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YouTube used to be a level playing field when it began and stayed that way for a few years. All one had to do was to upload a video without copying materials from other videos and YouTube used to automatically promote the video across the platform, showing it to potential viewers who might have had interest in the video. Subscribers, likes and views automatically increased on the videos. On could easily subscribe to the advertisement revenue scheme with the video platform and could earn money if the video became viral by the organic promotional methods of the video platform. In this system, all channel owners had an equal opportunity to earn advertisement revenue.
New Policy and the Reason
In recent years, the giant video platform has changed this policy. Now, your video is not organically promoted, or its visibility is kept at the minimum, even if you are uploading original, interesting videos and working hard to create them. Further, the platform has made the rule that in order to earn advertisement revenue a channel owner must have minimum 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours in last 1 year including all the videos in the channel. With the visibility of the videos kept at the minimum by the platform, it is difficult to achieve this target.
There seems to be some reasons why YouTube would try to limit its potential advertisement revenue partners.
Revenue Control
One is that now the platform has expanded beyond measures, with billions of channel owners. YouTube reserves the right to show advertisements on your videos even if you are not in the ad revenue sharing programme. This means that the platform keeps all the revenue gained from channels which are not in the revenue sharing partnership with the platform. By keeping most channels out of the revenue sharing partnership, YouTube increases its revenue to multiple measures.
Revenue from Third Parties
Making it difficult for the channel owners to achieve the minimum 1000 susbscibers and 4000 watch hours marks has resulted in a parallel business of third parties who call themselves digital marketing companies. These companies claim to market your videos to potential viewers and subscribers for a professional marketing fee. Many of them also claim to be partners of Google - the owner of YouTube. If they are really partners of Google, then this means that the video platform may be sharing the revenue they are getting from the channel owners for marketing their videos to get more views and subscribers.
Views, Comments, Subscribers, Even Dislikes on Sale
The business of providing views and subscribers has mushroomed to such a level that there are hundreds of companies that are selling subscribers, views and likes on the video channels. This is a growing business and the rates are quite affordable. Indeed, not only the comments and likes, but also dislikes are purchased by the channel owners!
Why would someone purchase dislikes?
It seems that the channel owners purchase dislikes to make the engagements on their video seem natural. Further, the companies selling these likes, comments, dislikes, subscriptions etc only ask for the channel link and the video link. This means that if a channel owner has grown in popularity, then their competitors can purchase dislikes for their videos to bring them down in popularity. So, this is a mushrooming business.
Is it Allowed by YouTube?
The short answer is yes, the platform allows engaging a person or company to do the marketing of one's videos for a fee. The only condition the platform has is that the subscribers, commenters, viewers and those liking or disliking should be real human beings with active YouTube channel accounts. Hence, the companies engaged in selling views, subscriptions and likes/dislike etc take care that they pay part of the fee to real channel owners who are active on the platform. As long as these subscribers and viewers are real people, YouTube accepts them. It may even encourage this because the companies selling these subscribers and views may be partners of the video platform.
The Downside
This kind of marketing brings subscribers and views etc, but it does not ensure followers who are really interested in the topic of the videos. Thus, a channel which deals with travel may get subscribers and views from the computer gamers - a category of channel owners that is really flourishing on the platform. This does not really add value to the channel in the long run, even though the channel may become eligible to participate in the revenue sharing partnership with the platform.
Another fall out of this is that those who can afford to buy subscribers and views become revenue partners, even if they are uploading low quality videos on mundane topics. Channel owners uploading better quality videos may become marginalised if they don't have the money to buy viewers and subscribers.
Video Boosting Apps
This situation has given rise to another tech phenomenon online. In the Google Play Store there are several video boosting apps. Most of them are freely downloadable into the Android Smartphone. Once installed, the channel owner is asked to link the channel to the app. After this s/he is supposed to like and subscribe to other people's videos, in exchange for getting likes and subscriptions from them. In most cases, it is not a process of simple exchange, but the channel owner has to play video games to get the list of videos s/he has to like or subscribe. S/he can't choose the video by topic.
Again, this means that a channel owner who has school educational videos on his/her channel for example, will end up liking or subscribing to computer games videos in exchange for getting likes and subscriptions from these gaming video owners. These likes and subscriptions are from real people, so YouTube accepts this, but in effect, such likes and subscribers are useless for the channel owner as they don't lead to a meaningful growth of the channel.
Bots and Software - Illegitimate Traffic
There is another business that has mushroomed in this area. There are companies selling views and subscribers from bots for a very low fee. However, bots and software traffic is completely illegal by the YouTube policy and hence, channel owners purchasing traffic have to take care of this aspect. If they purchase bot traffic, their channel can get terminated by the platform.
However, it is really difficult to make out if these companies are really doing genuine marketing and bringing traffic for a fee, or if they are bringing bot traffic and just fooling the client by saying they are doing marketing. There is no way the channel owner can know about this, till his/her channel gets terminated by the video platform.
The truth is that this entire conundrum has risen in the first place because of YouTube's policies of restricting revenue partners. If only it will reinstate the earlier system of giving organic views and subscribers to all channels, perhaps this malady can be curbed.
Extension to Other Social Media
Now this system of companies selling traffic, followers, shares, likes, dislikes and comments has extended to other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and others. This has infested the social media world to such an extent, that almost everyone who has a large number of followers, viewers, shares, likes and dislikes on his/her uploads has probably purchased at least a part of these. So next time you see a social media post with a large number of likes, shares, comments etc, don't get impressed. There's a fair possibility that the person may have paid for the traffic.
Why is This Important for the IT MSMEs?
We have been encouraging the IT MSMEs to build strong online profiles so that they can capture customers online. While they do this, they have to be extra mindful of the ways in which the world of social media is evolving. Otherwise, instead of potential customers, they will get bots or computer gamers on their profiles, which will not help them.
Technology should be used for the good of the society. It should not be used to create a world where people engage in meaningless actions just to make money. It should certainly not be used for harmful effects on the society.