How 10 hours of fire turned into $200,000 a year

Nine years ago, one person did on YouTube essentially the minimum possible. He did not launch a course, did not build a sales funnel, did not study preview CTR, and did not argue with algorithms. He simply uploaded a 10-hour video of a burning fireplace. No face, no voice, no stories, and no calls to “subscribe to the channel.” And… went off to do his own things. Practically forever.

Today, this video steadily brings its author up to $200,000 a year. Not as a one-time result, not “in a lucky month,” but on a постоян basis. Every month, the video continues to gain more than 2 million views, and in December there is a real traffic explosion. People massively turn it on in the background: for coziness, atmosphere, family evenings, and a pre-holiday mood. The digital fireplace has become the same interior element as garlands and a blanket.

Right now, this video already has around 156 million views. And this is not hype, not a TikTok trend, and not a lucky hit in the algorithm for a couple of weeks. This is nine years of stable demand for a simple human need – a feeling of warmth, calm, and background that demands nothing in return.

While we, during this time, were building complex sales funnels, drawing content plans for a quarter, arguing about Reels versus Shorts, and studying the latest algorithm updates, someone simply filmed fire… and left the chat. Without launches, without marathons, and without burnout.

The main business insight of the outgoing year 2025 sounds almost offensive: sometimes the best product is the one that does not require your constant presence. Not scalable through personal time, not tied to your mood, and not dependent on whether you posted stories today. An asset created once can work for years if it satisfies a basic, recurring need.

But at this point it is worth stopping and taking off the rose-colored glasses. Because the “fireplace” industry has long ceased to be an accidental success of a single video. Research shows that the largest channels in the fireplace, ambient, and background content niche earn millions of dollars a year. And their success is not magic and not luck. It is an industrial scale. Hundreds, and sometimes thousands of videos. Strict SEO optimization for different scenarios: “fireplace for sleep,” “fireplace for Christmas,” “fireplace 8 hours no ads.” Work with streaming platforms, content licensing, channel branding, and sometimes even selling merchandise and paid apps.

And here a new reality appears. Since July 2025, YouTube has seriously tightened its policy toward “inauthentic content.” Mass-produced, uniform, and cyclical videos created without noticeable human involvement came under attack. For many channels with rain, fire, and endless loops, this became a cold shower: monetization began to be turned off, revenues to fall, and old schemes stopped working.

The myth of “easy money on YouTube” once again turned out to be just a myth. Even in the simplest niche, those who win now are not the ones who simply uploaded a video, but those who managed to turn background into a product and a channel into a system.

And yet, the moral of this story is not that “it used to be better.” It is that in every era there is its own digital fireplace. A product that does not demand attention but provides value. That does not distract, but complements people’s lives. That you can turn on – and forget.

The only question is this: when you are sitting on vacation with a cup of tea, think not about a new sales funnel. Think about what could become your digital fireplace. That very asset that quietly works while you live your life.