I Tried It: Get $1,000 Per Month By Reuploading FREE Videos (NEW METHOD)

I tested the side hustle that claims you can make $1,000 a month just by reuploading free videos to YouTube Shorts. I spent about a month following the process as closely as possible, and I want to give you the real numbers without sugarcoating anything. The original content creator made it sound simple and easy, so let me show you exactly what happened when I actually tried it.

My name is Alston Godbolt with alstongodbolt.com. I make content to actually help you make money online, not just to put money in my own pockets. Here is exactly what I did, which tools I used, how much money I made, and what I think you should do differently if you want this to work for you.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The exact method the original creator teaches, laid out honestly
Every tool involved, including free alternatives to the paid ones
My actual results after one month: views, followers, and income across three platforms
The two monetization strategies I tested and what each one earned
Where the method falls apart and the honest drawbacks you need to know before starting
Specific modifications that could make this actually work instead of earning $0.004
How to find the right side hustle for your skills and situation at finder.platformproof.com

What the Original Claim Promises

The original content creator says YouTube Shorts is a powerful, simple, easy way to make money without much effort. The pitch is straightforward: download free stock videos from a site called Pexels, add a simple text overlay on top of the footage, upload to YouTube Shorts, and collect revenue through the YouTube Partner Program. The creator showed examples of channels making thousands of dollars per month doing exactly this.

The appeal is obvious. You do not need to show your face. You do not need to use your voice. You do not need to create original content from scratch. Just find free footage, put some text on it, upload it, and let the platform pay you. That sounds like a real business opportunity to a lot of people, and I completely understand why it gets clicks. I thought it was worth testing myself, so I did.

The Tools Required (Paid and Free Alternatives)

Before you assume this method is completely free to start, let me walk through every tool you actually need and what it costs.

Keyword research: I used Ahrefs, which is a paid keyword research tool. You type in a broad topic and it shows you related keywords, search volumes, and how competitive each one is. If you do not want to pay for Ahrefs, Answer the Public is a free tool that shows you question-based keywords around any topic. You can also do this completely manually by typing phrases into YouTube or Google and watching what the autocomplete suggestions show you. That takes longer, but it costs nothing.

Stock footage: The original creator pointed to Pexels as the free source for footage. I used Storyblocks, which is a paid subscription service that gives you unlimited downloads of stock video clips, music, and sound effects. Pexels is a solid free alternative with a large library of travel, nature, and lifestyle footage. Both give you content you are legally allowed to use in your videos without paying royalties or licensing fees per clip.

Content ideation: I incorporated ChatGPT to generate the lists inside each video. If I was making a video about the best vacation spots in Florida, I would paste that exact phrase into ChatGPT and it would return five or six specific destinations. That made it faster to build a clear structure for each short video and gave me actual names to search for in Storyblocks.

Video editing: I used Adobe Premiere Pro because it is the tool I already know well. That made it easy for me to get up and running quickly. There are completely free alternatives: CapCut is popular for short-form content, DaVinci Resolve is free and powerful, and iMovie works fine on a Mac. Any of these let you piece footage together, add text overlays, and drop in background music without spending money on software.

Cross-platform distribution: I used repurpose.io, which is a paid tool that lets you upload a video once and then automatically pushes it to multiple platforms. I would upload to TikTok first, and repurpose.io would automatically send the same video to my Facebook page as a Reel and to YouTube as a Short. That was the piece of the workflow that felt most like scale because one editing session produced content on three platforms simultaneously.

My Exact Process, Step by Step

I chose the vacation niche because it was coming into spring and summer, and a lot of people were actively searching for travel ideas. That felt like a smart timing decision. Here is what the actual workflow looked like from start to finish.

I typed “best vacation” into Ahrefs and exported a large list of keyword variations. If you use Answer the Public instead, you type in your broad topic and collect the question-based results it returns for free.
I picked specific keywords from that list, like “best vacation spots in Florida” or “best vacation spots in Colorado,” and pasted each one into ChatGPT. ChatGPT returned a list of five or six specific places for each keyword.
I went into Storyblocks and searched for each specific location. For example, when ChatGPT listed Miami Beach as a Florida destination, I searched for Miami Beach footage in Storyblocks and downloaded five or six short clips showing that location.
I opened Premiere Pro and assembled the clips into a single short video. I had the footage change every five seconds, added a simple text overlay showing each location name, and dropped trending background music underneath. The finished video ran under 60 seconds.
I uploaded the finished video to TikTok first. Repurpose.io then automatically sent that same video to my Facebook page as a Reel and to YouTube as a Short. One editing session, one upload, three platforms covered.

The process was genuinely not complicated. Anyone who can use basic software and follow a checklist could execute this workflow. The question is whether the output actually generates income, and that is where the reality check comes in.

My Real Results After One Month

Here is where the honest part comes in, and I am not going to soften these numbers.

On TikTok, I ended up with 8 followers and 128 total likes across all my videos. The views on most videos topped out at around 200 to 300. Nothing went viral. Nothing even came close. The channel just sat there collecting a few hundred views per video and moving on.

On Facebook Reels, I had published 38 reels and built up 1,100 followers. The view counts were similar to TikTok, landing somewhere between 200 and 300 views per video. I did have one video that went semi-viral relative to my follower count, but that was a single outlier and did not translate into meaningful revenue or subscriber growth.

On YouTube Shorts, no video earned more than 108 views. Most of my videos sat around 57 views or fewer. The channel was already monetized because I had crossed 1,000 subscribers beforehand, which actually put me in a better position to earn from the YouTube Partner Program than someone starting from zero. Even with that advantage, the numbers were low.

My total earnings from the YouTube Partner Program after following this method for about a month: $0.004. That is zero dollars and four tenths of one cent. The method claimed I would be making $1,000 a month by this point.

Not sure which side hustle actually fits your situation?

Answer a few quick questions and get a personalized recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

The Two Ways I Tried to Monetize

I did not just rely on YouTube Partner Program ad revenue. I added a second monetization stream and put it in the description of every single video I published on all three platforms.

I put together a digital product bundle and priced it at seven dollars. The bundle included travel planning checklists and journals, which fit the vacation niche I was already in. I figured that people watching videos about the best vacation spots in Florida or Colorado might also want a tool to help them plan the actual trip. The product was in every video description.

Over the course of the month, two people bought the product. That brought in $24 in sales.

So the total across both revenue streams after one full month of consistent work was $24.004. The method claimed I would be making $1,000 per month. The gap between the promise and the actual result was almost $976. I want to be completely transparent about that because you deserve to know what you are actually getting into before you invest time in something like this.

Real Numbers Breakdown

Let me put all the numbers in one place so you can see the full picture clearly.

TikTok: 8 followers, 128 total likes, typical video view count 200 to 300
Facebook Reels: 1,100 followers, 38 reels published, typical video view count 200 to 300, one semi-viral outlier
YouTube Shorts: no video exceeded 108 views, most sat at 57 or fewer
YouTube Partner Program earnings: $0.004
Digital product sales ($7 bundle, 2 buyers): $24.00
Total combined income: $24.004
Claimed income target: $1,000 per month

That data is from the back office of the actual accounts, not estimates or projections. If you want to know whether a method works, you have to run it and look at the real numbers. That is what I did.

Where the Method Falls Short

The core problem with this approach is that the videos give viewers nothing to connect with. There is no voice. There is no face. There is no story. It is just stock footage switching every five seconds with a text label on top. The viewer has no reason to care who made it, follow the channel, or click anything in the description.

People buy from other people. They follow channels because they feel some kind of connection with the creator behind that channel. A stock footage slideshow with trending background music does not give anyone a reason to subscribe, share, or click a link. The content is completely interchangeable with the next ten thousand vacation Shorts channels already publishing the same thing on the same platforms.

Without going viral, the YouTube Partner Program pays almost nothing on Shorts. The per-thousand-view rate on short-form content is already quite low compared to long-form videos, and when you are pulling 200 views per video instead of 200,000, the math simply does not work. Even the digital product side, which showed more promise, could not convert enough people because the total traffic was too low.

The method also assumes that stock footage content can compete on pure volume, that if you publish enough videos, something will catch. That can technically happen, but it is not a reliable strategy, and it is not something you can count on to build a consistent income.

Honest Drawbacks

I want to be direct about the real costs of this method, not just the time but the money too.

If you use the same paid tools I used, the monthly overhead adds up fast. Ahrefs is over $100 per month. Storyblocks runs around $15 per month for the personal plan. Adobe Premiere Pro as part of Creative Cloud costs around $55 per month. Repurpose.io starts at $25 per month. That is roughly $195 per month in tool costs before you have published a single video. If you are making $24 a month following this method, you are losing about $171 every month you keep running it.

You can replace most of those tools with free versions, but free tools usually take longer to learn and can slow down your workflow in the early stages when you are still figuring out the process. Pexels replaces Storyblocks. Answer the Public replaces Ahrefs. CapCut or DaVinci Resolve replaces Premiere Pro. You can get the monthly overhead down to near zero if you are willing to learn the free alternatives.

The time commitment is also real and should not be underestimated. Finding keywords, generating lists with ChatGPT, sourcing and downloading footage for each location, editing five or six clips together with text and music, and then uploading takes several hours per week even when the workflow is running smoothly. This is not a truly passive business. It is a content production operation that happens to use stock footage instead of a camera.

Finally, the income ceiling for purely faceless stock footage content is low. Without a personal brand, you cannot build an email list from this traffic. You cannot upsell a course or coaching program. You cannot partner with sponsors who want an engaged audience. The upper bound on what you can earn is capped by ad revenue rates and the conversion rate of whatever cheap digital product you put in the description.

Modifications That Could Actually Help

I kept going with this method after the first month to give it more time, and I have specific thoughts on what would make it work better based on what I saw.

The single biggest change you could make is adding your own voice. Record a voiceover narrating each location rather than letting the footage play silently with text. Even a simple sentence or two per location, something like “Miami Beach is one of the most popular destinations in Florida for families because of the shallow water and the wide sandy shoreline,” gives the video a personality and a reason to keep watching. People can connect with a voice. They cannot connect with text over stock footage.

The second modification is to show up on camera somewhere in the video. Even a brief intro where you appear on screen, say your name, and explain what the video covers builds the kind of familiarity that makes someone subscribe. It does not have to be a long intro. Thirty seconds of you on camera can make the rest of the video feel more trustworthy and human.

Third, tighten the niche significantly. “Vacation spots” covers an enormous amount of ground. A channel focused specifically on solo travel itineraries under $800, or budget-friendly national park trips in the western United States, or international destinations that are easy to reach from major airports, would have a clearer audience. A tighter niche also makes it easier to build content that actually serves a specific person, which increases the chance that person subscribes and buys something from you.

Fourth, think seriously about affiliate income as your primary monetization strategy instead of YouTube Partner Program ad revenue. Travel affiliate programs from hotel booking platforms, car rental services, travel gear companies, and tour operators often pay significantly more per sale than Shorts ad revenue pays per view. If you mention specific products or booking platforms in your voiceover and link to them in the description, you are giving viewers a reason to click even if they are not ready to buy a digital product.

Find Your X

The reuploading method might be worth testing if you are willing to add your voice, tighten your niche, and focus on affiliate income from the start. But for most people, there are side hustles that fit their existing skills much better and produce results faster. If you want a personalized recommendation based on where you are right now, head over to finder.platformproof.com and answer a few quick questions. It takes a few minutes and points you toward the path that actually makes sense for your situation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this method actually work for anyone?

It can work in the sense that some channels do earn from YouTube Shorts using stock footage content. But the channels that earn meaningful income typically have enormous subscriber counts built up over years of publishing, or they hit a viral video that pushed them into a large audience quickly. For someone starting from scratch or from a small base like I had, the income from this exact method as described is very low. After one month I made $24.004 total across two monetization streams.

Is Pexels really free to use in commercial videos?

Yes, Pexels footage is free to use including in videos that earn revenue. The platform licenses its content under a Creative Commons Zero license, which means you can use it commercially without attribution or royalties. Always read the license terms for any specific clip before using it, but in general Pexels is a reliable source of footage for this kind of project. Storyblocks and Pixabay are other options with similar licensing for most of their libraries.

Do you need 1,000 subscribers to monetize YouTube Shorts?

Yes. To qualify for the YouTube Partner Program, you need at least 1,000 subscribers and either 4,000 watch hours from long-form content in the past 12 months or 10 million public Shorts views in the last 90 days. My channel was already monetized when I ran this test, which put me in a better starting position than someone building from zero. Even with monetization already active, my YouTube Partner Program earnings were $0.004 over the entire month.

What is repurpose.io and is it worth paying for?

Repurpose.io is a tool that automates cross-platform video publishing. You upload to one platform, set up the automation rules once, and it copies the content to your other accounts automatically. It starts at around $25 per month. For this method it was genuinely useful because it saved the time of manually uploading to three platforms separately. Whether it is worth paying for depends on how many videos you are publishing per week. If you are only posting two or three times a week, manual uploads are probably faster than the time it takes to set up and manage the automations.

Why did the digital product earn more than the YouTube ads?

The YouTube Partner Program pays based on ad revenue per thousand views, and on Shorts the rate is quite low. Even a small number of sales of a seven-dollar product can outpace the ad revenue from tens of thousands of views. In my case, two sales at seven dollars each generated $24, while the YouTube ads generated $0.004 from every view I received across the entire month. If you run this method, a product in the description is almost certainly going to outperform ad revenue at the traffic volumes you will realistically see starting out.

Is ChatGPT necessary for this method or can you do it without?

ChatGPT is not required, but it speeds up the part where you need a list of specific items to fill out each video. You could manually research the five best vacation spots in any state just by reading travel websites and tourism boards. That takes longer but costs nothing. I used ChatGPT because it was fast and gave me a starting list I could then verify and expand. The key is that you are not just copying the output blindly; you are using it as a research shortcut and then building the actual video with real footage from the named locations.

How long should I try this before giving up?

One month is not long enough to draw final conclusions about any content strategy. I continued running it after the first month specifically to give it more time and gather better data. That said, if you are four or five months in and still not seeing growth in views or subscribers, that is a signal that the content is not resonating and you need to change something, whether that is the niche, the format, or whether you are showing up on camera. Consistent effort on a broken approach does not fix the approach; it just burns more time.

What would you do differently if you started this method today?

I would add a voiceover from day one, pick a narrower niche with a more defined audience, and focus on travel affiliate links instead of selling a seven-dollar digital product. The traffic volumes you get with this method at the start are too low to make a cheap digital product work reliably, but a higher-commission affiliate offer pays more per click even when traffic is thin. I would also skip the cross-platform approach at the beginning and focus on whichever single platform I had the best traction on before spreading the content further.

Sources

Pexels free stock footage library: pexels.com
Storyblocks stock video subscription: storyblocks.com
Ahrefs keyword research tool: ahrefs.com
Answer the Public free keyword research: answerthepublic.com
ChatGPT by OpenAI: chat.openai.com
Repurpose.io cross-platform publishing: repurpose.io
Adobe Premiere Pro video editing: adobe.com/products/premiere.html
YouTube Partner Program monetization requirements: support.google.com/youtube

Helping 1 million working adults make their first $3,000 online with the skills they already have. Alston Godbolt, Platform Proof.