Lauren Bateman's YouTube video explains why "sub 4 sub" (subscribing to channels in exchange for reciprocal subscriptions) is harmful for channel growth. She argues it produces inactive subscribers, prevents reaching required watch-time thresholds (4,000 hours), damages a channel's authority with the YouTube algorithm, risks account penalties or shutdown, and recommends stopping the practice and pursuing genuine subscriber-growth strategies.
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Hey, YouTubers, welcome back. In this video, I'm going to be answering the question, is YouTube sub 4 sub good or bad for your channel?
So the quick answer to this question is sub 4 sub is very bad for your channel. So what I'm going to do is explain why so that you guys don't participate in this bad practice. So the first thing, what is sub 4 sub? It's when you go to like a forum or you go to a Facebook group and you ask people to subscribe to your channel. In exchange, you will subscribe to their channel. Now, the good thing about this is you do get subscribers. And I know everyone's trying to get that 1000 subscriber mark to get the advertising, but also you need to have 4,000 hours of watch time. And this is where the problem starts. Now, maybe you grow your channel to a thousand subscribers very quickly using this sub for sub action. But. But what happens is nobody is watching your content. So the 4,000 hours of watch time that you need to start YouTube advertising, you're still not even going to be close. And that also has a detrimental effect on your channel, which I'm going to talk about next. So the worst thing about sub 4 sub on YouTube and why it is bad is because it actually negatively affects your authority with the YouTube algorithm. So you guys have probably heard me mention this a number of times before. YouTube is a search engine. It uses a number of mathematical algorithms to tell it what videos are good, what content creators are good, and what people are enjoying on the platform. Now, an important part of the algorithm is how many of your subscribers are actually watching your videos when you release them. So, for example, let's say you bought a thousand subscribers, and actually maybe only 50 subscribers are real people. So what happens? You go and release a video, you've got 1050 subscribers, and you only get 25 views on your video. Now, YouTube starts looking at this and says, well, only 25 people out of 1050 watch this channel. Not even this person's subscribers are watching the content. So maybe we're not going to show this video to anyone. We're just going to put this on the shelf and we're going to show other videos to different people. Hey guys, real quick, if you're enjoying this video, don't forget to subscribe and turn your notifications on. This way, YouTube will let you know when I release more videos just like this. Now let's go on the flip side of that and say you only had 500 subscribers, but they were 500 fans of yours. You release a video and 300 of those 500 subscribers watch the video through notifications. YouTube's looking at that and saying, hey, well you know, more than 50% of their subscribers really liked the information. Maybe we should show this to more people and see if more people like this person's subscribers will watch this content. So you can see if you have real subscribers taking real action and putting real views on your channel. It makes YouTube want to share your content. With sub 4 sub you run the risk of killing your channel. So if you have done this, I would stop that immediately. The other downside for sub4sub or buying views on YouTube is that you can actually get your account completely shut down by YouTube. Now what happens if you're a new YouTuber and you've taken part in sub 4 sub programming? I would instantly stop participating in any sub 4 sub channels, forums or Facebook groups. If your channel is brand new, it might be better to just start completely from scratch so that those subscribers don't count at all in your algorithm. But if you have a decent channel and you are getting a little bit of traction, I would just stop the sub 4 sub and really focus on getting real subscribers so that your watch time for your subscribers on the home screen, the percentage goes up and it shows YouTube that your subscribers are actually now interested in the content you're releasing versus not interested at all. If you guys are looking for real tips on how to grow subscribers, I'll put a video up over here to show you how you can get subscribers faster on YouTube without sub 4 sub. And finally, if you're interested in growing your YouTube channel, I do have a course on my channel. It's full time YouTubers levelup. Go check that out and if not, I hope to see you guys in another video here on YouTube.
