Some time ago I came across this ad about Youtube automation and thought it had something to do with this AI hype that's going on at the moment. After doing some research I found out that the word 'automation' is a bit misleading.
However, the concept is pretty straightforward: you actually delegate all the menial and time-consuming tasks involved in video making to others. This happens through platforms such as Fiverr where you can hire freelancers. Your team(and budget) could be something like this:
Scriptwriter - $10
Editor - $40
Subtitles & captions - $10
Voice over - $30
Total: $90
Note that the expenses mentioned above are for one video only with no guarantees for the video ever breaking and start generating income. Now, since I first mistook 'automation' to mean AI I thought why not use AI to do most of these tasks and save money?
In this post, I'm gonna share my experiment, the apps I used to do it, and tell you was it worth it.
APPS USED
SCRIPT: ChatGPT. I started by prompting ChatGPT with 'Tell me about five interesting facts about coyotes' and it gave me a list including stuff like their mating habits and puppies. Asked more about the interesting ones until I had a short script of five "scenes" or topics.
VIDEO: Canva. Forget about all the sites offering those "unlimited videos & photos" offerings, with Canva Pro you get a crazy amount of free videos and photos to choose from. All the pics and video clips are from the Canvas library for Pro plan users. I just started browsing videos and pictures related to my script.
THUMBNAIL: Also made with Canva.
VOICE OVER: Clipchamp. I'm sure there are much better AI text-to-speech -generators out there but this was the best free one I could find. I chose 'Michelle' to read my text who, in my opinion, doesn't sound that robotic - trust me, there are voices out there that'll make The Terminator himself sound human.
EDITING: OpenShot, free video editor. I put the AI voiceover on one of the tracks and started to arrange video clips on top of that. Surprisingly fast process.
MUSIC: This I didn't know beforehand but Youtube has a lot of free-to-use music. I downloaded a couple of decent tunes and uploaded those to OpenShot where I put them under my timeline and matched them to video clips. The most painful part was doing all the fade-ins/outs - OpenShot isn't very intuitive in this area in my opinion.
SUBTITLES: Youtube can auto-generate subtitles but it makes some mistakes so you'll have to re-position and correct the text yourself.
Conclusion
I think I got to cut some corners and save time with AI but whoever says AI automates everything is lying. There was plenty of manual labor. That being said, for the script part especially, I could have easily spent way more hours than without ChatGPT.
I'm still not sure if I'll continue this experiment with my Youtube channel. Perhaps the niche isn't that profitable and maybe there's too much competition when it comes to animal videos.
Still, this has been a good test of combining video creation with AI. Perhaps the most important thing I learned from it was to find different applications. There are plenty of apps that seem cheap and promise to offer many features. However, there are also a lot of free ones you can use to get the job done.
The only app I paid for is Canva Pro costing something like $11/month. So when compared to hiring a whole Youtube automation team, DIY is so much cheaper. In the end, it comes down to how we value our work.
If and when I continue with this kind of content creation now I know to search for cheap or free alternatives to cut costs - at least in the beginning.
For a Youtube channel to start generating income you'll need many views and many subscribers but I believe it can be achieved once the right niche is found. It certainly isn't like it is here on Hive when you start earning immediately after publishing. Then again, once cross that Youtube earning threshold, your older videos will also be generating income if they can attract an audience.
If you want to watch the Youtube version with subtitles(and support my channel!), here it is:
Thank you for watching & reading!
▶️ 3Speak