As a new YouTuber, you might’ve heard about something called Sub4Sub. You may think that it was a great idea to grow your channel. Well, that may not be the case. I’m going to break down what is Sub4Sub and why YouTube Sub4Sub is Bad for your channel. I’ll also share what you can do instead to grow your YouTube channel and get more views.
So we’ve all seen comments where people are asking for Sub4Sub.
“Hey, I just subscribed to you. Will you sub for me?”
Basically, that is the essence of it. And I don’t know why this is still so prominent and so common on YouTube. And it is a big problem.
Table of Contents
What Is Sub4Sub?
It’s basically where someone subscribes to your channel and you then subscribe to theirs in exchange. The idea behind is that if I scratch your back, you’ll scratch mine. We’ll both get more subscribers and more views and therefore we’ll start making much money.
Hate to break it to you, but that’s not how it’s going to work.
Why YouTube Sub4Sub is Bad?
The problem with Sub4Sub is that these new subscribers are never going to watch any of your videos.
The truth is they’re not going to engage with any of your content.
The reason is they don’t care about you or your content. They did it in exchange so that way they could get a subscriber in return.
The problem is that YouTube looks at these inflated subscriber numbers. But zero views, 10 views, and zero engagement.
It’s obvious this must not be that great of a channel. Because the subscribers that are subscribed to it, aren’t watching the videos. “And YouTube is not going to promote such videos.
One of the reasons why Sub4Sub is bad is that it’s actually against Google’s or YouTube terms of service. In the article about “Spam, Deceptive policies and Scams. There is a section called “incentivized spam.” By doing Sub4Sub, you can get your account terminated. And yet another reason to stop.
If you look on Facebook and you type in YouTube, there are tons of YouTube groups. These groups are dedicated to the sole purpose of Sub4Sub. These are called engagement pods, and it’s a way of artificially creating on your channels.
To me, it’s so crazy how common and how prevalent this is, and that people think that this works. My theory is that this is so popular because it has been around on YouTube for a while.
People see other people in comments doing this, and it’s just become the YouTube norm. They’re sort of sheep following.
What they think is supposed to be best practice. So if this is such a great strategy, then why aren’t the big YouTubers doing this? Something to think about.
Also Read: How To Do Italics, Bold & Strikethrough On YouTube Comments
Legit Ways to Grow Your YouTube Channel
Let’s transition into the things that you can do to grow subscribers on your YouTube channel.
Stop Sub4Sub
So my first tip, which is pretty obvious, is to stop Sub4Sub.
Stop it right now! Don’t do it. Never do it again.
This is going to hurt so bad and be super painful. But you need to go and delete subscribers that came from sub for sub. Yup, delete your subscribers you might be freaking out thinking, “Okay, no, no way I can’t do that. I worked so hard to get these subscribers.
“But again, remember these subscribers are not doing anything for you. They are not helping you. Instead, they’re making your engagement rate look low.
If you have a hundred subscribers and only one engages. So you want to get your engagement rate back down to a normal level.
This is tricky to figure out who is watching your videos and who isn’t. But what you could do is you can go into the comment section of some of your videos. If you see that people are commenting and you didn’t ask them to comment. Then those people are engaging and they are watching your videos. So they’re on your safe list.
Grow Your Subscribers By Putting Out Great Videos
My next tip to grow real subscribers is to start putting out videos that your subscribers want. So for the subscribers that you do have, you can poll them in your comment section. Then read your comment section, to see what video ideas they are asking you to do, and then go and make those videos.
So listen to those guys, girls, and then make videos that they want. You can broaden this even further by making videos in general, that people want to watch.
You can do SEO research to see what are topics related to your niche that people are searching for. Because if you make that video and then you have it ranked at the top of the YouTube search results. Then you are going to get views from people who want to watch your video. And hopefully, they will then subscribe, like, comment, and view your video.
Calls To Action
My next tip is to have calls to action in your videos for the people who are watching your videos. So you need to ask people to subscribe to your channel, to like your video, and to leave a comment. But you don’t need to do it in a “quid pro quo” manner where you’re exchanging it for something.
So, in your videos, you should always be having these calls to action. Reminding people to engage with your video, by doing those things.
More organic engagement on your videos is going to be an indicator to Google that this is a good video.
Respond To Your Comments
My next tip is to get more subscribers and a healthy engagement rate by responding to your comments. So you need to respond to every single comment on your channel. Because YouTube doesn’t know the difference between you commenting on your channel.
So if someone has responded to your channel, you need to like their comment and respond back to them. This will double or triple your engagement rate. Because you are now having conversations with your subscribers and your viewers.
Collaborate with other YouTubers
My next tip is to grow your subscribers by collaborating with other YouTubers. Who are in similar niches as you or have similar audiences like you. Collaborations with other YouTubers is a great way to grow your subscriber base. By collaborating with someone else, you are exposing yourself, your personality, and your channel to a new audience. That may not have known about you before. They’ll see you on this other YouTubers’ channel and become interested. They’ll want to check out your other video that you collaborated with the YouTube or on they’ll like it. And then they hopefully will subscribe.
So this is a subscriber that you want and will help your channel tremendously. Because they found you on someone else’s channel that is related to your niche. And they came over, they watched your video and they liked it enough and they subscribe.
This is perfect. This is exactly the type of subscribers you want. Not garbage subscribers that come from Sub4Sub.
Upload Consistently
My next step is to upload consistently. By having a consistent upload schedule. Your subscribers will know when to expect videos from you. and hopefully, they will be excited about this and they will tune in when your video launches. So that way you can get more engagement.
For the first 30 minutes, I do respond to every single comment that comes in. This not only gives my subscribers a chance to ask me any questions they want in the comments of that video. But it also helps the engagement rate of that video during the first two hours. For getting engagement and views.
Those first two hours are crucial. Because for the first two hours, YouTube and the algorithm is watching the video to see how much engagement, how many views it’s getting. To see if they should then further push it to more users after that first two-hour window.
So again, you want to prepare your subscribers for when you are uploading. But then you also want to give them an incentive to respond and watch that video, right when it drops. Ultimately, I know that subscribers are really important when you are a new YouTuber. So that’s why Sub4Sub hurting your channel and hurting your chances of growing.
Final Thoughts
The truth about sub4sub is that you can get a lot of subscribers when you participate in sub4sub. Yes, you can join a huge community of YouTubers and participate in sub4sub.
Indeed, you can gain a thousand subscribers when you sub4sub on YouTube. But you’ll break YouTube’s Terms of Service when you sub for sub. Meaning you can have a chance to get your channel deleted or banned off the platform.
Instead of such practices, you can follow along with my methods to grow your channel.
