In this section, you'll understand how to research YouTube to discover rising & hidden niches.

These types of YouTube niches often get lots of views with low production costs, and TubeLab helps you find them quickly.

YouTube has an estimated 14 billion videos with about 5% of those never having a view and just over 85% having fewer than 1,000 views.

Topics covered:

• The lifecycle of a YouTube niche
• Seperating signal from noise
• Avoid these common mistakes
• How to identify niches and performance of channels?
• Finding breakout channels

The lifecycle of a YouTube niche

Most niches follow a similar lifecycle.

1. They start with a whitespace where the supply is above the demand.
2. Then, the niche grows and the supply reaches the breakeven point.
3. Finally, the niche reaches maturity and becomes saturated.

You want to start a channel on the whitespace.

YouTube niche lifecycle

Let's see how we can tap into this in practice...

Seperating signal from noise

The main challenge in any research is to seperate signal from noise.

Think of a signal as your compass needle pointing to a treasure - it's the valuable data that guides you toward your goal.

Noise, on the other hand, is like static on a radio - it's a mess of distracting information that leads nowhere.

What does this mean in practise (for YouTube)?

A signal reveals audience demand, or viewers' willingness to give their time and attention to a specific topic.

Avoid these common mistakes

When conducting YouTube niche research, there are a few common traps to avoid:

Living in the past

Always look at channels & videos that are recent.

A 2 years old video could have a lot of views, because there WAS demand, however recently that could not be the case.

To avoid this, filter your niche finder or ideas finder results by recency.

Open up the filters and select the recency filter to at least 1 year.

Views as a demand signal

High view counts on established channels can be statistically irrelevant because subscribers watch every video.

Instead, prioritize the total amount of views from non-subscribers.

Here you can see an example of noise vs signal in a video topic

With TubeLab, you can filter by the average views to subscribers multiplier signal, which reveals the REAL demand above the channels audience.

This filter shows channels with 2X more views vs the acquired audience

This is also visible in each channel card, below the insights.

Unmonetizable topics

There are some topics that are very hard to monetize.

This includes AI related content, compilations, content that uses a lot of third party material, etc.

You can quickly understand if a channel is monetized with our YouTube Monetization chrome extension.

To avoid falling into this trap, in TubeLab, you can quickly filter channels & videos by monetization status and see only monetizable channels.

Filter by monetization status with a simple click

Attention bubbles

Attention bubbles are tricky. They can be huge opportunities, but they tend to burst quickly.

Avoid focusing only on initial demand without considering longitivity.

Aim for sustainable niches. Understand a markets sustainability:

• Are there any older channels that are still performing well?
• Are there any older videos that are still performing well?
• Is this a spiking trend? You can use Google Trends to analyse this.

Example: Tiktok "type" of trends are often short-lived.

How to identify niches and performance of channels?

The main signal to spot rising niches are breakout channels.

This are recently active channels, which are performing extremely well within a topic.

Multiple new channels performing really well in a market, is a strong indicator of a rising niche.

Breakout channels reveal whitepace

Taking into account the topic covered before, here are the 3 main metrics used to identify these breakout channels:

• Recency: always look at channels & videos that are recent due to audience attention shifts.
• Views to subscribers ratio: total amount of views divided by total amount of subscribers
• Channel outliers: the 1 of 10 videos within a channel, the most successfull videos in a channel.

Finding breakout channels

Okay, everything seems a little complex, but let's make it simple.

With TubeLab's Niche Finder, you can simple click on the Breakout Channels filter.

This will apply the most appropriate filters to reveal thousands of rising niches right away.

Breakout channels filter

Each channel will reveal some key insights so you can focus on signals, not noise.

Channel insights

These are the main insights, you can analyse:

• Profitability: the earning potential of the channel (or topic)
• Demand: How many evergreen audience is this channel attracting?
• Audience loyalty: how many subscribers keep watching the channel?
• Audience commitment: how many viewers are converted into subscribers?

TubeLab automatically analyses this for you, and shows you the insights per channel.

Search, search and search!

This is one of the most important steps in finding a niche.

Take your time and dive deep into the Niche Finder:

1. Start by clicking on the Breakout Channels filter.
2. Scroll through the results
3. Bookmark channels that you think interesting
4. Open new tabs with "similar channels" and continue searching
5. Repeat until you have a list of 10-20 topics you find interesting
6. Analyse each niche video formats, hooks, cost, etc.
7. Breakdown each niche and select the one that best suits your skills and interests.

The three P's in theory

New opportunities emerge constantly:

• Cultural trends and events
• Changing audience interests
• New TV shows and movies
• New video games

This can be overwhelming - the opportunities are endless.

That's what TubeLab is for.

Now you can quickly identify what your audience wants to watch, no matter which niche you choose.

In the next section, we'll explore the Ideas Finder tool.

You will learn the method used by the world's top YouTubers to find ideas and how the Ideas Finder makes it easy to find your next viral hit.