Avoid These 6 Mistakes or Risk YouTube Channel Termination

Here's 6 things that lots of YouTube channels are doing that could get your channel deleted. This means that all of your hard work that you put into YouTube would be a complete waste, and I don't want that to happen. I want you to build a real long-term business with YouTube, so make sure you pay attention and do not do these 6 things. Number 1 is not making your content transformative or following fair use guidelines. And this applies if you're using any copyrighted clips within your YouTube videos. So for example, if you're using other YouTube videos within your videos in the manner of like top 10 videos, top 5 videos, compilation videos, or something like that, you need to make sure that you're doing it the right way, and a lot of people do this the wrong way. And as you guys know, I run a ton of different YouTube channels where we use other people's clips within our videos, usually in the context of list videos or countdown videos. But here's what we don't do. We don't just make compilations of other people's videos, we don't do TikTok compilations or anything like that, because all it takes is the copyright holder holders of those videos to leave strikes on your channel, and if you get just 3 strikes, your YouTube channel is deleted. Instead, we make the content transformative in fair use by making it different in nature than the original, by providing additional context in the form of an original voiceover and an original script, and by making it educational. Now you might be saying, "Matt, I need some examples of channels that are actually doing this." Well, Top15s right here is a channel within the scary niche that uses other people's scary videos within their videos, gets millions of views per month, Here's another channel called Looper, which also does this within the celebrity and movie niche. And another channel within the movie niche is called WatchMojo. And if you watch any of the videos across these 3 channels, you'll notice they're not just re-uploading movies or re-uploading scary videos onto their channels, they're making it transformative in fair use by making it different in nature than the original. And a lot of the biggest channels on YouTube do this, but you need to make sure that you're doing it the correct way. And YouTube has a great resource on this where they talk further about fair use and they give examples of what is and isn't fair use. And just know that even if you follow fair use guidelines, there's always a risk when using copyrighted content within your videos. But if you did follow fair use, then at least you have a leg to stand on. So if someone copyright claims your video, you can refute it on the basis that it's fair use. And to be clear, I'm not personally a lawyer and this isn't legal advice, but this is just my understanding of it and this is for entertainment purposes only. And if you wanna discover more about making money on YouTube without making videos, I'll leave a link down below that talks more in depth about this. The second thing not to do that could get your YouTube channel deleted is tag stuffing. Now tag stuffing is where you take a big chunk of keywords and you throw them within your video description in the hopes that YouTube will index your video for those keywords, getting you more views and subscribers. Now the problem is YouTube does not allow this, and any content that YouTube finds that does this is at risk of being deleted off of YouTube. Alternatively, if you want YouTube to index your videos for certain keywords that you wanna rank for, Just write those keywords in a natural way into the description in natural paragraphs and sentences. Don't just copy and paste a big list of keywords, but rather write it in in a natural way that actually describes your video. The third thing not to do is to use another YouTuber's channel name within your video tags. YouTube classifies this as misleading metadata due to the fact that you're not actually talking about that creator, yet you use their name in your tags. Now the only circumstance where it is allowed to use another creator's name in your tags is if you explicitly talk about that creator within your video. If your video has nothing to do with that creator or that channel that you put in your tags, I highly recommend removing that from your tags because YouTube doesn't allow this. And instead, the best way to tag your videos to get the most amount of views is to put keywords that actually relate to the content that you're putting up. Now a great way to find some great keywords for your channel is to use a tool like vidIQ. Now, if vidIQ suggests that you use another YouTuber's channel name or even any tags that don't relate to your content, don't do it. Only add tags that actually relate to your content. Tools like vidIQ only go so far in that they'll give you a bunch of ideas to use as tags, but it's up to you to pick the right tags to put on your videos that actually relate to your videos. Mistake number 4 is using copyrighted music, even if it's only a few seconds. It doesn't matter how long it is, it's not allowed by YouTube, and your videos are likely to be claimed, or worse yet, striked. And again, if you get 3 strikes, your channel gets deleted. This isn't okay to do unless you potentially use it in the context that you could argue it's fair use, but even then, I kind of recommend shying away from using any copyrighted music whatsoever. I still don't recommend it, just due to the fact that you could have so many different copyright problems. That said, the YouTube Audio Library is a completely free resource provided by YouTube that gives you tons of free songs that you can use within your videos and that you have the right to use, and you'll never have to worry about copyright if you use them. And that's personally what we do on all the YouTube channels that I run. We use the YouTube Audio Library. Mistake number 5 is to leave sub for sub comments on other people's videos. Now, despite me saying this within this video, if you go down to the comments section, you'll probably still see some comments asking people to subscribe in return for them subscribing to you. And this will actually hurt your channel more than helping it due to the fact that the subscribers you get won't be interested. You'll have a super low engagement rate on your videos, and in a lot of ways it kind of ruins your chances of having success on YouTube. And YouTube specifically says that this isn't allowed, and they classify this type of behavior as, quote, incentivization spam. And YouTube also says that you can't leave comments on other people's videos saying, quote, hey guys, check out my channel/video here, when the channel or video has nothing to do with the video that it was posted on. So you want to make sure if you do leave comments on other people's videos, make sure that it actually relates to the video that you're leaving a comment on. Don't just ask for views or subscribers or anything else. Don't try to do sub for sub because because you could face problems with YouTube. And not only that, it's probably not gonna help your channel in the first place. There's so many better ways to grow on YouTube, and that's what I'm covering on this channel right here. Mistake number 6 is copy and pasting articles as your scripts. I've seen a lot of channels do this on YouTube, and while it might work short-term, you know, you might get some views doing this, this is not a viable long-term strategy because all it takes is the website owner who actually wrote that content to find your video once it does take off, issue a copyright strike, get 3 of those, your channel's gone. And if they do issue a copyright claim strike, you have literally no leg to stand on due to the fact that you just copy and pasted the article. Now, the way to do this correctly is to simply use articles as inspiration when you're writing your own scripts. Don't copy them word for word, but open several different articles at the same time. Open a couple of YouTube videos as well. Use a bunch of different sources when you're writing your own scripts. Write it in your own words, completely unique, and then use a website called Copyscape to make sure that the script is unique and not copying anything directly. And Copyscape costs a couple cents per search that you do on it. I use it for all my channels and I highly recommend it. And the way that I personally write scripts is I open several different sources at the same time, whether it be YouTube videos or articles. I synthesize the information and write it in my own words, typically just in bullet points covering all the points that I want to make sure to cover in a specific video. And then I try to put it in a step-by-step manner that would make chronological sense. And I'm gonna be releasing a video that goes in-depth exactly how I write scripts very soon, and I'll put a link down below to that video also. And now I'm gonna go over one bonus thing that could get your channel deleted, and then one additional extra thing that might not get your channel deleted, but I still don't recommend, and I'll outline why in just a second. But let's start with the bonus item of literally one of the most important things that you should not do under any circumstances whatsoever, which is buying views or subscribers. Whenever you buy views or subscribers online, there's a 99% chance that it's fake engagement using bots or something else which YouTube specifically says it does not allow. And you've probably seen services offering this on different websites, on Fiverr or somewhere else. And as tempting as it might be to try to get some engagement sooner than having to wait for your channel to grow organically, do all the optimization and everything else, this will actually likely hurt your channel more than helping it. And you're probably seeing this as a theme at this point that a lot of the things that we think might help our channels short-term actually end up hurting us in the long run. Or worse, yeah, causing our YouTube channels to be deleted. So worst case scenario, your channel gets deleted, and best case, it just hurts your engagement a ton and it makes it really hard for you to grow. So not a good case either way. So I highly don't recommend buying views or subscribers due to the fact that it's highly likely they're fake. And even if it is real, you have to ask yourself, how are they getting these views? Are they promoting it within different Facebook groups or something like that to an audience that's actually not interested in your videos? But it's a 99.9% chance that it's fake, so just don't do it under any circumstances. I've grown all of my YouTube channels, even the ones that have gotten millions of subscribers, completely organically from scratch. So even though it takes a long time to build it up, in the long run it's worth it to have a real long-term business with YouTube. And now let's talk about the one extra thing that might not be the worst thing in the world, but I still don't recommend it, which is robot text-to-speech voiceovers. And while it may be tempting to do a text-to-speech voiceover on your videos because then you don't have to hire a voiceover artist or do them yourself, in the long run I've heard of a lot of people not being able to get monetized with their videos because their videos don't pass the monetization check that YouTube runs where a human actually reviews their channel. And sometimes they can assume if there's a robot voiceover that the entire video is robot-generated, which YouTube doesn't allow by my understanding. And yes, there are channels that have been monetized with robot voiceovers, but there's also a lot that haven't. So I wouldn't recommend running the risk, and I want to make sure that you can get monetized, make this a real long-term business, and make money with YouTube. And in general, in terms of an audience, if people got to choose watching a video with a robot voiceover compared to a human voiceover, people are much more likely to choose the human voiceover, which is indicative that it would perform better long-term anyways. So it's worth it to get more views, have your videos do better, make sure you can get monetized when you reach the requirements. And you can either do the voiceovers yourself using something like your phone or a cheap microphone like a Blue Yeti Nano, or you can pay someone $10 to $20 to do a 1,800-word voiceover, which is typically around a 10-minute voiceover. I also give cheat sheet templates on how much to pay when you're hiring every single position when it comes to outsourcing a YouTube channel. Blog post templates for hiring people, and step-by-step instructions on how to grow a profitable YouTube channel without ever showing your face within my program Tube Mastery and Monetization. Feel free to check it out down at the link below if you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level. I answer every single question within our private student community daily. And if you want to make sure that you do this the right way, not only do you get the community, but you get 100+ step-by-step lessons with checklists and templates and everything you need to be successful on YouTube. And to make sure that you're doing YouTube correctly, I'll also put links down below to the YouTube Community Guidelines, the Terms of Service, and the YouTube Creator Academy, which has a ton of great resources when it comes to doing YouTube correctly. Now, if you want to discover how to make money on YouTube without making videos, feel free to check out this video right here, which goes over it step by step, and I will see you within that video.