I lurked here for almost a year before I actually qualified for the Creator Rewards Program, so I owe the community an honest debrief. I run a faceless history account-short clips about places and buildings that don't exist anymore-and the narrator is an AI persona. I disclose it openly in every caption and usually pin a comment about it, which is its own headache.

When I started I did what everyone does. Stock footage, anonymous voice, text on screen. My RPM was laughable and my qualified views barely moved. The pivot wasn't a better prompt or a fancier voice. It was making the narrator a recurring character with a consistent look, a made-up name the comments started using, and a slightly stubborn personality that comes through in the scripts. I keep the narrator consistent in APOB AI, cut and caption in CapCut, run the voice through ElevenLabs, and batch a week ahead in Later. The stack is boring and that's the point.

What changed in CRP was categorization and return viewers. Once the videos started getting categorized properly I made sure every title was searchable, the topic was obvious in the first three seconds, and the clip ran over a minute. Searchable titles plus a recognizable face meant people who watched one video started looking for the next one. That repeat traffic is what pushed my watch time numbers from borderline to actually qualifying for additional rewards, and additional rewards are where almost all of the money comes from. Base pay on my niche is still modest and very uneven month to month.

The costs nobody talks about. It's not push button. Each clip still needs manual cutting and a retake or two before it looks right, so the time saved is real but smaller than people assume. The "this is AI" comments are constant. Some days it feels like half my engagement is people arguing about whether AI narrators should even be allowed on the platform. I don't engage much but I don't delete them either because the algorithm seems to treat those threads as activity. Maybe that helps, maybe it doesn't.

I'm not going to post a dashboard screenshot because my numbers aren't brag worthy and I don't want to be that person. If anyone wants specifics on the categorization process or how I structure the one-minute-plus scripts, I'll answer in the comments. This is a slow grind and the money is real but it's not life changing yet.

A colleague asked about script structuring-happy to dive into that if there's interest. Another asked if the platform auto-tags AI content. No, you have to do it yourself if you want to earn money with AI videos.