How to find a YouTube niche (with real examples from this week)

Most advice on choosing a niche starts with "what are you passionate about?". It's the wrong first question. Passion keeps you going, but it says nothing about whether anyone is waiting for those videos.

A good niche is one where the demand is already proven, where a small channel can still win, and where you can make video after video without running dry. The fastest way to find one is to look at the channels that are winning right now, with almost no audience.

Watch the method in 2 minutes

What makes a niche worth it

Before the method, the four things you're checking for:

1. Proven demand: videos on the topic get views beyond the channel's own audience.
2. Room for newcomers: channels with a few thousand subscribers break through, not only the giants.
3. A repeatable format: you can see 30 videos in it, not one lucky hit.
4. An audience that pays: the viewers are in markets where ads (and sponsors) pay well.

Everything below is a way to check these four with data instead of guessing.

Step 1: Look for views that outrun subscribers

The clearest sign of unmet demand is a young, small channel whose videos get far more views than it has subscribers. Those views come from strangers: YouTube is pushing the videos to people who've never heard of the channel, because they want that content.

That's exactly what Returbe's Niche Finder lists: channels under 100k subscribers, less than a year old, already monetized, ranked by average views per video divided by subscribers.

Here's what it showed for long-form English channels when this article was written:

A channel with 1,500 subscribers averaging 148,000 views per video isn't lucky once: the whole channel is being pushed. "Internet iceberg" videos have demand that existing channels don't cover.

Step 2: Make sure it's a niche, not one channel

One channel breaking through could be a fluke: a great editor, a lucky upload. A niche is several unrelated channels winning on the same kind of video.

Two ways to check in Returbe:

• In Top videos, filter by the niche and a channel size under 100k: if the top of the list is full of different small channels, the demand is real.
• In Breakout creators, look for channels that recently started growing in the same niche.

If you only find one channel, keep it as inspiration but don't build on it yet.

Step 3: Copy the format, not the video

What travels from one channel to the next is the format: the structure of the title, the promise of the thumbnail, the length. Look at the titles of the channels above:

• "Horrors of the 1990s Internet Iceberg", "Disturbing Japanese Internet Iceberg" → [Adjective] [Topic] Internet Iceberg
• "The MrBeast Files Are Really Bad", "The Jack Doherty Files Are Really Bad" → The [Person] Files Are Really Bad
• "What Really Happened Inside the flydubai Cockpit" → What Really Happened [Event]
• "Where Are 400,000 Amish Moving?" → Where Are [Group] [Doing Something]?

Each one is a slot you can fill with your own subject. Returbe's Title formats page finds these structures automatically across the whole index and tells you how much they beat their channel's average.

Step 4: Check where the money is

Two niches with the same views can pay ten times apart. What decides it:

• The topic: finance, software, business and education attract advertisers who pay more than gaming or entertainment.
• The audience's country: US, UK, Canada, Australia and Western Europe pay far more per view than most other markets.
• The length: long-form videos (8+ minutes) fit mid-roll ads, Shorts barely pay.

The Niche Finder flags channels in high-paying niches, and only lists channels that are already monetized, so the demand you see is demand that pays.

Step 5: Test with 3 to 5 videos

You don't need to be sure before you start, you need a test you can read:

1. Pick one format from step 3 and make 3 to 5 videos with it.
2. Give each video a week, then compare its views to your channel's usual: that's its multiplier.
3. Double down on what beats your average, drop what doesn't.

Once your channel is connected, Returbe's My channel page tracks this for you: which videos beat your norm, which old ones are coming back, and which title or thumbnail changes worked.

Mistakes that waste months

• Picking a niche that's too broad: "gaming" or "finance" isn't a niche, "Minecraft hardcore challenges" or "explaining the economy like you're 5" is.
• Copying the giants: a format that works for a channel with 5 million subscribers often doesn't work without them. Copy what works for small channels.
• Chasing one viral video: if the format can't give you 30 videos, it's a video, not a niche.
• Ignoring the market: a niche with huge views in a low-paying market can stay unprofitable at a million views a month.

The checklist

Before committing to a niche, you should be able to say yes to all of these:

• At least 3 different channels under 100k subscribers are getting views far beyond their size.
• Some of them are less than a year old.
• You can write 20 titles in the same format without forcing it.
• The audience is mostly in a well-paying market.
• You'd still enjoy making video number 30.

That last one is where passion comes back in: once the data says there's demand, pick the niche you can keep going in.