income in conjunction with your existing monetization from your listeners.
Given how easy it is to produce episodes, you can produce multiple in advance and schedule them to release, giving you a nearly passive source of income based on your existing content.
Prompt Tip: Before turning text into an audio script, ask the AI to rewrite the content “in a conversational tone, using contractions, simple transitions, and rhetorical questions that sound natural when spoken aloud.”
Create Viral, Profitable TikTok Storytelling Accounts
One of the more unique forms of faceless videos you can make is found consistently on TikTok. There are plenty of accounts on TikTok that produce storytelling videos, which aren’t strictly locked to telling fictitious stories like you might think.
A storytelling account can do anything from recent trending news to true crime or fun facts. As long as it has a hook that will keep people binge-watching multiple slides and videos of yours, it can do well by earning you creator rewards.
Oftentimes, these pages are already run using AI voiceovers, and simply integrate generic images along with stock TikTok effects for the video. As long as your account sticks with a consistent theme, you can produce tons of AI voiceover videos that will attract a large audience with ease.
You’ll want to stick with a consistent theme because if you keep jumping from topic to topic, you might annoy some of your subscribers. If they sign up for more trivia or sports news videos, but start getting true crime out of nowhere, it might be obnoxious to them. Keep each topic to a separate account if you want to do multiple subjects.
Once you pick your topic and create your account, you can start making videos. You can either write the scripts for the current news yourself, or have AI compile the most recent news for you.
Certain AI programs like Grok are better with current trends than others, but if it’s something broad like trivia or true crime that doesn’t require current updates, you can stick with programs like ChatGPT.
In order to keep viewers’ attention, you should integrate plenty of things like animated captions and quickly transition between the images you’re using for your video. You want to keep viewers hooked and scrolling continuously because the more views you get, the more you’ll earn from TikTok’s creator rewards program.
The creator rewards program replaced the creator funds program, but it’s fundamentally the same concept. As you generate more views with your videos, you’ll be given monetary incentives from TikTok to continue operating on their platform. These, too, can be monetized further with things like sponsorships or ads, which can be easily integrated into most videos without most users even noticing. It’s common enough that it won’t stand out as some long sponsored segment to your average viewer, so it won’t diminish your view count.
This method requires and is most often seen with no face or voice from the original creator. Almost nobody uses their own face on storytelling accounts, and nearly everyone uses the same few TikTok AI voices for them, so you can be sure that your content will fit right in.
Prompt Tip: To generate binge-worthy scripts, prompt AI with: “Write a short script that starts with a shocking fact or statistic, breaks it into 3 fast-paced segments, and ends with a cliffhanger or unexpected twist.”
Build Passive Income with Faceless Animated Listicle Videos
If you’re not familiar with listicle style videos, they’re essentially just numbered lists of the best products or something in a similar vein. For example, you might find a listicle titled “Top 5 Kitchen Gadgets for Thanksgiving,” with each one giving you the what and why of the product(s) they’re promoting.
These are almost always done for profit, as the products shown are usually affiliate links. This means that anyone who sees the mini-review of the product and buys it through your link ends up generating some commission for you from the sale of the product.
While some users actually buy the products first and show them using them, you could do this without ever even touching the item and doing it purely faceless. By integrating things like the product’s promotional images and some clean animations along with an AI voiceover, you can still convince plenty of people to buy these products through your affiliate links.
The basic structure of these videos starts off with a somewhat dramatic tagline of a title. It’s usually something attention-grabbing like “Top 10 Amazon finds I couldn’t live without” or “Top 5 travel accessories you didn’t know you needed.”
This hooks viewers in, and then you quickly go through each item so as to retain their attention. The voiceover should talk positively about each product and quickly list off the benefits and use cases of each item.Then you can finish by telling your audience that links to the products are in the description or in a link in your bio profile.
For the script, you can either draft it yourself for the AI voiceover tool to read, or you can use a service like ChatGPT to help list off all of the benefits of the item in question. You can directly copy and paste the Amazon link to the product into ChatGPT and it can give you a quick, punchy script for a listicle video. There, you can add your affiliate link, and all purchases made through there will net you some commission from bringing in those sales.
If you make plenty of these and they pick up momentum, all of your videos will get recommended to people who watch these listicle videos. Users on platforms like Instagram and TikTok watch tons of these and make impulse purchases from them all the time.
Prompt Tip: For product-based listicles, feed AI the Amazon URL or product features and say: “Write an enthusiastic, 2-sentence benefit summary for each item as if convincing a distracted TikTok viewer to click and buy fast.”
With a large enough audience, you’ll set up a consistent stream of passive income with very little effort on your end, just by introducing people to these products. While there may be a small learning curve to using some of these platforms and AI programs if you’ve never touched them before, you can be sure that it’s easily doable for anyone, anywhere.
With just a little bit of know-how and some minimal effort, you can set up multiple long-term streams of profit that don’t need very much attention. In fact, for all of these examples, you could set up a week’s worth of content for all of them in a single day, leaving you to enjoy the rest of your week as your content works for you, without ever once having to appear on camera or buy any specialty equipment.
