Why You Shouldn't Buy YouTube Subscribers - EVER!

Trust me, if you've been thinking about buying subscribers to grow your YouTube channel, this is going to save you a lot of pain. Because put simply, you don't want to do it. And this is the main reason why.

These are YouTube's Terms of Service. You probably haven't read them, and that wouldn't surprise me because nobody ever reads them. Especially when they are this long. But if you have intentions of buying subscribers, then you may want to read Permissions and Restrictions section 6, which states that you are not allowed to do the following:

Cause or encourage any inaccurate measurements of genuine user engagement with the Service, including by paying people or providing them with incentives to increase a video's views, likes or dislikes, or to increase a channel's subscribers, or otherwise manipulate metrics.

So it doesn't matter where you bought your subscribers from, and it doesn’t matter how much they promise your subscribers are legitimate, and will genuinely watch your content. Ultimately, you have paid somebody to try and artificially grow your channel, and to manipulate YouTube's metrics, and that is against Terms of Service. And the buck stops there. YouTube are the gatekeepers, and if they find out what you've been doing, then your channel will most likely be suspended or terminated.

Why Buying Subscribers is So Bad For Your YouTube Channel

Now let's say for argument's sake that you do buy some subscribers and YouTube doesn't take down your channel. What are you actually going to get from those subscribers you paid for? Well it's kind of similar to sub4sub. And while we are on the subject of sub4sub, I hope that it won't come as a surprise to you to learn that this practice also falls under the fake engagement policy. Buying subscribers, sub4sub, you know it's wrong, don't do it.

Now let's put on my hypothetical hat for a second. Let's say you were on the other side of a fence, and somebody paid you to subscribe to a channel, and maybe watch a video. Once you've done what you were paid to do, you're under no obligation to watch any more of their content or to stay subscribed to their channel. You didn't choose to watch their content in the first place, there was a financial incentive. That's not really the relationship you want with your audience, is it? It's not a recipe for success.

Now, granted, that was hypothetical. But you know what I'm talking about, right? Nobody said YouTube was easy, and buying subscribers and indeed views makes it impossible, because your channel will be terminated. This is all blood, sweat, tears, and hopefully at the end of it, some success. But the important thing is, you need to do it organically. So no, this isn't a video on how to buy YouTube subscribers. This is a video on educating you why you shouldn't buy YouTube subscribers. And we hope you found it valuable. If you did, you may be on the cusp of subscribing to our YouTube channel. And if this little graphic down here helps push you over the edge, which is allowed by YouTube, then go ahead. And that's how you get subscribers the right way.

Hopefully. You did subscribe, right? Cheers. Now I know some of you at the back of the room are probably shouting at the top of your lungs, you've just told us not to buy subscribers, and yet you sell a YouTube tool that feels like a hack to me. Well let's address that point.

Well first of all, the vidIQ software is certified directly by YouTube, and that means we have to go through compliancy checks every year or two to make sure that our software isn't doing anything that it shouldn't. We follow Terms of Service on YouTube. And put simply, we are not a hack piece of software. There isn't a magic button in vidIQ that gives you more views and more subscribers.

What we do is signpost your journey. Point you in the right direction. Whether that be through researching YouTube, finding the right keywords to better serve your videos to the right audience, analyzing every single video on the platform to find out what's working for your competitors or what's successful for a particular channel, and how you can potentially follow that success. Auditing your own channel, going through all of those YouTube analytics and bringing the important ones to the surface with single clicks, and suggesting actions that will help fix problems on your channel and help you grow quicker.

Not necessarily help you grow by hacks, but by helping you grow organically. vidIQ is free to download. There is a link below. Make sure to check it out.

YouTube Giveaways: The Rules

Now as we're on the topic of growing subscribers, there is one more gray area to take a look at. Giveaways. Can you encourage people to subscribe to your channel during a giveaway? You are allowed to hold a giveaway contest on YouTube, but there are lots of rules surrounding them and here they are. YouTube clearly states that:

You and any third party may not manipulate metrics on the YouTube service, including numbers of views, likes, dislikes, or subscribers, such that those metrics fail to reflect genuine user engagement with the YouTube service.

I also spotted a Tweet from Team YouTube that says, "Giveaways are still allowed! What we don't allow is linking to sites that solely aim to drive up subscriptions or other engagement metrics like views or likes through external contests and other means. Since that's the case with this site, it violates our external links policy."

And what YouTube were talking about here was Gleam. This service helps users manage competitions by giving entrants multiple ways of entering a contest, such as following the user on Twitter, or subscribing to their YouTube channel, watching a video. But unfortunately, YouTube doesn't want you to do any of that anymore, because it manipulates their metrics.

So again, our advice would be to not use giveaways on YouTube that encourage the viewer to subscribe to a channel to enter the contest.

Want To Get More Views on YouTube?

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and get more views on YouTube then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps click here to install now!