Sub4sub. Is it a good thing or not?

[CrystalD]

Waste of your time. You'll just get them to sub to you for 2 seconds then they'll unsub/unfollow once they get what they want and try to unsub from you discretely but you can always tel lol. I had it happen to me once and I got so p****d, never gonna do it again.

 

[SamuelBrice]

No just No, it leaves you with a lot of inactive subs who don't watch your videos and as you say lower your retention rate placing you further down the rankings....

 

[TalkFandomToMe]

Sub4sub is a really bad idea. All those people are ghost subscribers and probably once you subscribe to them, they try and be sneaky and unsubscribe from you. Sure, it makes your channel look big at first, but people will see you're only getting like 2% of your subscribers actually watching your videos.

 

[Gaijillionaire]

Everybody here about empty subs is right on. I always compare it to printing money and inflation. If a country put 3 zeroes on the money today then $1 now equals $1000! If I had 5,000$ in the bank it now becomes 5 million!$ wow I'm rich!! Let's go shopping! Except now everyone else who had their bank accounts upped by 1000 are out there too, all the shops raise the price accordingly. Now no body is rich but our pretty new money has a lot of zeros on it! Look at Zimbabwe. 400 quintillion $ couldn't buy a tomato. But you're zeroes are pretty high! Don't be the Zimbabwe of subs!

 

[Irahs]

It's been a month since I joined youtube and I've done most experiments in getting views and subscribers. One of the things I did is get some from family and friends which gave me a decent subscriber number, a decent view and also a high audience retention rate. But they are not good in repeated views so I tried the sub 4 sub thing. I made lots of subscribers, views also gets up watch time also increases likes comments and certain things went up, they are also repeat viewers in any other video but then they ruined my high retention rate.. But all in all the money average in social blade increases to $44 a year from $12 a year.. So I guess it's still worth it.. how about you guys what are your experiences in sub4sub thing?

This is why whenver i see the youtube friend comments, I shake my head, it is absolutely worthless and hurts channels more than not

 

[ChrisLegend]

Yeah having those ghost subs really suck that eventually unsubscribe from you sneakily. Same thing happens on Instagram a lot as well if you are trying to run an Instagram account that links to your channel. In my opinion, sub4sub is a no go.

 

[Winger94]

My though is a big no. Sub4sub will never be a good idea, even if weirdly I read somewhere that it's a good idea but it's totally wrong. Even if should happen that some of your sub4subbers will become loyal and active subs, the biggest part will only be a giant pile of corpses that will only let your subs number growing with no real effects. High subscribers count and low views count is a big deterrent for potential viewers so it's better avoiding it.

 

[wickisworld]

I have only had my channel for 3 months and I already feel overwhelmed with "I subbed, sub me back". At first I thought it was like a courtesy thing. Like supporting each other and helping each other grow. It wasn't until I started learning more about it that I saw just how bad it was in hurting your ranking. Just the other day I had someone comment on my video by referencing something that is only in the first 30 seconds so I know that is all they watched. I would rather they didn't watch it at all!! When people don't watch your videos or only watch a little bit of them, it's telling youtube that your content isn't interesting enough to viewers. Honestly, I would rather have a few subscribers who love our content, than a bunch of people who couldn't care less to watch our videos. We put a lot of thought and work into the videos and I only want subscribers who appreciate that!

I have never asked for sub4sub, but they all came out of the woodwork and the amount of them is increasing everyday. The biggest issue I have right now (besides dealing with all those comments) is that many of these people have subscribed to me with the expectation that I will subscribe back so I am gaining sub4subs without wanting to or asking to. I'm not sure which ones actually like our channel, or are just expecting the sub back.

Bottom line, I have yet to see a good reason to sub4sub because the "benefits" it gives (higher subscriber count) has even bigger negatives attached to it.

 

[TheMercenaree]

Sub4Sub is AN ABSOLUTE NO GO!!! It may get you more subscribers but they probably won't actually watch your videos and that will hurt your channel.