As an amateur YouTuber myself, I understand the desire for more subscribers. If you’re going to be spending all of this time making videos, you want people to actually watch these videos, especially if you’re going to try and make a career of it. However with YouTube’s ever growing size and the fact that more and more people are becoming YouTubers every day, it’s getting tougher to obtain subscribers for smaller channels.
But a lot of the methods being used today aren’t very effective. The result is this list of things that personally turn me off from subscribing to a fellow YouTuber.
1. Spam Comments – Literally look at any popular video or twitter account. You will see at least one if not two messages saying something like “I make videos similar to this one! Subscribe to my channel!” It’s annoying and doesn’t contribute anything. Does it even work? I mean, it’s not like people intentionally go into the comments section to look for a new potential YouTuber to follow. Honestly it just seems like a lot of excessive work to look self-centered while simultaneously annoying EVERYONE.
2. “Sub for Sub” – I’m a rebel at heart. Trust me; I haven’t had a Dr. Pepper since their “It’s not for women” campaign. If you only want to subscribe to me so I’ll subscribe to you, I’m going to ignore your request. For one, my subscriptions are marked to private so you’ll never know if I’m subscribed to you unless I directly tell you and you’ll never believe me. Second, it’s the easiest YouTube marketing campaign in the book. If you can’t think of anything more creative for a marketing campaign, I’m going to assume your channel is going to reflect that mindset. Third, it’s just plain annoying. So if you ever see me say “Sub for Sub,” please assume that I’m joking because I mostly definitely am.
3. Guilt Trips – Alright getting subscribers is hard, everyone knows that, but you’re not going to help yourself with a pity party marketing campaign. You’re just going to get subscribers who don’t care for your videos outside of sympathy and annoy other YouTubers who have been or are currently in a worse situation. Everyone has had trouble with obtaining subscribers. Get over it.
4. Rudeness – Believe it or not, but there are some YouTubers out there who are actually rude to their fans just because there’s not enough of them. They get frustrated and sort of lash out, saying that they should quit trying to make these videos just because they don’t have enough subscribers. That’s never a good thing. It doesn’t matter if you have three subscribers or three million subscribers; those people are subscribed to you for a reason. They may seem like a number to you, but they’re real people (unless they’re spambots) and you should never treat them like anything less than that. Not only do these people not get my subscription, but they get my active boycott of their channel.
5. Poor Quality – That’s really the bottom line. You could have the perfect marketing campaign, but if your videos aren’t at a good quality then I’m simply not subscribing. If you want subscribers, you have to make quality content first. Alternatively, I’ve seen YouTubers who have awful marketing campaigns that break the other four guidelines but their content is so good that I can’t help but subscribe. Good quality is what makes a good YouTuber. You can’t expect to become successful at YouTube if you just make Vlogs from your snapchat stories with the terrible YouTube stabilizer. Only the already famous can do that.
If you need some ideas for some high-quality videos to bring your YouTube channel to the next level, I highly suggest reading through Grin’s 101 YouTube Video Ideas for some inspiration. They even have ideas based for specific genres such as Technology, Gaming, and DIY channels! Or, if you want some excellent tips about gaining subscribers for free, Grin also has a detailed blog post about how to actually get subscribers with certain tricks…which is basically the opposite of this post.
Subscribe to my YouTube channel for a new video every Monday! No guilt trip required.
The Maddness 