Apex · YouTube · Project 4
Scary / Reddit Stories Month 5–6 · GATED
10–20 minute narrated horror and Reddit-style stories. Launches only after the history channel proves the long-form pipeline at the month-3 gate.
~$4.8K/mo
Steady-state target (M18–24)
01Description
A faceless narration channel telling 10–20 minute scary stories in the Reddit-horror tradition: nosleep-style first-person accounts, "true scary story" formats, unsettling encounters. Every script is an original Claude-written story — Reddit is the genre reference, not the source text. TTS narration over atmospheric OpenArt visuals and a low ambient sound bed, assembled by the same pipeline the history channel runs on, at $2–6 per video.
This is the portfolio's conditional fourth channel: it exists on this page as a plan, and it only becomes a channel if the history pipeline earns it.
02Plan
- The gate comes first: launch in month 5–6 only if the history channel passes its month-3 gate (≥1 video >10K views, or CTR >4% + retention >40%) and the long-form pipeline is proven. If not, this project stays parked and effort feeds the winners.
- Launch (M5–6): account from Barry's Phase-0 batch (created early, activated late); branding, then 2 videos/wk from a story backlog Sage pre-writes during months 4–5.
- M6–9 — build + push: ~20–30 videos; chase 1,000 subs + 4,000 watch-hours — 15–20 min videos with strong retention build hours quickly; part of the portfolio's M9 gate (≥$1K/mo overall).
- M10–12 — Q4 push: horror has a natural October spike that lands inside the Q4 CPM spike — the launch timing aims the channel's growth phase at both.
- Hard deadline: as the last-launching channel it has the tightest runway to clear YPP before the Feb 1, 2027 threshold doubling — a late gate-pass compresses this further and gets re-decided, not assumed.
03Research results
| Finding | Number |
|---|
| Scary / Reddit stories RPM (long-form, monetized) | $4–13 / 1K views |
| Steady-state math | 0.8M views/mo → ~$4.8K/mo |
| Content pipeline | Effectively unlimited (original scripts) |
| Quality bar | Rising — lazy TTS-over-stock channels are dying |
| YPP full ads | 1,000 subs + 4,000 watch-hrs / 12 mo |
| Cost per video | $2–6 |
Two research caveats shape this project. First, the quality bar is rising: the niche was flooded with minimal-effort TTS channels, and the July 2025 inauthentic-content enforcement is culling exactly those — surviving channels have original writing, real pacing and produced sound. Second, reading actual Reddit posts aloud is reused content — demonetizable and the reason our scripts are originals in the genre's style, never rips.
04Why this project
- Second-best RPM in the portfolio ($4–13) after the finance niches we can't credibly enter — and unlike finance, horror narration is naturally faceless.
- Unlimited content pipeline: original horror shorts are exactly what Claude writes well and fast; no research bottleneck, no news dependency, evergreen forever.
- Free-riding a proven pipeline: by launch, script→TTS→visuals→assembly has run for months on the history channel — this channel reuses it at near-zero incremental engineering cost.
- The gate is the point: deliberately last so the portfolio's kill/feed discipline has data before committing. A 50/50 stretch goal needs draws, but only cheap, sequenced ones.
- Retention-native format: "what happens next" narration drives the long watch sessions that both the algorithm and the 4,000-hour threshold reward.
05Marketing plan
- SEO / keywords: "true scary stories", "scary stories to fall asleep to", "reddit horror stories", "[N] true disturbing stories" title formats; numbered multi-story videos (3–5 stories per upload) match how the audience searches and binges.
- Thumbnails / hooks: dark, high-contrast OpenArt stills — a lit window, a figure at a treeline — minimal text; cold-open mid-dread in the first 15 seconds, no intro. CTR >4% gate metric applies.
- Cadence: 2/wk from a pre-written backlog (no launch-week scramble); 3–4/wk only after monetization; heavy October seasonal push.
- Shorts as funnel: 30–60s single-scare excerpts ending on the cliffhanger — "full story on the channel". Subscriber acquisition only; Shorts RPM ($0.01–0.15) is never the revenue plan.
- Cross-promo: the history channel's audience (doc-style, true-crime-adjacent) is the closest in the portfolio — end-screen and community-post cross-feeds both ways; story compilations for "sleep to scary stories" listeners overlap the ambient audience.
- Off-platform: US/UK-first topics and metadata (5–10× RPM premium); later, narration audio repackaged for podcast platforms (same asset, second stream).
06Expectations
This channel may never launch — that's by design.
It's gated on the history pipeline proving out at month 3. If that gate fails, this stays a plan and the effort goes to whatever is working. No sunk-cost launch.
Latest launch = tightest YPP runway.
Launching month 5–6 leaves roughly 7 months to reach 1,000 subs + 4,000 watch-hours before the Feb 1, 2027 doubling (to 8,000 hours). Realistic YPP timing is 6–12 months — this channel is genuinely racing the deadline and might lose that race.
$0 for its whole first year is a live possibility.
Launch M5–6 + normal YPP timing puts first revenue at M11–18. The ~$4.8K/mo figure is a month-18–24 steady-state target requiring 0.8M monetized views/mo — top-few-percent territory in a niche whose quality bar is rising.
Honest bottom line: a strong-RPM, cheap-to-run channel that only exists if the pipeline earns it, probably makes $0 until at least month 11, and carries the portfolio's tightest deadline risk. In the $16.8K/mo steady-state math it's the fourth ticket, not the banker.