This is a YouTube channel with 1.1 million subscribers
on sale for $15,000. (cha-ching!)
And here's another YouTube channel on sale for 70,000.
I recently discovered there are websites out there
selling established YouTube channels
for thousands of dollars.
So today I'm gonna attempt to buy one of these channels
to find out is this just a big scam
or can you actually buy someone else's YouTube channel
that's got hundreds of thousands of subscribers?
Okay, so I'd like just Verified listings.
I'd like the channels to have monetization enabled
and I'd like them to have already verified their identity.
For subscribers we'll do at least a hundred thousand.
And then everything else I'll just leave blank
and I'll click Search.
Whoa! (chuckles)
Need For Speed? $99, 2000 subscribers.
Well, let's have a look at the channel. (chuckles)
And it's just "Need For Speed" gameplay.
It makes sense.
Well, I'll leave ya on the back burner
'cause I was actually after something
with slightly more subscribers.
Let's actually see what the most subscribed on here is.
3.8 million subscribers
and they are wanting $8,888.
Well let's find out if it's worth it.
So this is the page
and they get to add their own bit of info
and they can even add some screenshots from the channel.
So they want $8,000, but they have earned just $200
in the last 28 days
and they have a Community Guideline strike
which isn't a great sign.
They also only accept payments via crypto.
I feel like if I buy this, I'm asking to get scammed.
Let's keep looking.
Newt Shorts, 1.8 million subscribers
and apparently they're earning $1,000 per month.
Okay, well that actually might not be a bad deal.
Well, that actually says estimated revenue is $19
which is a lot less than $1,000 as advertised.
And you've also got a strike warning. (laughs)
They've listed it as a "thriving YouTube channel",
and if we go to the channel,
to be fair, they've got more views than I've got.
44 million on their most viewed.
But the thing is, right, if I buy this channel
what do I start uploading?
Because let's click on one of the videos.
(video narrator speaking in foreign language)
- (laughs) I don't even know what they're saying.
How do I continue this?
So most of the channels that are for sale
aren't English speaking,
which obviously makes it much harder
for me to continue the uploads
but I'm not too worried about continuing the uploads.
Primarily, I just wanna see
if I can legitimately get access to another YouTube channel.
Because you will see if I actually click Buy this channel,
it's a very complicated process,
and it seems like most of the sellers
want you to pay in cryptocurrency
which also feels a bit dodgy.
But basically how it all works is,
if I, for example
wanted to purchase the Playtime Squad channel,
I have to first create a deal
and then if the current owner of Playtime Squad,
who is this fella, Asif Ali, agrees to my deal,
I then send my $10,000 to a person called an escrow.
They then hold onto my $10,000,
Asif Ali then transfers the Playtime Squad to the escrow.
And then after seven days
the escrow person sends Asif Ali my $10,000.
And the escrow then sends me
Asif Ali's Playtime Squad YouTube channel.
So it's very complicated
and it feels like there's a lot that could go wrong.
Maybe I will get scammed.
We're just here to have a bit of fun.
Oh, interesting.
This YouTube channel actually got their Silver play button.
So I wonder if I purchased this for $1,450
could I then order another play button as well
that would have this channel name?
That would be so funny.
Their revenue is so weird.
On one day they earned nearly $3,000
and then the rest of the time they earned barely anything.
That's so weird.
Whoa. This channel's called Jack Reacts.
So this could actually be quite handy. (laughs)
Jack Reacts has earned over $100,000
in ad revenue in the last three years
and they get between 250,000
to 400,000 passive monthly views.
Well, let's look at the actual channel.
Oh my God, he's still uploading.
His channel's quite inactive at this point.
So $29,000 feels a little bit steep,
but to be fair, still averaging like 13,000 views a day.
Oh my God.
It would be so funny if I bought this channel
and then just started posting daily reactions
to music videos just like him.
But I just never acknowledge that we're not the same person.
But unfortunately he's charging way, way too much money.
Like I cannot afford that.
We might have to go back to Need For Speed.
I'm not gonna lie. (laughs) (whimsical music)
What is this channel?
Pretty Woman Kitchen. (laughs)
Oh my God. Imagine Pretty Woman Kitchen on a play button!
They've got 120,000 subscribers apparently.
But they have literally no videos.
They have nothing at all.
That's so weird.
It's only $349 though.
I'm kind of tempted
because it would just be so funny
to own Pretty Woman Kitchen.
Yeah, I'm going for it. (laughs)
We've got lots and lots of small print.
Yeah, I'm sure it's fine.
They're warning me that the website is not responsible
for what happens after the listing ends
and the sale is completed.
Well that's a bad sign,
but we'll click Agree and continue.
Request to purchase Pretty Woman Kitchen. (laughs)
Okay. Apparently I just need to wait
for the seller to accept.
So while we're waiting, let's just buy another channel.
What should we go with?
Ooh, interesting.
So I've found this channel called Fufik
and they are selling for $1,400.
But if we have a look at the actual channel,
it's basically like weird kids content,
and this is their most viewed video, 4.1 million views.
But if we go ahead and watch it.
- Hello, my name is Fufik. (Jack laughing)
- I think basically what's happening is
this blue animated dog with a crown
is reacting to these weird Paw Patrol related clips.
So just something funny happens and he laughs at it.
Now there's fun music and he's dancing.
So I could see myself adding another layer to this.
What if I animate myself into some weird animal
and I react to the blue animated dog that's reacting
to whatever this is.
If I had this channel,
I would own all of the rights to this content,
so I would be totally fine reacting to it.
And then maybe it'll just randomly get a billion views
because like, dumb two year olds are watching it.
And then the rest's history.
So they are losing subscribers.
They do also have a Guideline strike warning
but it's a warning rather than an actual strike.
(chuckles) It seems like every channel on this website
has some kind of warning or strike.
They've earned $1 in the last 28 days.
So I'm not gonna lie,
I think this is probably about to be
one of the worst financial decisions I've ever made.
But let's click Buy this channel. (laughs)
And I'm doing PayPal once again, please.
Now I need to accept all of these scary details
which make it nice and legal for me
to literally just be scammed out of all of my money.
I agree. There you go.
And now we just wait for them to get back to me. (laughs)
I've still not heard back from Pretty Woman Kitchen either.
So I'll see you when there's an update.
It is now a couple of days later
and both channels accepted their purchase.
So my next step was to pay the escrow fees.
And the escrow fees are 7%
of whatever the purchase amount is.
So for Pretty Woman Kitchen,
I had to pay 7% of 349,
which was $24.
Now for some reason I couldn't pay via PayPal
and instead I had to pay via cryptocurrency.
So of course I did the logical thing
and purchased £2000 worth of Dogecoin!
(laughs)
I do not know how I'm going to
explain that to my accountant.
I paid the $24 escrow fee for Pretty Woman Kitchen
and then I paid the $84 escrow fee,
or should I say a 1,368 Dogecoin escrow fee.
And now, in all fairness to both sellers,
they've both been quite prompt so far.
But I wanna warn you, do not do this.
This is stupid!
Not only is it kind of completely pointless
to purchase another YouTube channel
'cause there's no way it's ever gonna work.
You're not gonna be able to just carry on
where the other channel left off.
What are you thinking?
But also I'm paying for stuff with Dogecoin.
This is incredibly dodgy.
If you were to try this yourself,
there's a chance you'll get scammed out of a lot of money.
But anyway, that being said,
both sellers have now made the escrow agent
the manager of their corresponding channels.
And as you can see, in six days, five hours,
primary ownership rights will be transferred to me. (laughs)
And once I get these YouTube channels,
I don't know what I'm gonna do with them. (laughs)
Obviously I'm gonna try and get two Silver play buttons
but let's be honest, that's definitely not gonna work.
But first and foremost, I just wanna find out if it works.
Will I actually become the owner of these YouTube channels?
So I guess I'll see you in six days,
five hours, 35 minutes, and 28 seconds.
Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
The time of the Pretty Woman Kitchen has now ended,
which means it was time for me
to send the current owner $349.
Now they let me do this via PayPal
providing it was a friends and family payment,
which basically gets rid of any buyer security on my end.
It means that it's impossible for me to refund this.
So that's nice and dodgy.
But the independent escrow agent is now able to
make me the primary owner of the channel.
So I've received an invitation to join.
So it looks like on Pretty Woman Kitchen,
I'm not gonna get scammed.
This is gonna be a legitimate transaction
and hopefully nothing goes wrong.
Now before I click Accept, I have been doing some digging
into the history of this channel
because why does a random channel
called Pretty Woman Kitchen have
over a hundred thousand subscribers?
Well, using the internet archive,
I managed to go back to November, 2020
and I found this screenshot of the channel
and we can see the name
and profile picture has been changed.
He is not a pretty woman in a kitchen.
They had 290 subscribers three years ago
and they were uploading some videos
which have now all been deleted.
So we can't see the thumbnails.
But I was able to put the titles into Google Translate
and it revealed some interesting names. (laughs)
Now they've been translated badly from Arabic
but we do have a few key phrases such as
"steak from the house of kidneys",
"slicing the peel,"
"cutting the heart and calf kidneys."
Now, I don't think this is as serial killer as it sounds.
I think, as I said,
they've just been translated really badly by Google.
And my thought is they're actually cooking videos
where they're preparing meat,
hopefully anyway. (laughs)
But either way, shall we accept our invitation?
Let's see if we can actually get access to this channel.
Here we go. Become an owner.
Sure, let's accept. (giggles excitedly)
Go on, go on.
Here we go.
Got a little bit more access.
Manage permissions.
What users do we have?
All right, it's just me.
And then the person above is the escrow agent
who Becky will blur.
So this means the original seller
has no access to the channel anymore.
So this looks good.
Oh my God. (laughs)
I've gone back to YouTube
and now Pretty Woman Kitchen
is just one of my channels in my list. (laughs)
All right, let's log in.
I'm in. I'm bloody in.
It's all in Arabic.
Okay, that makes sense. (chuckles)
I can't believe it.
How do I get out of Arabic?
Okay, let's go to my YouTube studio.
Oh my God, this is so weird.
I'm just on the channel.
I'm Pretty Woman Kitchen.
I've got 120,000 subscribers.
I have a channel violation.
Should we find the details on that?
YouTube deleted a video, but because it's now gone,
I can't see what it was, why it was deleted
but it's just a warning, we'll leave it.
Everything's still being translated from Arabic
so it's reading from left to right.
So it takes a bit of getting used to.
But we can take a look at Lifetime Statistics.
Oh my God, apparently the channel had 82 million views!
Doing what?
And it earned $300.
This is so weird. (chuckles)
Do I have any videos?
No, they've all been deleted.
Oh my God.
Well, $349 later, here I am.
Pretty Woman Kitchen.
I'm gonna comment on my last video.
Okay, I'm just gonna say "good vid"
and let's leave a comment.
And I've logged back into JackSucksAtLife,
sort by newest first.
(laughs)
Thanks, Pretty Woman Kitchen. (chuckles)
All right. I've officially purchased one YouTube channel.
Now I just need to wait for the much more expensive one
that actually has a bunch of videos and stuff.
Okay.
And now even more excitingly
my countdown ended for the other channel, fufaika.
So I've sent them over £1000 worth of Dogecoin
and I am now the owner of the channel.
(laughs) This is so weird.
So you can see it's here on my dropdown.
Let's log in.
Oh, okay.
Looks like everything's in Russian, but hold on a second.
Is that $6.93?
That Dogecoin pays for itself!
So thanks to Pretty Woman Kitchen,
I now know how to change the language.
It's quite straightforward.
There we go. (chortles)
I cannot believe that I now own all of these videos.
"Guess the Monsters #15",
"Skibidi Toilet: Original versus Iron Man." (chuckles)
We'll have a little watch.
(weird discordant music)
What have I bought?! (laughs)
I own this.
Look, I could just change the description.
"Yo, yo, yo!
"Wat up?
"Iron Man rulez"
Save.
So we have a Community Guideline strike
just like Pretty Woman Kitchen.
They uploaded 17 days ago and got 500 views.
And how much did we earn from that?
2 cents. Okay.
Lost two subscribers as well, which isn't great.
Now speaking of monetization,
obviously right now, the channel's earned $6.
So that means that if I go to Earn,
everything is currently set up and active.
However, I guess I need to change
the AdSense account to my own,
otherwise the previous seller will get the $6.
But also if we have a look at our watch time
over the last 365 days,
it is on exactly 4,000 hours.
And if it dips below that,
Fufik will actually be removed from the partner programme
and I won't earn any money.
So guys, if you're looking for any Skidipoo toilet content,
I've got the channel for you.
Link in the description.
Now this is kind of crazy
but I guess I can see exactly how much money
this channel has earned in its entire history.
You can see that in the last year they've earned $133
but it looks like there's been no uploads
for most of the year.
So let's change it to Lifetime.
I'm kind of excited. Here we go.
(Jack gasps)
(chuckles) Go on!
I don't know who owned this channel.
I think it's obviously been sold many times.
But if we go back to 2020,
there was a period of time where this channel was earning
over a hundred dollars a day.
Meaning that in total, Fufik has earned $19,000.
Most popular video was this
"Paw Patrol" zombie one with 9 million.
So how much did that earn?
$3,000. I can't believe I'm looking at this.
This is so weird.
This is now my video.
Look at that! They've got an intro and everything!
So was this like actual original content?
Oh, it's privated.
That's so interesting.
This is insane.
It's the kid from Paw Patrol, which is like a kid's cartoon
but they've made their own version of it
and he's now a zombie that's about to be
run over by a train. (train horn blasts)
(zombie snarls) Did he get run over?
Oh my God. He does!
(zombie growling) (bones crunching)
What the hell? (chuckles)
Well let's get it un-privated, here we go. (laughs)
Yeah, why not?
What's the worst that could happen?
Is this irresponsible?
Possibly. So it looks like many
of their biggest videos have been privated
which is really, really interesting.
I kind of wanna just un-private everything
and see what happens. (laughs)
It's possibly a bad idea
but I'm about to lose monetization
so I'm doing everything I can.
Yeah, I'm gonna do that.
And then I'm gonna hop back into Pretty Woman Kitchen
'cause I've got a funny idea.
That's right.
I have made a video for Pretty Woman Kitchen
and it's pretty incredible.
Shall we give it a watch?
Yeah, sure. Why not, Jack?
What's up guys?
Pretty Woman Kitchen here in the kitchen feeling pretty.
I just wanted to let you all know
that I'll be back with regular recipe videos real soon.
So stay subscribed and I'll catch you on the flippety flop.
(laughs) Weird, really strange.
So I uploaded that video
to Pretty Woman Kitchen two days ago
and I've not yet checked on the video's performance.
Well, Pretty Woman Kitchen has 120,000 subscribers.
So the video must be on at least like 20,000 views, right?
Let's log in and find out.
Go to my YouTube studio
and we have got... (drum roll)
25 views. (chuckles) (sombre music)
Zero comments. Okay.
Zero likes. Okay.
We've lost one subscriber. (laughs)
We have some audience retention data,
but I'll be honest,
I'm pretty sure that's probably just me watching it.
I didn't think it was even possible
for a channel to be that inactive.
Like it's making me think perhaps
none of those subscribers are even real.
Potentially they're all botted accounts.
Well, I guess things on Pretty Woman Kitchen
aren't going great thus far,
but don't worry, we have Fufik to fall back on.
I un-privated all of those videos, didn't I?
So we probably have millions of new views, right?
Well, I did get 300 more views
(sombre music) but then YouTube also removed
my monetization for having reused content, apparently.
(laughs)
And I've fallen below the watch hour threshold.
So even if my channel wasn't riddled
with apparent stolen content,
I wouldn't be eligible to make money anyway.
So now the two big questions.
Number one, can you buy other people's YouTube channels?
Well, we've proven over the last month,
the answer is yes, you can.
But then the second question is,
should you buy other people's YouTube channels?
To which I would generally say
absolutely not,
unless your sole intention is to just be one of those
people that are verified in the YouTube comments.
I really don't see any advantage to this.
The only way it could ever work is
if you were buying a faceless channel
that had like an AI voice
that you could just continue to replicate,
and also that channel was still successful.
Whereas all of the channels that you see on these websites,
they're all kind of dead and that's why they're for sale
because people are just trying to make
a little last bit of extra money.
But either way, we could continue this.
I have these two channels now.
I'll leave them linked in the description.
Let me know if you have any fun experiments
you think I should try.
Thank you so much for watching.
Subscribe to this channel.
Let's get to 4 million and I'll see you all later.