As a small YouTuber
I spend a decent amount of time
on youtube related subreddits,
but if you’ve ever been on one yourself,
the first thing you probably noticed
is the rampant
self-promotion spam
Basically
It’s when a YouTuber takes a a shotgun approach to marketing,
and posts their video
anywhere without an auto mod
It’s not uncommon to see videos
shared 6, 10, 19 different places,
or Reddit accounts
consisting entirely of youtube links
But does any of this actually work?
Self-promo spam is unequivocally banned by Reddit
Most subs require you to adhere to a strict 10% self-promo cap,
if they let you self promote at all
But for most people posting 40+ times a week,
making 360 other posts just isn’t viable.
Even if users aren’t hit with the ban hammer,
any remotely popular sub will moderate out their posts,
which turns many users to ‘link sharing subs’ instead
Despite the risk of permanent Reddit bans,
some of the more popular subs have retained
tens of thousands of active users
and have hundreds of daily posts
But for all the trouble they go through,
do any these practices actually work?
Can you really create a community based
solely on the desire to self promote?
And, is it really worth losing access to the rest of Reddit?
Opinions on them are mixed,
to say the least
but results,
those are objective
So I set out to take 10 of the most popular self-promotion subreddits,
and directly measure their traffic
against a single post
on a relevant sub
But to do that
I would have to join their ranks,
and become
a link dumper!-
Ah I’m just kidding,
I’m far too pretty for internet jail.
This is all above board
I posted a LOT of eel memes
Now one of my earliest videos
was a GTAV joke video
which I exclusively promoted
on the GTAVpc subreddit
making it an ideal candidate
All my external traffic came from posting
to a single relevant subreddit
at 74% of my total,
it accounted for roughly 300 views,
and the video averaged a 52% watch percentage.
Now simply posting links to the video
on self-promotion subreddits
would just result in a garbled mess of data
And since these subs vary so wildly in activity
measuring the exact traffic from each sub
felt like a crucial step.
For my experiment
I uploaded unlisted versions of the same video,
title and thumbnail 5 times,
with minor variations in the length at the end
to get around YouTubes upload restrictions
I then set out to post one link to each sub
over the course of 2 days,
which would give the videos
1 full day of self-promotion
Which is more than the typical lifespan
of these posts
I decided to make a completely fresh youtube account for total objectivity
And if you haven’t liked and subscribed yet,
this would be a great time,
because I only realized
you can’t upload custom thumbnails
without a verified account
after my brother lost his phone for the hundredth time,
and I to go to phone number site,
pasted it incorrectly,
fill out the boxes,
get a code,
it was a whole thing
Now once everything was uploaded,
I assigned 2 subs to each video,
made my posts,
and waited
alrighty then
let's see how
it's worked so far
probably racking in those views
shit I'm at 1
what?
How?
One external view!
Okay [laughs]
so wait where was this view from?
external,
okay so not from being public
alright then, so we have our stats so far
youtube gamers got me one view
ummm [mouth noises]
advertise youtube
got me one view
and
get more views youtube got me
what I can
only assume
is a view bot
because
this is like an exact clone of tom
so okay
so 5 reddit posts
3 views
one of which is a view bot
and um
I think it's fair to say
this experiment clearly demonstrates
that this is a failure
but
I'm not going to fold just yet,
I did say i'd do ten
so
time to post more eel memes
and post on
these other subreddits
hopefully, I'll have better luck
higher?
fun
oh, helpful advice?
So that guy
oh I spelled that wrong
so you know you will get one helpful comment,
if you go to advertise youtube maybe
shoutout to this dude
ohhhhh! And I get to check out his channel!
this is fun, this was so unexpected,
[video] [so you may know Mr breast]
well of course
[if you don't he does challenges where he gives people lots of money]
[I however don't have lots of money but I still need a good]
[lright is there anything I can get you guys]
I'm so glad I posted to a self promotion subreddit
you're just exposed to so much
*quality content*
okay
So, if this was a real science experiment
I would go back and like check which one I messed up
but I wrote it all on a sticky note
and I think with the amount of views
we'll just combine them it doesn't matter.
I'll divide the zero by three how about that?
infinity bitches!
[bell dings]
moment of truth!
6 whole views
wow
truly impressive
I'm glad I posted to ten different subreddits
uhhmm
Originally I was going to make like
a graph
but I don't really think there is enough data
for a graph
so in the end
nothing from youtube promo or youtube promoter
got one from youtube gamers
and two from youtube startups and a like so you know, that engagement
youtube views also gave me one,
see how they're separated there
and a 13% audience retention!
Wait no, one of them was channel pages,
I take it back,
youtube views gave me nothing
It was cus I wanted to see if anyone would
naturally see this
oh and actually, an actual comment
good for you dude, shoutout,
you actually watch other peoples videos on those subreddits
meanwhile
this man wrote a full letter
hi I have checked out your channel
and I have subscribed to you from my alternate account
fully watched, and liked your most recent video
subscriber number one!
Video like number one!
Would you mind subscribing to this channel below?
lets help each other grow!
Okay so you also get one sub for sub offer
forgot to include that in the package
If you already subscribed, support me by fully
watching and liking the most recent videos here
any likes and comments and watch time on videos will be returned!
how do you even measure that?
Bro
he has a- recent videos oh my g-d his five
most recent lets plays,
part sixty to sixty-four of borderlands
Jesus
that's so many parts
Hopes to hear back from me
thank you
this is a full-on letter! this man put effort into his spam
Oh g-d, and they're all auto-generated
thumbnails
I know this isn't a real test, I only posted to ten subreddits,
there's plenty more link dumping subreddits,
and it's only with one video,
but that's the result a lot of videos
on these subreddits have also gotten
Right?
Like these aren't targeted
You're sending them to eleven other communities,
mostly of people who do not want to watch
your content,
they want to promote their own content
And not everyone using these subreddits
is spamming,
but even if you're not using them to spam, it's still pretty useless to you
Because there are better places to promote your content.
Because you're using up whatever self-promotion space you have, on something that will have
literally no return
Now obviously an ideal experiment would have included multiple types of videos
from different genres
But I think the result would have been basically the same
All these subs are all just collections of completely unrelated videos
There’s no cohesive audience that could possibly appeal too
And that leaves link dumpers as the only real users
If you’ve ever link dumped yourself
just ask this
Have you ever stopped to browse other people's videos?
And once again this says nothing about the quality of videos or the people creating them
This is such a common practice that many YouTubers don’t realize it’s wrong
But regardless of how good a video is,
for it to get views,
it needs to be shown to people
who actually want to watch them
Reddit’s view on self-promo tends to be summarized as such
"It's perfectly fine to be a Redditor with a website,
it's not okay to be a website with a Reddit account."
- Confucius
I hope.
I'm bad at pronouncing things
If you’re promoting your own content,
it’s your job to make it for an audience,
not Reddits job
to give you one.
Thank you guys so much for watching,
I hope I changed some minds, or at least better explained
how all of this works
My regular content consists of skits and video essays,
but if you like these informative videos
tell me down in the comments below
Sub for more great stuff original content
and I’ll catch you guys next time
Jake Bardin Music