One does not have to appear on camera to make money on YouTube. In fact, some of the most successful channels on the platform are faceless. For instance, there is Simply Aviation, a channel that serves the travel and airplane niche, and while the channel has no formal face of a host associated with it, they monetize handsomely. How do they do it? Let’s explore the nature of this unique channel in this interesting case study.
What Does Simply Aviation Channel Do?
The airplane and travel niche channel have carved out a unique position for itself in the YouTube sphere because of the somewhat unique approach they take. They are not the only YouTube channel in this niche, in fact, they are not even the only faceless one. But they do something unique called “Tripreports.”
The goal of these is to put the viewers into an airplane and allow them to experience what a flight in a certain airplane is like. The entire experience is presented from start to finish: the flyer arrives at the airport, goes through the check-in and security process, boards the plane, walks through the cabin, receives in-flight service, and finally deboards the plane once it has arrived at its destination.
This truly puts the viewer in the shoes of the flying party, providing a wholly total experience from the start of a flight to its finish. Each video opens with an itinerary that displays the flight’s map, then the cabin, the seat, the boarding area, and even the taxiing are shown. Finally, the viewer can experience the take-off, in-flight entertainment, dinner and breakfast services, the approach of the landing area, the actual landing, and the deboarding.
The coolest part is that most videos are from different airlines which allows viewers to experience the flight on a variety of different airline brands. To date, the Simply Aviation YouTube channel has flown on 224 distinct airlines.
For the channel’s creators, this is not only their bread and butter, it’s essentially their way of life. They have been doing this for the last decade, compiling an extensive library of about 504 videos. Broken down, this means that they post 50 videos per year or roughly one per week.
How Do Simply Aviation Videos Get Made?
To record their flight experiences, Simply Aviation uses certain recording equipment. According to their website, the equipment they utilize for the Tripreports includes GoPro HERO11 Black, as well as the DJI Pocket 2. For other types of videos on the channel, they use the Canon G7X Mark II.
If the video is an interview or voice-overs are required, they utilize the RODE smartLav+ microphone. Their editing is done with Adobe Creative Cloud software.
How Much Does Simply Aviation Earn?
At the time of writing, the Simply Aviation YouTube channel has over 154,541,361 video views and has the backing of 546,000 subscribers. 11 of their videos have over a million views each, while a few others have between two and six million. There is no doubt about the fact that a lot of people view their video content!
They are also wise about optimizing ad revenue by making their videos longer than 10 minutes. Videos that are over 8 minutes in length are considered ideal by YouTube in terms of having greater opportunities to place more ads, which, in turn, generates higher revenue margins for the creators and the channel owners.
Social Blade, an online tool that tracks the estimated revenue of channels across a variety of video streaming services estimates that Simply Aviation earns an average of $6,700 per month in ad revenue. Again, these are just estimates, as the channel looks to be averaging a CPM of $4.00.
Most of the ads that play on the channel are, not surprisingly, related to travel. Since people who watch this channel likely also enjoy traveling, travel-related ads are likely to be clicked and explored, resulting in higher than average CPM. In fact, the CPM for the travel ads could be worth as much as $19.
Quickly doing some multiplication to multiply that by the 1.6 million views a month the Simply Aviation channel accumulates, and it’s possible that the channel could be earning as much as $30,000 every month.
Where Can Simply Aviation Improve?
Don’t get us wrong: Simply Aviation is doing great! But they could be doing even better since they are not exactly maximizing their earning potential, or in other words, they are leaving a lot of money on the table. Since their monetization is almost entirely based on ad revenue, they are missing out on opportunities to make a lot higher revenue. So what else can they do to capitalize on their popularity and uniqueness? Here are a few ideas:
Corporate Sponsorships
One way that Simply Aviation can monetize is by forming a strategic partnership between its channel and various airlines. The way partnerships of this nature would work is the channel will produce videos about a particular plane or airline, and they would get compensated handsomely by the airline for promoting a particular trip or the particular airline.
Affiliate Marketing
Seeing as the channel makes travel-related videos, it is a safe bet that its viewers are likely looking to travel on a particular airline, and showing interest in doing so by watching that airline’s videos. One approach that Simply Aviation could take is to become an affiliate partner through affiliate programs on travel site such as:
- Travel payouts: Get access to exclusive tools and top travel affiliate programs, including flights, hotels, car rentals, insurance, tours, and activities, with our Travel Affiliate Network for your travel traffic.
- Aviasales: Get the lowest possible rates from reliable agencies with Aviasales, a trusted service for buying cheap flight tickets without extra fees or markups. Available on mobile and aviasales.com.
- Hilton Honors – Points.com: Hilton Honors program partners with Points.com to sell Honors points to members, with frequent bonus/discount offers. Points.com helps leading loyalty brands engage members in new ways and is the world’s leading loyalty program management site for getting more value from airline, hotel, retail, and credit-card loyalty programs.
- Trip.com: Trip.com, a part of NASDAQ-listed Ctrip Group, offers one-stop travel booking in 20 languages through website and mobile app. With 1.2 million hotels in 200 countries and 2 million flight routes connecting 5,000 cities, 24/7 English customer service, and various travel products, trust us with your next trip.
- Snaptravel: Snaptravel, built by Snapcommerce, offers great travel deals over SMS, Messenger, and WhatsApp. It’s a global AI-powered message-driven commerce platform connecting price-conscious consumers to the best mobile promotions.
- Tiqets: Tiqets is the world’s largest online ticketing platform, offering instant mobile tickets for museums, shows and attractions globally, including cities like Dubai, Rome, and New York. Its mission is to help people experience different cultures and create fantastic experiences. With a wide variety of attraction and museum tickets worldwide, Tiqets has something for every traveler.:
- GetTransfer: GetTransfer.com is a booking service for transfers and car rentals with personal drivers at the best prices. It’s more advantageous than taking a taxi or other transport companies. Rent a car at a cheaper hourly rate than most companies.
When a viewer opts to use one of those services to book their trip, Simply Aviation would receive a cut of the revenue for being the affiliate that directed a business purchase towards that service. To do so, all they would need to do is acquire an affiliate link and place it in the video description.
People who like what they see in the video about the flight could go straight to that link and book their trip, earning Simply Aviation affiliate commission for their booking. This doesn’t have to be limited to airfare booking either. It could include any travel-related matters including hotels and rental vehicles.
Promotional Gear And Merch
Another great way to monetize off such a popular channel is to promote various equipment that the channel creators use to make their videos. There will be viewers who are interested in making similar videos and they are going to want to utilize the equipment that Simply Aviation uses.
If the channel then puts affiliate links to something like an Amazon affiliate to Amazon pages where these can be purchased, interested viewers can purchase the equipment right from the video, and the items earn them a commission for the sale.
Airplane And Travel Related Merch
Partnering with on-demand merch printing services is another great way to monetize. One of the easiest methods is to sell online merch without having to pay upfront for inventory, but rather direct viewers to premade models of print-on-demand services like Etsy, Printful, and Sellfy’s POD. These services will print the merch right when it’s ordered and ship it to the buyer. Simply Aviation would collect a portion of that sale, with the magnitude of the portion related to the service they use.
Handmade, Custom, Vintage, And Unique Airplane Related Gifts
There are a ton of ideas for generating unique, vintage, custom, and travel-related handmade gifts that can be promoted through the channel’s videos. Many people start using Etsy where unique and interesting products can be sold, purchased, and collected.
How Can Someone Create A Channel Like Simply Aviation?
For those who love traveling especially when it involves flying, emulating a Simply Aviation style channel would be massively enjoyable. It is also a great way to generate revenue on YouTube without ever having to show one’s face in the videos. But how would one go about doing so?
Choose A Channel Name
Before you do anything else for setting up a faceless YouTube channel, you need to create the channel. One of the first requirements of the channel is to select a channel name that reflects what the channel will be about. Since you are looking to create a channel in the airplane travel niche, you will need a unique name that is clearly reflective of your channel’s topic.
Create Your Channel
With the name chosen, the next step is to create your YouTube channel from your YouTube account. All you need to do is to log into YouTube and click View Channel, then select the option to Create Channel. For YouTube to know what your channel is about, you will need to optimize the channel accordingly. This is done by writing a great channel description filled with optimized, low-competition keywords.
Additionally, you will want to adorn your channel with a great-looking YouTube cover and a unique logo that reflects your channel’s topic of focus. You can use a litany for free logo-making services online, order a professional one made on Fiverr, or create the logos themselves by using Canva.
One of the biggest factors in creating this type of channel is securing the necessary equipment for recording the videos that feature every aspect of your flight. As noted earlier, Simply Aviation uses DJI Pocket 2 and GoPro HERO11 for video recording, as well as Canon PowerShot Digital Camera for other video types. You can’t really go wrong with using the same gear as a proven success story.
Of course, that is not a requirement. If you wish, you can use a high-quality phone capable of HD recording. This will need to pair with a gimbal handheld stabilizer (DJI Ronin-SC – Camera Stabilizer) to make sure that the videos are not shaky while you walk or while the plane moves around. Simply Aviation uses DJI Osmo Mobile, but there are many other quality choices.
Once the videos are recorded, they will need to be edited and produced. You can use many video editors, but we recommend Camtasia or Filmora, but an online video editor like visme certainly works too.
If you wish to describe what is happening on the screen during the video, you can talk over the video. Simply Aviation does not do that, and clearly, it works great for them. They reasoned that without the voiceover the viewer gets a more immersive experience, making them feel like they are actually sitting on the flight. That way they are also exposed to the ambient sounds of an airplane.
Create A Thumbnail
One of the factors that are most prevalent in getting clicks is a great thumbnail as it captures the viewer’s attention first. Consider what your viewers are looking for and what will cause them to gravitate to your videos. You should consider not only showing a person in your thumbnail image but using your logo, bright colors, as well as fun and pointed text. The text should clearly reflect what the video is about.
If you are worried about a lack of design skills, you could use Canva to create free, customizable thumbnail templates. You could also pay someone on Fiverr to make a great one for you for just $5.
Upload The Video
Once the video is created and edited to its final state, you can upload it to Youtube. And you do not need to wait until you have a whole bunch of videos to upload. Simply upload them as they are ready. That way they can start pulling in revenue while you work on others. Once the videos are uploaded, make sure they are optimized with an effective title, description, keywords, and a catchy thumbnail image. You can use tools like Vidiq or TubeBuddy to help you find the perfect information for your particular video.
Monetize
The entire reason for setting up such a channel is ultimately to monetize it. To do so, you will need to make sure you can do so. YouTube requires that a channel have 4,000 hours of video watched and at least 1,000 subscribers before the YouTube ad revenue partnership program can be started. Once you achieve those qualifications, you can start making ad revenue money.
But your channel doesn’t need to wait until you meet the ad revenue qualifiers to start monetizing your airplane video content. You can promote other people’s products (serve as an affiliate) and earn a commission for your referral of the sale. You would need to join travel-related affiliate programs and Amazon’s affiliate program to get started.
Once you are signed up, simply place the affiliate link to the products in your video description and wait until someone makes a purchase using it. If your channel has a lot of video views, the chances increase of more people using the link to purchase products.
Important Factors To Keep In Mind
To create a viable channel of this sort, you will have little choice but to travel. That means you need to have the funds and time available to take the trips. Once your channel begins to grow and you begin to make affiliate sales and ad revenue, your costs of travel will likely be largely covered. But you will need to consider that there are upfront costs involved not in just airfare, but commuting around your destination, as well as lodging.
Simply Aviation says that they mitigate travel costs by staying at budget hotels, using public transport to airports, and booking on days that are less expensive to fly. They also use strategic booking methods for their tickets including “dead head bookings,” “error fate scouting,” “hidden city booking,” and “fuel dumping,” along with various others.
They also prefer to travel during off-season times of the year, and off-peak hours, and purchase tickets in economy class. Another way they mitigate flying costs is to use airfare search engines, every accessible OTA, and leverage travel points on credit cards.
Final Thought
If you love to travel and enjoy the experience of being in an airplane, then you have a great opportunity to put together a YouTube channel that is perfect to satisfy your traveling desires and earn you a great living.
we invite you to read our next case study on 4 Ever Green’s Faceless YouTube channel, which will delve into how this channel has utilized similar strategies to grow their audience and engagement. Stay tuned for more insights on how to effectively utilize YouTube for building a strong brand and reaching your target audience.
Frequently asked questions:
Can I make a YouTube channel without showing my face?
Yes, you can make a YouTube channel without showing your face. You can use animation, screen recording, or other means of creating content without showing your face. However, keep in mind that personal connection with the audience may be harder to establish without showing your face.
Does YouTube pay monthly?
Yes, YouTube pays creators on a monthly basis, typically between the 21st and the 26th of each month. The payment method is usually through electronic bank transfer. However, you will need to meet the minimum threshold amount of $100 before receiving any payments.
Hi, my name is Idammah, and I am the founder of Vid Gators, a website dedicated to helping people make money through YouTube. I have always been fascinated by the potential for success on the platform and the power of video as a medium for communication and entertainment. That's why I started this blog – to share my own experiences and the strategies that have worked for me with others who are looking to do the same. I have personally tried a variety of methods for making money through YouTube, including creating and monetizing my own channels, collaborating with brands, and using video content to drive traffic to my website. While some methods have been more successful than others, I have learned a lot along the way and am constantly experimenting with new ways to earn an income through video. I am excited to share my knowledge and experiences with my readers, and I hope that my blog can be a helpful resource for anyone looking to make money through YouTube. Thanks for stopping by!
