8 months of faceless AI videos. Real numbers, real talk, no $10k screenshots.
i see a lot of "made $5k my first month with ai videos" posts here. here is what 8 months actually looked like for me, across 2 small faceless channels (scary stories + weird history).
month 1: $0 (posted 22 videos, felt insane)
month 2: $0 (kept posting, almost stopped here)
month 3: $41 (first youtube payout, lost my mind over $41)
month 4: $96
month 5: $88 (went DOWN, no idea why, kinda gutted me)
month 6: $214
month 7: $437
month 8: $611
total: ~$1,487 over 8 months. it is back-loaded hard, almost all of it came in the last 3 months.
is it passive? kind of, now. the first 5 months were absolutely not, it was a daily grind for basically nothing. now old videos keep earning while i do nothing, and the daily upload is maybe 15 min. but anyone calling month 1 passive income is lying to you.
where the money comes from: youtube shorts is the biggest, facebook reels second (way underrated, almost quit posting there, glad i didn't), tiktok pays the worst per view, small bit from affiliate links in bio.
the slump in month 5 nearly made me quit. nothing was wrong, the algo just does that. if id stopped there id have made $225 total and concluded it doesn't work. the people who say "ai content is dead" mostly quit in their month 5.
i wasted the first month and a half making videos on topics i thought were cool instead of stuff people actually watch all the way through. scary stories and weird history hold attention. figured that out around week 8 and it picked up after.
happy to answer questions if anyone is thinking about starting, ask here so others can see it too.