STOP Asking For YouTube Subscribers... THIS is why

While getting a shiny silver play button would be pretty amazing, and I would totally hang it up behind me in every single YouTube video I did from here on out. Getting subscribers here on YouTube isn't my top priority for my YouTube channel in 2022. By the end of this video, I'm going to share with you why it's not my number one priority moving Forward here on YouTube and what you should actually be focusing on if you want to grow your YouTube channel. Because the truth is, the amount of subscribers you have on your YouTube channel has absolutely no effect in how fast your channel is going to or even whether or not YouTube is going to recommend you to new people. In fact, we just started a channel with a client at zero, started from scratch, and we were able to grow her over 100,000 views and over 6,000 subscribers, and we didn't ask people to subscribe. Now it's getting a little bit awkward to sit outside here in my neighborhood. So let's go up to my office so I can show you some real data points, some real analytics to show you how and why this all makes sense. So the truth is that even though people are subscribed to your channels, it doesn't mean they're actually watching your videos. So I pulled this screenshot straight from my analytics that show you the amount of people that are getting notifications from my channel. Only 17% of my subscribers have notifications turn on. And on top of that, only 8% of that number actually have notifications turned on on their phones. And you can see that the YouTube average is much lower than that. And this really reflects how I content on YouTube. Most of the people that I'm subscribed to, I haven't watched their content in months, sometimes years, because I didn't click that bell. I don't have notifications turned on on my phone. And if I'm not watching their content, YouTube's not going to recommend it to me based on what I am actually watching on YouTube. So what are most YouTube educators telling you to do? And why do I not think that's what we should do? Moving forward, most YouTube experts are going to tell you, you know, that first minute in the video, tell people to smash that subscribe button, right? And hit that bell, not notifications. So you get all the notifications of every single video that I publish. But third thought is by asking people to subscribe, they will. And this will ultimately get you more subscribers and grow your channel. And by getting more subscribers, every time you publish a new video, they'll be notified of that new video, they'll watch that video, the video will get more views and YouTube will recommend that video to more people because it has views and more views on it. Are you tracking me? But like we said earlier, Only 17% of my audience actually has the bell notification clicked on my channel. And only 8% of those people have notifications turn on their phone now. I want to share a couple reasons why asking people to subscribe could actually hurt your YouTube channel growth. The number one biggest reason is people will flat out leave your channel when you are taking the time to ask them to subscribe at the beginning of the video. Because people are clicking on your video to consume something, you promise them something in the title and the thumbnail and they want that by you taking the time, 30, 40 seconds, maybe a minute, to ask them to smash that like button and turn the bell notification that is irritating them almost like an ad, right? And they're going to click on that next video they see and suggested. So this could ultimately affect your audience retention and lose that viewer. The second way this could hurt your YouTube channel in the long term is you're getting people to subscribe that aren't the right people you want to subscribe. This could cause what I like to call a ghost subscriber. So why you may have convinced them to hit subscribe, Would this person be likely to watch another video from you? Watch a video video when you publish, are they just going to subscribe and kind of forget about your content? Because they hardly even consumed any content if you're asking them to subscribe in that first minute. Right. You haven't really proven what kind of content you are going to create. So how do they know your channel is something that they want to watch day after day? This is what's going to cause your channel to look like it has a lot of subscribers. But then when you publish a video, not get that many views on your videos because you have these ghost subscribers. So why do we even have the option to subscribe to YouTube channels then when people subscribe to your channel, that is actually giving the YouTube algorithms running a data point. But subscribing is just one piece of data amongst millions of Data points that YouTube is collecting to figure out what video to put in front of a person that they are actually going to watch. So even if they do subscribe to your channel, they haven't watched any of your content in the past couple of weeks. They're going to be less likely to even be recommending recommended your content. And if they don't have that notification bell turned on. There's that go subscriber again. So if you're not going to be focused on getting people to subscribe, what should you focus on on YouTube to actually grow your channel moving forward? One amazing call to action to get engagement on your videos is getting people to hit the like button. Hitting the like button is a signal to the YouTube algorithm that people are enjoying your content, they're engaging with it, they're liking it enough that they're making the effort to click the like but button. While comments are an important engagement piece as well, you have to actually get people to think about what they are going to comment and type it in. Whereas a like button is so simple, all they need to do is just tap it or hover over and click on it. So that is the most easiest call to action that you can get people to do to signal to YouTube that people are engaging with your content, thus enjoying your content. So I would start incorporating in your video at least once a call to action to hit the like button. And they could do this for every single one of your videos, right? If they start to go down a binge session on your channel, which we're going to talk about here in a moment, that could be multiple likes, multiple engagement factors, sending signals to YouTube to send all of those videos to more people. The other thing that you need to be focusing on that nobody is really talking about and it's such an underutilized opportunity, is end screens. So at the last 20 seconds of your video, you can have a video on your screen that is clickable for people to watch next. Why is this so important? YouTube wants you to create binge sessions on YouTube. Because the more people watch YouTube content, basically like going down a rabbit hole of YouTube, the more ads that YouTube can put in front of that person, every single ad that they can put in front of that person, a business is paying for. Thus, YouTube is making more money, the more ads that they can show. So you really want to focus on creating your content in a way that easily transitions a viewer to another video. You know how when you start binge watching season seven of Stranger Things and you keep watching and down it says next episode. That's how you want people consuming your YouTube content. And when you can do this, the YouTube algorithm will greatly reward you. And I'm not just saying this, I want to show you the data points that prove this. So let's look at end screen clicks. You can see for this client, her channel average is usually 3%. This video is at a 5.6% end screen click through rate. And look how much higher this video is performing than average. You can see it has over 3,000 more hours of watch time than normal. But I got more. This client's end screen click through rate here is 8%, whereas her channel average is about 2.7%. And look how significantly higher this video performed than average. You can see over 5.5 thousand more hours of watch time than normal. And look how far above the performance of this video is doing compared to average. And let's look at one of my videos. Okay, you can see this particular video has a 12% end screen click through rate. And this video is skyrocketing, right? Has over 2.7 thousand more hours of watch time and it had over 52,000 more views than a typical video. So just goes to show, end screens can really help your channel grow. Here's the deal though. Growing your subscribers will come naturally when you can do these two things that I mentioned. Getting people to like and getting people to binge watch your content. And I think this analogy will really break it down. So I haven't dated and probably over 20 years, but think about your YouTube channel as you dating somebody. If you go on a very first date and you sit down with somebody and within the first three minutes they ask you to be their boyfriend or girlfriend and this is your very first date, red flags. You may just run right out that door immediately. Now let's say you go on a couple dates. That natural progression to feeling more comfortable about having the conversation of that label boyfriend or girlfriend is much easier. Easier. Just like with your videos, the more people watch your videos, the more naturally or organically it's going to happen that they are going to hit the subscribe button. They've watched five, 10 videos and they know they want to keep getting more because they really like you. Not only are they going to subscribe to you, not only are you going to make sure they come back and watch every video that you publish, but you've developed the sense of community and created like a fan member in result of that. This way you're avoiding ghost subscribers and you're getting people to subscribe who are legitimately excited to watch every single video that you publish. Now again, there needs to be proof in this pudding. So let me show you some statistics of the top videos driving me subscribers and whether or not I ask people to subscribe in them or not. Okay. This particular video has gained me over 20% of my subscribers. You can see over 12,000 subscribers in the lifetime of this particular video. And you can watch this video. Not once did I ask people to subscribe. The exact same thing with this video. This video has gotten you over 2,000 subscribers. So you don't have to actually tell people to subscribe to get people to subscribe. And this is the proof. Yes, I do think having a strategy to grow your YouTube subscribers is important, but I don't think it should be the primary goal you're focusing on here on YouTube to continue to grow your YouTube channel and get in front of more people. I just don't think you need to tell them to smash that subscribe button and hit the bell notification. But let's say you do want to focus on subscribers and your whole goal is to get to like that first 1,000 or that first 10,000 or heck, get that silver play button with your first a hundred thousand subscribers. What should you do in this case? I wouldn't recommend doing it in that first minute of your video again. It's kind of like going on that first date. You want to drop a call to action to subscribe, maybe halfway through the video. When you share something pretty cool or you have something that happens in your video where that viewer is is likely to say, wow, that was really cool, or that was really awesome. Then after that particular piece in your video, I would say something like, now, if you want to learn more content like this, or if you really liked what I shared there, make sure you subscribe because this channel is purely focused on whatever that is, and then go into your next portion of your video. The other place you could ask people to subscribe is the end of the video as well. Yes, not everybody's going to get to the end of the video, but we don't want those ghost subscribers that would have left. Right? You want people who are legitimately excited to watch your entire video. So the people that get to the end are going to be more likely that type of person. So you could wrap up your video by saying something like, if you enjoy learning more about xyz, make sure you are subscribed to this channel. Hit that bell notification. That way, you know, every single Tuesday when I publish a new video. Now, there's definitely more to a YouTube growth strategy that we use in our YouTube agency with our seven figure entrepreneur clients. And if you want to hear more about how we build those seven figure entrepreneur clients YouTube channel strategies, watch the video that's on your screen right now. Because I break down the entire process we go through to create their YouTube strategies from scratch. And I'm going to ask you right here. If you want to continue learning about using YouTube in your business and growing your YouTube channel, make sure you hit subscribe and tap that like button.