In regards to all the "follow for follow" requests I keep getting..

[Gediphoto]

I keep getting "subscribe for subscribe" requests on YouTube. In my experience, these are just worthless subscribers that won't watch your content anyways. But still, this raises a few questions that I'm having.

If you know anything about me, it's that I'm all about driving traffic to my channel and hope my content converts to a subscriber, a like/dislike or a comment (or a combination of them). On Instagram, a way to expose your account (and gain more followers), is to simply follow random accounts and unfollow them a few days later, if you don't like their content - It's all about showing that you exist. If people like your content, they stick around.

I'm wondering, is this applicable for YouTube at all? If yes, then I have a follow up question:

I've noticed that sometime I get a notification and an email when a new subscriber .. well .. subscribe. I get his/her name, and link to the account. Sometimes, I notice the number of subscribers just increase without any notification. I'm at 79 subscribers now, and I'd say I've gotten around 15 notifications/emails and the rest (64 subscribers) have been "silent" ones. My guess is that it's a privacy setting. But If the "follow for follow" thing I mentioned earlier is to work, I need to set my account so that people can see that I'm following them (in order to expose my account). Anyone know anything about that?

OK, my last follow up question. Subscribe on YouTube isn't really a thing here in Sweden where I live - So I'm wondering: On average - how many channels do you think people in general subscribe to?

Holy crap, sorry for the long post. If this was 9gag I'd give ya'll a potato.

 

[Nicekid76]

Answer -

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4yOc-eCbGwiPZ3Bq86ZS-A/channels

You're channels are hidden, which means you are not publicly subscribed to any channel. You have to change your setting to show your subscriptions publicly.


Rant -
I disabled this back in 2013 because I didn't want to do exactly what you are talking about. I would find channels with 1000 subscribers that were also subscribed to 4000 different channels. It's pretty obvious what they did To me this is as bad as asking sub for sub. I'm not trying to change your mind. but when people subscribe to me and they have 5,000 other channels they are subscribed to I already know they aren't going to be watching my stuff. It's a meaningless subscription to me. It's like they are trying to trick me into subscribing and even if I liked there content I wouldn't at that point. . . who knows? maybe that's what I need to do too to grow my channel. *sigh* but I think you would be better off collaborating with similarly sized channels in your niche.

Anyway, hope I answered your question above. Sorry for the lecture.

 

[Gediphoto]

What lecture?

I totally agree with you that a follow 4 follow is worthless (much as I described above). Not only would the algorithms give me crappy suggestions, I would also have a sucky subcribers - views ratio. I'll continue as always, and stay out of f4f request.

Thanks for answering my question! And glad to see your phone got back alright

 

[Nicekid76]

^_^ Thank you
I thought you were going to start follow for follow / sub 4 sub.
I was a bit worried

 

[Gediphoto]

Dude, no! f4f are inheritably lame!

^_^ Thank you
I thought you were going to start follow for follow / sub 4 sub.
I was a bit worried

 

[CrazyOwenYT]

I agree. sub 4 sub is pretty lame. But what if you think of it like a weird Superbowl ad that you thought was dumb. Think in terms of exposure and conversion. If you can just covert a small % out all the subscribers into actual viewers. Wouldn't 10% of million be better than 90% of a thousand? Just to be clear I don't agree with sub 4 sub but just thought I throw it out to for something to think about. On that note, anyone wanna sub 4 sub.. lol just kidding, not kidding, no really I'm kidding.. Ok I'm just a kid lol.

 

[Nicekid76]

If I ever meet you in person I'll buy you a tuna sub if you buy me a tuna sub
The issue is that if you get 10% of a million you are rolling the dice to fail. Here's why. If only 10% if your subs actually watch your content, then when youtube send out the first wave of you video notification to 10% of people... there's a change that none of the people who actually watch your content see it. Worst case everyone who got notified is from the 90% of people who don't watch. Well then youtube would never share your video out to anyone in the 10% of users who would actually watch your video because no one watched in the first wave.

Youtube doesn't share your videos with all your subs, it shares it with a small portion and based on how they react to it they will then share it with a few more, and more and more. but if they don't react to it at all, youtube 2nd wave is smaller and smaller until youtube basically kills it from showing up in recommendation or sub feeds (even notification squad doesn't guarantee getting a notification).

This is why you might find a channel that has over a million subs but is struggling to get over 1,000 views per video. Yes it's "better" but you're basically limiting the growth of your channel in the long run.

feel free to check out this video about buying fake facebook likes. I realize sub for sub isn't quite "fake likes" but in a way they are.

those are my thoughts atleast.

 

[CrazyOwenYT]

I agree. I thought the whole Million Subs with low views are all pretty much sub/like buyers which is the worst of them all. Maybe I was wrong about subs and notification. What's the point of subs and notification if you're not being notified. This is the reason why I only sub to less than an handful so that I don't get "junk" mail. But if what you're saying is true then subbing don't really matter. Here's the plot twist, why not sub away to support others (just to get them over the hump) if subbing doesn't result in "junk" mail (feed/notification). Again I'm not condoning it (you can tell by the very few subs I have or sub to), I'm just provoking thoughts. I'll take that tuna sandwich from you any day even if I have to buy you one. It's nice to get a gift even if you have to give one back. Isn't that the point of gift exchange. lol...

 

[Nicekid76]

I'm subscribed to less than 100 channels (i think)
my friends on the other hand O_O they might be subscribed to 1000's of channels WHICH I DO NOT UNDERSTAND (I'm not yelling at you, I'm yelling at my friends)
in that case, giving them 1000 notifications a day or 1000 videos a day is a bit much to filter through.
It sounds like you already understand this though based on your "handful" of channels comment.

 

[Boris Qs]

I keep getting "subscribe for subscribe" requests on YouTube. In my experience, these are just worthless subscribers that won't watch your content anyways. But still, this raises a few questions that I'm having.

If you know anything about me, it's that I'm all about driving traffic to my channel and hope my content converts to a subscriber, a like/dislike or a comment (or a combination of them). On Instagram, a way to expose your account (and gain more followers), is to simply follow random accounts and unfollow them a few days later, if you don't like their content - It's all about showing that you exist. If people like your content, they stick around.

I'm wondering, is this applicable for YouTube at all? If yes, then I have a follow up question:

No its not applicable on YouTube and if YouTube detects your channel is doing sub sub they will penalize your channel.

I've noticed that sometime I get a notification and an email when a new subscriber .. well .. subscribe. I get his/her name, and link to the account. Sometimes, I notice the number of subscribers just increase without any notification. I'm at 79 subscribers now, and I'd say I've gotten around 15 notifications/emails and the rest (64 subscribers) have been "silent" ones.

That's normal for most new channels...the Emails where probably coming from YouTube and that's usually not often or so.

My guess is that it's a privacy setting.

Kind of a setting because you accepted to receive mails from new subscribers along the lines when you where creating your channel.

But If the "follow for follow" thing I mentioned earlier is to work, I need to set my account so that people can see that I'm following them (in order to expose my account). Anyone know anything about that?

The only way people can know on YouTube that you are subscribed (or following them) is when they login to their subscriber tab in their channel studio and trust me most creators don't have the time to be doing that on YouTube a glance at the number of subs is enough so there is nothing to set here.

OK, my last follow up question. Subscribe on YouTube isn't really a thing here in Sweden where I live - So I'm wondering: On average - how many channels do you think people in general subscribe to?

That's a hard one to answer, probably only YouTube will know the answer to that but I know for sure there is no limit for subscribing to channels on YouTube

Holy crap, sorry for the long post. If this was 9gag I'd give ya'll a potato.

Can't wait to get my share of the Potato from Sweden.