For a while, I seriously thought about how I could open up further passive sources of income for myself as an Internet freelancer. One idea was to look for videos on YouTube that could generate passive income without much effort. I then abandoned this plan, but some very interesting insights emerged.
Unspectacular simulators
Our son was about 2-3 years old at that time. And every now and then he was allowed to watch short videos on YouTube on the iPad. No more than 10 minutes a day, just for in between. Anyway, he liked to watch tractors and construction machinery, etc. While searching for clips about tractors, I came across Farming Simulator. A game where the user has to learn every detail of the work on a farm. Tilling the fields, fertilising, feeding the animals – simply everything. The whole thing is incredibly detailed. You even have to make sure that baler twine is tied on the hay bales. What surprised me was that this game has been around for over 20 years and new versions keep coming out. The Let’s Plays for it were boring as can be. Yet they had hundreds of thousands to millions of views. The gamers certainly earn a golden nose with it and are probably hardly exposed to any competition.
Later I saw that there are similar, unimpressive simulator games. There is the bus simulator, in which you simply drive a bus to the stops of a city. There’s also the truck simulator, the train simulator and so on. Who would have thought that.
Construction site videos
It is not only agricultural machinery that magically attracts children. One of the first highlights in a child’s life are building sites. Many parents stand around construction sites with their prams and watch the excavators. So kids want to see that too. I noticed that some videos also have millions of views, even though they only show an excavator or a crane at work.
So I just started walking around with the pram and filming construction sites. Some clips had a few thousand views. If you record about 500 or 1,000 of them, you’ll definitely earn a few euros per month – without much work. Above all, they are timeless.
Animal videos
Always popular on YouTube: small, cute animals. I was able to film them without any problems while I was driving my little one around in the pram. For example, there were the little ducklings at the pond or the cute squirrels in the park. These videos also had a lot of potential. The good thing is: you never run out of motifs.
Conclusion
You can only make fast money on YouTube with spectacular videos that have the potential to go viral. However, if you are looking for a mass strategy, you will find enough free motifs in your environment to make a little money on the side.