🔴 Built 14 niche channels, sold 1 for €93K

In partnership with:

You only need to understand two things to identify a high-potential YouTube niche.

Our guest this week is Kevin Jon, a veteran YouTuber growing channels within his holding company, Deus Media Group, and for a wide range of clients — including German national television — through his agency, Channel Craft.

In this episode:

— Natalia Pérez-González, Assistant Editor

P.S. Though we lost our bet with our producer on hitting 2.5K YouTube subscribers before June, we’re so much closer to reaching that goal, thanks to you! We’re 624 subscribers short now and aiming to close the gap before July — help us out and subscribe?

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Kevin Jon spotted a textbook supply-demand imbalance: biker gang content had a high Google search volume, but there were barely any videos covering the topic on YouTube.

So, despite never having ridden a motorcycle in his life, he spent $1,500 producing four YouTube videos on the topic. The first video hit 500,000 views; the third reached one million; he broke even within months.

This analytical approach to the YouTube market has driven Kevin's entire business. As founder of Channel Craft, he now builds YouTube channels for clients ranging from boutique consultancies to national media outlets, using the same methodology that made his motorcycle gang channel profitable.

Kevin’s been developing this approach for years, starting as a teenage Beautuber (beauty YouTuber) who earned a YouTube Partnership back when it required manual approval — a much more exclusive process than today's automatic system, which grants partnership once creators hit 1K subscribers and 4K watch hours within 12 months.

After gaining business experience through a decade in finance and consulting — including years in Shanghai helping startups crack the Chinese market — he went all-in on YouTube with MegaloMedia, initially creating videos about his career as a consultant before pivoting to finance documentaries.

Kevin sought to build an empire. After learning he could outsource scriptwriting and editing without losing quality, he thought, "If I can build one channel, maybe I can build 100." So he scaled to 14 channels, working with 40–50 freelancers at any given time — scriptwriters, video editors, thumbnail designers, and channel managers — applying his systematic plan for finding profitable, underserved niches (see more under Steal this Tactic).

To keep scaling sustainably, however, Kevin needed strategists; the best charged $5,000 to $10,000 monthly, which made individual channels unprofitable. So he pivoted, founding Channel Craft to build channels for companies willing to pay those monthly rates upfront, rather than waiting months or years for AdSense revenue to reach profitability.

Meanwhile, he streamlined his channel portfolio: from his original 14 channels, six remain. Some died as niches got saturated, and two sold, including one for €93,700.

For Kevin, this is a long-term game: He’ll use Channel Craft's profits to fund new niche media companies, each combining YouTube channels with newsletters, communities, and backend monetization. The same supply-demand analysis he learned as a consultant — which helped him spot motorcycle gangs as an untapped opportunity — guides every new venture.

Listen to our podcast for more from Kevin.

A few things that stuck with me as I listened through this week’s conversation:

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn and X.
Learn more about Deus Media Group and Channel Craft.

Kevin's systematic approach extends beyond just spotting opportunities — it's about building scalable systems that work repeatedly across different niches.

Every YouTube niche can be analyzed across two dimensions:

Kevin uses the sauna industry as a teaching example of how this works in practice. For a business that builds and sells saunas online, the broader YouTube wellness space is oversaturated. So, they’d need to get specific with their content strategy: infrared saunas versus outdoor saunas, saunas for longevity enthusiasts versus general health content, interview formats with sauna experts versus documentary-style content about sauna culture.

The goal is to find the intersection where you can dominate — specific enough to own, yet broad enough to scale, with a clear connection to your business goals.

For a sauna company, this might mean owning "infrared sauna installation walkthroughs" or "sauna health benefits for biohackers" — niches that directly connect YouTube viewers to potential customers.

Kevin analyzes patterns to identify three simple things:

These indicate proven interest without platform-specific competition. He knows he's found an opportunity worth investing in when the minimal channels publishing content on the topic are around three months old, with around 500 subscribers, but averaging 100,000 views per video.

Tools like NextLev can automate this analysis by scanning YouTube for these supply-demand imbalances.

Former Spotlight guest Hayley Rose emphasized this in her YouTube upload success formula, citing it as a step most creators overlook. Kevin learned this lesson the hard way while managing his 14-channel portfolio.

Unlike creators who optimize for individual video performance, Kevin optimizes for production sustainability. This means:

The goal isn't viral content — it's consistent, profitable content that doesn't burn out your team.

Every channel should have a clear path to converting views into email subscribers, then email subscribers into customers for backend products or services.

This approach makes channels easier to finance and more valuable to sell. Kevin sold one channel for €93,700 and another for a similar price, based on their potential to grow beyond YouTube into full media businesses with newsletters, communities, and premium products.

You can implement this by:

The master plan isn't just about finding opportunities — it's about identifying the ones that can be systematically executed through repeatable processes that scale beyond an individual creator’s output.