When should I ask to subscribe?

EVO

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I never ask people to subscribe. I just use the subscribe watermark thingy in the corner throughout the duration of a video.
 

satiricals

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In my personal opinion, the end. Asking people to subscribe (or like) at the beginning of a video is a bit obnoxious and appears manipulative. Because you're telling your audience to do something with your video before they've even formed their own opinion on it. Granted, you might get more subscribers because not all people stick around until the end.. But it's simultaneously going to tick a lot of people off.
First of all this but I'm going to add a bit of my own critique.

You have to think about subscriber burn. If you get subscribers who will blindly subscribe then that is more than an isolated incident but more of a behavioral pattern. These type of subscribers will likely have a lot of subscriptions. So they are more likely to become a product of subscriber burn and become inactive subscribers very shortly. If you're picking up subscribers by only asking people who go through the whole retention of the video then you're picking up subscribers who made the decision for themselves to subscribe & they will more likely have less subscriptions.

It's quality followers over quantity. I see some channels claiming they almost got 10k subs but they're pulling the views I got on a 1k sub channel.
 

Dewmonic Abyss

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These type of subscribers will likely have a lot of subscriptions. So they are more likely to become a product of subscriber burn and become inactive subscribers very shortly.
Very good point. That will hurt your channel's ranking in the algorithm. When you upload a video, you need to make sure at least 5% of your subscribers watch it. Otherwise, YouTube doesn't think it's an interesting video because people aren't clicking on it. Dead subscribers increase the amount of views you need for the view-to-sub ratio, and since they aren't watching the videos, that will make growing much harder.
 
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Mcrocks9

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How funny you bring this up. I literally just did a rant video about the very same thing but mostly on the likes. Personally I would say wait untill the end cause I find extremely annoying when people ask at the beginning. There are a few channels that I watch that will literally ask 3 to 4 times in a single video.
 

Silverr

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The ending will be better. When I watch videos and they ask for subscriptions in the beginning, I tend to get a little annoyed. By doing it at the end, you know the viewer actually subscribed to you because they watched your content and decided to subscribe to you because of it.
 

Ocean Chan

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Should I ask to subscribe at the beginning of the video, or the end? The beginning might work better, but I might look unprofessional. So when should I ask?
Definitely the end - personally when i watch a video i want to get straight into the video content, then aftee watching the content if someone asks to sub i can make a decision about it.
The channels i've subbed to have always been based on their content quality not because i was asked to
 

Sootiro

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I personally would never ask my viewers to subscribe , if they like your channel and content they will naturally.
 

Rini Malik

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I have seen many videos who ask to subscribe in the beginning of the video with instructions on how to do it. It worked for those channels as they already have 1000 or lacs of subscribers. But for new channels, I don't think it's such a good idea to ask subscription in the beginning. Best will be to ask in the end.
 

EyeCantDoThis

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At the start will bring in more subscribers

At the end looks more professional

Depends which one you value more I think
 

Masters of Kung Food

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I personally would never ask my viewers to subscribe , if they like your channel and content they will naturally.
You're giving too much credit to people though. Lots of people love watching videos and never subscribe. Telling them reminds them / puts it in their thoughts.