Case study: a full faceless Shorts stack, costed per video

Case study: a full faceless Shorts stack, costed per video

We built one faceless 'tech facts' channel end-to-end and tracked real cost per Short over 30 videos.

Stack: ChatGPT (script, free tier) + ElevenLabs VO + Pexels b-roll (free) + CapCut edit (free) + Submagic captions.
Cost: ~$0.40/short in VO credits + ~$0.55/short in caption credits = ~$0.95/short. Time: 18 min/short.

Result: 30 Shorts, 410k views, channel monetized in 6 weeks.

Pros:
— Under $1 and 18 min per video is sustainable solo
— Every paid tool earned its slot in testing

Cons:
— Caption credits were the biggest spend — CapCut's free captions could replace them

Price: ~$30/mo total at this volume.

Verdict: lean, repeatable, profitable. Swap Submagic for CapCut captions if budget's tight. Not for you if you want one viral hit, not a system.