Thoughts on people who do sub4sub?

Corporate values sub numbers - MCNs give you better terms when you have higher subs, YT gives you different colored play buttons, you get paid for sponsorship based on subs not views. and you slowly creep up through the echelons of the YT ecosystem and get perks based on subs. Subs are critical to give you earning stability. You can plan better and estimate expected views. You can go to the bank and get a business loan. You got to get subs. From day one to succeed. There's many ways, s4s is one way. It is not intrinsically bad nor good. It just is. You can use it if you know the drawbacks and benefits of the strategy. Know when to use it, how to use it, and when to stop using it, and the results of s4s on your videos and channel.

One thread common here is don't do s4s but share your videos on forums (like this one) and social media. What is often not said is the retention from sharing on forums, like here, is appalling.

You can try both - share on forums and s4s. See the retention and sub counts from both, then make a decision what's best for your future growth.

YT is a lot like playing the stock market. You got to know when to long, when to short, when to go with the trend or against it, and when to stay out. If you're good you can even play the spread and scalp off that. No strategy is intrinsically bad or good, it's how you execute them and your ability to play the game. Bottom line is, Yt is a game, you have to know how to play the game.[DOUBLEPOST=1474776573,1474776094][/DOUBLEPOST]
PositivelyBrainwashed said:
So by increasing your sub count, we tend to conclude this will increase our subscribe rate. Now this is actually somewhat true. Having 2k subs now, I can tell you people are subscribing much more often then when I had just 500, and based on other channels who are much bigger, the pattern continues
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This is spot on. The more you have, the more you will get.
It's not only psychology, it's algorithmic!
Think of s4s as r4r (relationship for relationship). Find like minded channels and support each other.
But absolutely critical for continued growth are a dozen other factors, like you mentioned.

Yt blows my mind - before it took I think 2 months to get to 600 subs, now it takes 1 day to get that. Some channels get that per hour.
 
KiddieToysReview said:
Corporate values sub numbers - MCNs give you better terms when you have higher subs, YT gives you different colored play buttons, you get paid for sponsorship based on subs not views. and you slowly creep up through the echelons of the YT ecosystem and get perks based on subs. Subs are critical to give you earning stability. You can plan better and estimate expected views. You can go to the bank and get a business loan. You got to get subs. From day one to succeed. There's many ways, s4s is one way. It is not intrinsically bad nor good. It just is. You can use it if you know the drawbacks and benefits of the strategy. Know when to use it, how to use it, and when to stop using it, and the results of s4s on your videos and channel.

One thread common here is don't do s4s but share your videos on forums (like this one) and social media. What is often not said is the retention from sharing on forums, like here, is appalling.

You can try both - share on forums and s4s. See the retention and sub counts from both, then make a decision what's best for your future growth.

YT is a lot like playing the stock market. You got to know when to long, when to short, when to go with the trend or against it, and when to stay out. If you're good you can even play the spread and scalp off that. No strategy is intrinsically bad or good, it's how you execute them and your ability to play the game. Bottom line is, Yt is a game, you have to know how to play the game.[DOUBLEPOST=1474776573,1474776094][/DOUBLEPOST]

This is spot on. The more you have, the more you will get.
It's not only psychology, it's algorithmic!
Think of s4s as r4r (relationship for relationship). Find like minded channels and support each other.
But absolutely critical for continued growth are a dozen other factors, like you mentioned.

Yt blows my mind - before it took I think 2 months to get to 600 subs, now it takes 1 day to get that. Some channels get that per hour.
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While controversial amongst creators I do agree with you. Any social media activity brings bad retention, YTtalk being the worst of them on my channel haha. From all the sources (Reddit, Facebook, Google+, etc) the average view duration of YTtalk is 20 seconds :), even adwords kills your retention quickly if your video is bad no matter how well you target it.
I full agree on your view that subscribers are a major importance in the algorithm, Youtube's rewards systems are only build on this metric. In the past they also relied e.g. on the amount of watch time per 90 days but they even threw that out of the window in the new creator reward system.

On the S4S itself, you hit the nail on the head there. If you do s4s with other channels similar than yours, you are likely to find friends, maybe even do collabs in the future. Watch their videos, comment on them with something that shows you really watched it, subscribe to them and ask nicely to check your channel as well. After subscribing to them, make sure you check them out (all of them) at least once a week and comment again on their video's. This way you build relationships and you make sure they care for you as well and come back (no dead subs).
What you shouldn't do with S4S is go to comment and subscribe to channels outside of your niche. This will not help with retention, it will give you a dead sub who never comes back, it will not improve your relationships with other channels, no collabs, etc. I think this is where S4S get the bad reputation from, subbing to anything uploaded no matter the quality or subject.
My second thought why S4S has a bad name is that a lot of the channels following this strategy have absolute garbage as videos and try to use S4S trying to get attention and game the system. YouTube is not crazy and even if they do put your video in recommended because it seems good it will quickly reveal there is nothing that can keep viewers on youtube for and will drop it quickly from their ranks.

As you said well, use all your tools at your disposal (including S4S), know how to use them and in which moderation. Don't discard any strategy in advance, with a little twist it might actually work well for your channel while it would maybe fail for someone else. To get noticed you have to do something, relying on the algorithm only is going to take a very long time unless you get very very lucky! Any business in the real world relies on marketing, why would you not do it for your business (meaning your channel)?
 
I see a lot of them. Some youtubers I was really impressed with the growth but then I look into the comment section and turns out they do sub4sub. I personally don't like it, I want my average views to be either on par or more than the amount of subscribers I have. Having a thousand subs with 200 average views is just a slogan that says "My content isn't that interesting" for me.
 
I have never done it, i seems stupid and it just floods your sub box with useless videos you will never watch and they don't count, because people how do sub4sub are in it for the money but you don't make money from subs.
 
I am really sick of seeing it everywhere on Youtube! And ironically, pretty much every single video about how to grow your channel has them. The video might even say NOT to do sub4sub... yet the comment section is filled with it.

I have to say though that a channel that has a lot of subscribers (even if it's because of sub4sub) LOOK like they are more "professional" than channels with less subscribers. The numbers alone make you think "Ah, this is a great channel!". Well, until you see that there are barely any (or good) videos on their channel lol.
 
Alexander Hoff said:
I am really sick of seeing it everywhere on Youtube! And ironically, pretty much every single video about how to grow your channel has them. The video might even say NOT to do sub4sub... yet the comment section is filled with it.

I have to say though that a channel that has a lot of subscribers (even if it's because of sub4sub) LOOK like they are more "professional" than channels with less subscribers. The numbers alone make you think "Ah, this is a great channel!". Well, until you see that there are barely any (or good) videos on their channel lol.
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Have you ever walked along the strip mall or shopping street, and had someone walk up to you with a sample tray of food from the local pastry or delicatessen? Or even in the supermarket, where a brand sets a display and lets you try their food? Try4Buy. You try it, you like it, you buy it, then you become a customer. Maybe even a loyal one for life of the product.

In the Yt game, success is measured by subs. Play the game, or you're out on the sidelines. Don't discount strategies you have not tried yourself and have very limited experience with. I am closely tracking channels that have gone to over 100k subs in under 18 months with heavy s4s activity in the beginning before the algorithm kicks in and sends traffic. These channels are banking 20M-50M+ views a month. They are obviously doing/have done something right.
 
I'd like to lie and say: "No, I've never" however I have done it twice!

The first time was when I uploaded my 1st video and had no idea about YouTube. So I was like okay..

2ND time I got a DM on instagram from a channel called "fabulous four" . They sent me a picture of my channel, with them being subscribed. And told me to sub back please. Now this is a channel of 4 teenage girls doing make up etc, nothing wrong with that.. but not exactly what I'm on YouTube for.

It was at that moment that I realised I'll never sub4sub again.
 
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