What is the best way to get rid of sub 4 subbers?

[Aaron Geyer]

About 1/3 of my channel's subscriber base is from people subbing me and then I subbing them back. I realize now that this is rather foolish because a lot of these people watch for less than 2 minutes (lots of 15 second views) and this is slowly killing my channel.

I started direct messaging people who don't watch to unsubscribe. For people that do watch I've unsubscribed from them to discourage them. I'm thinking of blocking all my sub 4 subbers that don't watch my entire videos. I've deleted all my messages on other peoples channels that suggest I subscribed back to them. This is to avoid retaliation.

Going forward I'm deleting sub 4 sub messages or telling them I won't sub back.

Any other ideas to prevent/discourage sub 4 subbing?

 

[Crown]

Well as you have seen, the best way to get rid of it is not to do it in the first place. Once a channel starts with sub4sub, it attracts a very bad crowd, which in turn attracts a bad crowd and it just snowballs. Not much you can do about the past, but just make sure going forward, you don't do anything to encourage it and eventually it will stop. Or just start afresh.

 

[Aaron Geyer]

Thanks Crown! Yeah, fortunately I don't think I need to cancel the channel.

 

[Ruslana Ness]

i have the same problem and i dont know what to do.. i have 1K subs that almost all of them are channels that i approached or they approached me with sub4sub and it is killing my channel too, i got retention time in average of 13-20% and that is really low..
people are watching just the first 30 seconds of the video and then living a comment "great video, nice channel" and i know they didnt watch the video..

i deleted all the sub4sub comments on my channel and i unsubbed from all the channels i subbed to [nearly 900 channels, it took me a whole hour to unsub from all of them]
and when i upload new videos i just see my subscribers bar drop but i'm glad that it is because the people who dont watch my channel unsubing.. and still people are not watching the videos
a total mess..

 

[toptengamer100]

Unless you have a lot of legitimate subscribers, I'd just start over. Make compelling SEO rich content and you'll get noticed.

 

[Ruslana Ness]

i really thought about it because i dont think that i have real followers..
and i asked Tim Schmoyer from video creators about this subject and he answered me
"You don't need to start a new channel. Just start working on organic growth from here out."
so i'm lost lol
i think that i will continue my channel for a few more weeks and if there will be no change than i will start a new channel

 

[Aaron Geyer]

Thanks for your story Ruslana. I've been tracking a lot of channels that sub for sub. Many of them reach 1000 quite quickly but have fewer views than when they started their channel. I don't want to be in their shoes. The crazy thing is that some of them have great videos. It's really sad.

I've seen 12K and 23K channels that do sub for sub. I even found a 500K channel that claims to sub back to everyone who subscribes. I think these guys are rare and they probably would have done well without doing sub for sub.

I'm glad that you were able to shake off some of the dead weight on your channel. I'd be really tempted to start over myself. I think it is possible to overcome it. YouTube feels like a massive online game where people try all sorts of strategies. Most of them don't work!

 

[Arc Flash]

Thanks for your story Ruslana. I've been tracking a lot of channels that sub for sub. Many of them reach 1000 quite quickly but have fewer views than when they started their channel. I don't want to be in their shoes. The crazy thing is that some of them have great videos. It's really sad.

I've seen 12K and 23K channels that do sub for sub. I even found a 500K channel that claims to sub back to everyone who subscribes. I think these guys are rare and they probably would have done well without doing sub for sub.

I'm glad that you were able to shake off some of the dead weight on your channel. I'd be really tempted to start over myself. I think it is possible to overcome it. YouTube feels like a massive online game where people try all sorts of strategies. Most of them don't work!

i really thought about it because i dont think that i have real followers..
and i asked Tim Schmoyer from video creators about this subject and he answered me
"You don't need to start a new channel. Just start working on organic growth from here out."
so i'm lost lol
i think that i will continue my channel for a few more weeks and if there will be no change than i will start a new channel

I genuinely feel bad for you guys. It's many people's dream here to be successful. That's one of the main reasons why we use this site. Sometimes because of that strong burning desire for success, it can unfortunately cause you to make decisions you regret later. I wish you guys the best that both of your channels can recover, because you both seem to have entertaining and worthwhile content.

 

[Hirudov]

When I stream and mostly on my gaming channel I always get messages like "Nice stream bro, I subbed, waiting for you to sub back" or similar (Some of the messages are really creative). Okay, they subbed, but I never sub to anyone (sub back), so eventually they unsubscribe later, if they don't forget. I don't think the low retention time you have is only because of these sub4sub people, since usually they don't watch anything (and they can't if they subscribed to hundreds of channels anyway). Just turn back this page of your channel history and start improving your videos. Eventually non sub for sub viewers will start watching and genuinely subscribe, which will increase your viewer retention and real subscriber base. At the beginning it may be only 10% genuine subscribers, but with the time they will become 20-30-40-50% or even more. So in long term if you have 90% real genuine subscribers and 10% sub4sub subscribers (who don't contribute to your statistics anyway), you will be pretty good. If you read some of the messages on this forum in many of them people complain that they have many subs but low views.

tl;dr: It's not because of the sub4sub that you have low retention time and few views.

 

[Ruslana Ness]

When I stream and mostly on my gaming channel I always get messages like "Nice stream bro, I subbed, waiting for you to sub back" or similar (Some of the messages are really creative). Okay, they subbed, but I never sub to anyone (sub back), so eventually they unsubscribe later, if they don't forget. I don't think the low retention time you have is only because of these sub4sub people, since usually they don't watch anything (and they can't if they subscribed to hundreds of channels anyway). Just turn back this page of your channel history and start improving your videos. Eventually non sub for sub viewers will start watching and genuinely subscribe, which will increase your viewer retention and real subscriber base. At the beginning it may be only 10% genuine subscribers, but with the time they will become 20-30-40-50% or even more. So in long term if you have 90% real genuine subscribers and 10% sub4sub subscribers (who don't contribute to your statistics anyway), you will be pretty good. If you read some of the messages on this forum in many of them people complain that they have many subs but low views.

tl;dr: It's not because of the sub4sub that you have low retention time and few views.

i totally understand your point and it is legitimate.
i came to the conclusion that the sub4sub people are causing my low retention time because i always have the same people that are commenting "nice video, like, please check my new video in my channel" [those people already approach to me in the past for sub4sub, or i approached them and now they coming back to my videos for the sake of asking me to watch their new video, and for other people to see their comment on my channel so they will have a chance for new people who are looking for sub4sub],

this is also some kind of self promotion, you are coming to the people that you already did sub4sub with them and asking them to watch your new video..

so they dont really watch my video, they are watching only the 30 first seconds and leaving a comment only for self promotion