Hey guys.
My name is Tim Schmoyer, and it's Thursday.
Time to do some Q and A with you guys, and got a little bit of a different setup here,
because I just shot a great video you're gonna wanna check out right now over on the ReelSEO
channel about how to look really stinking good on your webcam, especially for Google
Plus hangouts.
Link for that is below, so go check that out, but in the meantime, let's talk about one
of the questions that you guys asked.
Over on the Video Creators' Facebook page, Jacubus asked, "Tim, "What do you think about
Virool?"
Then here on YouTube, Christopher commented and said, "Tim, is it a good idea to pay YouTube
money to get yourself subscribers and views?"
Both of you guys, this is a great question, one that I'm actually asked frequently, so
it's good to finally talk about it here, and I'm not gonna talk about specific different
websites that promise to give you tons of views for a little bit of money, because they
all kind of work a little bit differently.
I'm not familiar with every single one of them either, but I have seen several people
use them, and I know a couple of people who have as well, and the big blanket answer is
no, don't use them except for one, and I'll tell you which one in a second.
The reason why you wanna steer clear of these actually isn't because they're sending you
illegitimate views or because they're breaking YouTube's terms of service, although some
of them are, but even the ones who are legitimately sending you true actual human people to watch
each of your videos that you submit to them, it almost never turns into engagement.
I've seen this time and time and time again.
Think of it this way - let's say you pay ten bucks and a website promises to send you 15,000
real human actual views.
Well, very few of those people are actually interested in your content.
You'll see very few comments, if any at all; you'll see very few thumbs ups or interaction
of any sort, so YouTube says, "This video just got 15,000 views and not a one of them
stayed for longer than 15 seconds.
This video probably isn't worth, like, ranking in search."
And if you use the service on a couple of different of your videos and that same thing
repeats itself, YouTube says, "This channel isn't really producing good content because
it looks like they're getting tons of initial views, and no one is sticking around."
So your videos are going to get lower and lower and lower in search and just not perform
as well overall.
And once YouTube and Google starts thinking that about your channel, it is really hard
to reverse it.
It's possible, but it's gonna take a lot of work to get back to where you otherwise would
have been.
Now there's other services that will say, "Well, we're not just gonna send you views
from people in our network who are just watching your content because they have to watch a
couple of videos in order for their videos to get some views."
There's others that actually say, "We are going to seed your video across our entire
advertising network, so it's gonna be showing up on blogs and websites in front of targeted
people that are interested in your content, and still, like, that might be a little bit
better, but really, I have never seen those types of promotional programs actually lead
to more subscribers; they only lead to more views, but at the cost of probably having
a very low watch time and audience retention score on that video.
So would I use any of those out there?
No, I would stay away from all of them.
The only one that I have actually used and would recommend is YouTube's actual own Adwords
for Video because they actually track the difference between paid views and organic
views.
As to the effectiveness of promoting your video within YouTube, it really depends on
a lot of different variables.
I've had mixed success with different projects that I have been a part of.
Some work well, some don't, then there's just a lot of different things to consider, which
is actually a whole 'nother conversation for another video.
But until then, comment below and let us know what your experience has been with these paid
promotional websites that promise you hundreds of thousands of views for very little money,
and also if you use YouTube's, uh, Adwords for Video, let us know what your experience
with that has been like, as well.
And I don't just say that because I want you guys to just, like, leave comments on my video.
Like, I really do wanna learn from you, so it will help me out.
We'll all learn from each other and figure this thing out together.
Also, if you have a comment that you would like me to answer in an upcoming Thursday,
you can either leave that as a comment below or you can post it on our Video Creators'
Facebook page, or the best option actually is to check the description text below this
video.
There's a link there where you can actually submit your video to me, as you asking the
question and I will put your face right here, and we'll actually just kind of talk about
it, and that would be awesome.
And if this is your first time here, we'd love to have you subscribe.
Every Tuesday, look at online video news, and every Wednesday, we do YouTube tips and
ideas and advice, and on Thursday, like today, we do Q and A with you guys, all to help you
guys spread your message to the people who need to hear it here on YouTube.
So subscribe and I will see you guys again next week.
Talk to you then.
Bye.