Why you should NEVER do "sub for sub"

Sub for sub is hands down the worst thing to do for your channel as you end up with little views and dead subscribers that don't care about your content :/
 
Adam Quigley said:
Sub for sub is hands down the worst thing to do for your channel as you end up with little views and dead subscribers that don't care about your content :/
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Quite literally the only defense of it I've heard (which is somewhat valid) is the psychological aspect that many people won't subscribe to a channel that has very few subs. The impression a viewer gets is "wow this person must suck, no one's subscribed." So you sub4sub early on and that at least gives you 20-30 subs to start out and then people will feel more comfortable subscribing and giving you a chance.

That is the ONLY defense that I can accept. I cannot imagine a YouTuber getting any satisfaction in amassing hundreds (or even thousands) of subscribers with no one watching.
 
Won't do it, ever. This is for fun for the Quagdarrian Horde!!! (What I consider my subscribers =D ) and fun for me. If that means I only get to entertain and make things for 3 or 4 people , then dangit! I am going to give them the best stuff available, and as I upgrade things like Cameras...mics, lighting, etc. My gang gets to reap the benefits. Having fun doing it so far, not focusing to much on "amount of subscribers" as I am making sure I properly get the word out so I can find more who will enjoy what I do. I figure if I work hard at it, in ohh...years, I may have upwards of a couple thousand :)
 
SomeGuyDude said:
Quite literally the only defense of it I've heard (which is somewhat valid) is the psychological aspect that many people won't subscribe to a channel that has very few subs. The impression a viewer gets is "wow this person must suck, no one's subscribed." So you sub4sub early on and that at least gives you 20-30 subs to start out and then people will feel more comfortable subscribing and giving you a chance.

That is the ONLY defense that I can accept. I cannot imagine a YouTuber getting any satisfaction in amassing hundreds (or even thousands) of subscribers with no one watching.
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Saw your Saturday VLog...dude, aliens must have beamed your thoughts and shared your exact thoughts with me.
 
Its Just As Bad As Buying Subs Or Subscribing To Yourself With Fake Accounts Like The Whole Fun Of Making A YouTube Channel Is The "Grinding" That It Takes To Get To The Top Finally Someone Has Mentioned How Bad/Annoying Doing The Whole Sub4Sub Thing Can Be For A Struggling YouTube Channel It Just Makes Things Harder In The Long Run... (To Make A Long Story Short I 100% Agree With You):smug:
 
I've seen tonnes of sub for sub pages on facebook and reddit, things that obviously encourage you to get subscribers early. But surely people must realise that the owners of these pages are the ones profiting from subscribers, as they can determine who is allowed in and out of the groups and everyone else gets maybe 5 or 10 subscribers that have no interest whatsoever in what they do. Can't see any reason for this to be recommended or even tried by anyone.
 
You should never do sub for sub or shoutout series(that include people having to sub to you) all it does is inflate your numbers and make your channel look larger than what it really is.
 
SomeGuyDude said:
Quite literally the only defense of it I've heard (which is somewhat valid) is the psychological aspect that many people won't subscribe to a channel that has very few subs. The impression a viewer gets is "wow this person must suck, no one's subscribed." So you sub4sub early on and that at least gives you 20-30 subs to start out and then people will feel more comfortable subscribing and giving you a chance.

That is the ONLY defense that I can accept. I cannot imagine a YouTuber getting any satisfaction in amassing hundreds (or even thousands) of subscribers with no one watching.
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Never done sub4sub and I'm NOT planning to do it anytime soon, but saying that this is a valid argument for it, the question with it is though, where do you draw a line in the sane? At what point do you stop doing it?
 
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Rhodri Powell said:
Never done sub4sub and I'm planning to do it anytime soon, but saying that this is a valid argument for it, the question with it is though, where do you draw a line in the sane? At what point do you stop doing it?
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That's for someone else to decide. Personally, any time you end up with the strange disconnect of "way too few views for how many subs you have" then you've gone too far.

It's also actually a huge problem with "gimmick" videos. I've seen a bunch of channels that did one thing that took off, but the rest of their content isn't of that type, and so they have thousands and thousands of legitimate subscribers who subbed because of that one video, but then just never unsubbed for whatever reason but don't watch.

Hell it happened on my old and now defunct personal channel. I used to dump cool videos there or stuff for my political blog (I had zero interest in "YouTubing" at the time), one hit 1.5mil views, a few others got into the hundreds of thousands. As a result, years ago I had all these subscribers despite the fact that 99% of my channel was weightlifting and playing the drums.

It's the toughest part of promotion. You need to get people to subscribe to your channel because they want to watch WHAT YOU DO. Not because of a sub4sub agreement or because of one aberration that nothing else is related to.
 
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