Your YouTube channel is almost stagnant. Your channel receives few subscribers and views that you’re beginning to question its survival. Consequently, you begin to consider investing in YouTube subscriber bots. If you can buy a few tens or hundreds of subscribers, your channel will gain traction faster, right? It’s not that simple.
Although they artificially ramp up engagement metrics, YouTube bots can’t help your channel. In this article, we’ll discuss what harm and good YouTube sub bots can do for your channel and alternatives for raising your subscriber count without bots.
Why People Use Bots on YouTube to Increase Subscriber Count?
Before delving into why you shouldn’t use YouTube bots and exploring the best alternatives, let’s first examine three reasons why people might choose to use them.
1) For Social Proof
Just like how you feel about subscribing to channels with thousands of subscribers already, YouTube users generally prefer to subscribe to already-popular channels. The reason? They believe that these channels must have been uploading good content that set them apart in the YouTube community. That’s why owners of upcoming channels want to buy subs and views.
2) To Manipulate YouTube’s Algorithm
Does subscriber count matter on the eyes of YouTube’s algorithm? Not that much. The days when a higher subscriber count meant a higher channel ranking are long gone. People who don’t understand this are the ones who buy subscriber bots, thinking that bots can get them to the forefront of the YouTube video chain.
3) To Qualify for YouTube Monetization
Video creators on YouTube aim to eventually monetize their channels through YouTube ads. Two of the criteria for qualifying for YouTube’s monetization program are having a minimum of 500 subscribers and 3,000 watch hours. Some content creators believe that boosting their channel’s subscriber base artificially will bring them closer to monetization.
If your goal is to qualify for monetization quickly, buying real watch hours is a safer and more effective strategy.
Pros and Cons of Subscriber Bots: Will Your YouTube Channel Thrive or Suffer?
Of course, like anything else, using a YouTube sub bot may have its benefits. Let’s objectively examine the pros and cons of this practice.
Pros
1) Rapid Increase in Subscriber Count
This is the main advantage of using sub bots. If you use bots to grow your channel, you can jump from 100 subs to 1000+ in a day. If all you want is to see your subscriber base rise each day, using YouTube subscriber bots won’t hurt.
2) Saves Time
YouTube sub bots can help you achieve the extent of growth that you’ll need months of video creation, video editing, analytics tracking, etc. to achieve organically. Rather than wait until you get more online engagement before enjoying the sight of visible subscriber growth in YouTube Studio, just buy subscriber bots.
3) Outshine Your Competitors
While your competitors tirelessly strive to earn each subscriber they acquire, you can relax and let subscriber bots handle the work for you. Your channel experiences the exponential growth you desire in exchange for a few bucks.
Cons
1) Prevents Monetization
As previously mentioned, YouTube mandates a minimum of 500 subscribers for each channel to become monetizable. Well, in that case, getting bots to subscribe to your channel should be the way forward, yes? Actually, no.
While sub bots assist in increasing a channel’s subscriber count, they do not have a positive impact on the channel’s overall watch time. Bot activities are limited to what the bots have been designed to do. Sub bots won’t watch your videos, just as bots made for fake views and spam comments won’t subscribe to your channel.
Consequently, when you use YouTube subscriber bots, your channel will get more subscribers, but your videos won’t enjoy much traction. New videos you upload may not get substantial views. Frustrated, you may buy different types of bots—some for getting your desired number of views a day, some for getting more shares, and others for fake likes and potentially inappropriate comments.
The activities of these bots create warning signals that alert the platform to the fact that you’re violating its policies. YouTube’s terms of service expressly prohibit the manipulation of engagement metrics through methods like using subscriber bots. Violating these terms may result in content removal and/or monetization rejection.
2) You Lose Money
There’s only one winner in the game of buying YouTube sub bots, and it’s not you. It’s those who operate the bot farms. Depending on how many subscribers you buy, you may spend anywhere from $10 to $10,000. Due to the negative effects of flooding your channel with bot subscribers, you won’t get value for your money.
3) High Risk of Subscriber Drop-off
YouTube audits channels from time to time to verify the legitimacy of subscribers. Even if you attempt to conceal your subscriber purchase by completing your channel’s profile and publishing engaging content, other telltale signs of subscriber bot activity will expose your channel.
Any time YouTube suspects that a channel is buying bot subscribers, it removes the suspicious subscribers from the channel.
4) Causes Distrust
Once a real YouTube user notices that your subscriber count is far too disproportionate to your views, they won’t trust your channel. They’ll second-guess everything you say. Some users may go as far as reporting your channel for violating YouTube’s policies.
Why You Should NOT Use Sub Bots
In case you’ve weighed the pros and cons of using YouTube subscriber bots and are still wondering why you shouldn’t use them, here are a couple of reasons why:
1) You’ll Be Penalized
If you violate YouTube’s fake engagement policy, you might get a community strike. A strike prevents you from doing anything on your YouTube channel. For one week, you can’t upload videos, start live streams, make custom thumbnails, create or edit your playlists, etc. (find out more here)
Everyone can still view your uploaded content and interact with your videos and posts, though. Get two more strikes within 90 days of receiving the first strike, and YouTube will delete your channel. If you buy bot subscribers continuously, 90 days is enough for your channel to get three strikes and to bid YouTube goodbye.
YouTube removed about 15.79 million channels in the first quarter of 2024 due to violations of its Community Guidelines. In the second quarter, YouTube deleted more than 3.26 million channels.
2) Fake Subscribers Skew Your Channel’s Analytics
Whenever a bot subscribes to your YouTube account, YouTube Studio includes that subscription in your analytics. Many bot subscriptions later, you can no longer tell the difference between the real and fake engagement with your channel. No video analytics checker will be able to distinguish between the habits of your real viewers and those of bots. This affects your ability to develop a content strategy.
3) You’ll Waste Your Time
Using sub bots is a grand waste of time. Using sub bots will only result in inflated numbers, which will not yield any long-term benefits. Most likely, your channel will face a ban before it becomes eligible for monetization.
4) You’ll Find It Hard to Break the Cycle
Getting fake subscribers with a bot is like taking loans that you’ll never succeed in repaying. You’ll keep doing it. If your channel somehow escapes YouTube strikes, you’ll continue to get bot subscribers until you’re tired and you quit.
5) Using Sub Bots Is Expensive and Unprofitable
If you wish to continue using sub bots after your channel becomes eligible for monetization (assuming it survives until then), be prepared to incur significant costs. Since fake subscribers do not interact with your channel, you will need to purchase likes, comments, shares, and other engagement metrics every month, in addition to purchasing bot subscribers. In the long run, you’ll lose money instead of profiting from your channel.
Let’s do a little math. In order to earn up to $5,000 from YouTube’s monetization program in a month, you need about 1.4 million YouTube views. On average, 100K views cost roughly $500. You’ll have to spend around $7,000 to buy that many views. At the end of the month, you’ve spent $2,000 more than you gained. Your channel is running at a loss.
What if you’ve already bought bot subscribers and you’re looking for how to reconcile your subscriber count with your engagement rate? You can’t remove those subscribers from your channel, but you can buy genuine YouTube comments, real likes, and cheap yet real YouTube views.
6) Using Sub Bots Is Unhealthy for YouTube Advertising
Advertisers pay YouTube for ad views, clicks, etc. Since YouTube has the right to monetize all videos on its platform, it can run these ads on different videos. However, when ads are run on a video that’s published on a channel with fake subscribers, the advertisers who paid for those ads will end up getting fake impressions, views, clicks, etc. As a result, they waste the funds that they in intended to spend on authentic engagement
Every year, businesses waste billions of dollars due to ad fraud. For example, in 2023, businesses spent $84 billion on advertising fraud. Business of Apps’ ad fraud statistics predict that ad fraud will cost about $172 billion by 2028.
Now, imagine that every YouTube channel owner buys subs. Advertisers will no longer be able to trust the integrity of YouTube ads.
How Bots Easily Get Detected by YouTube
Does YouTube actually detect bots, or is everything you’ve been told a huge lie? Studies have demonstrated that YouTube has methods to identify the use of bots to artificially increase a channel’s engagement. After employing these methods, YouTube will impose the penalties on the channel, which may extend from removing fake views, likes, subscribers, etc., to deleting the channel entirely.
In a 2024 article about fake views removal on YouTube, researchers revealed how they monitored the view counts of different videos across 1064 channels for 17 months.
They found that YouTube usually removed fake views from videos around 5 pm each day, resulting in a reduction in the view counts of the affected videos. There are limited studies that focus on subscriber counts, but this study clearly demonstrates that YouTube has its own methods for detecting bots.
Below are four ways through which YouTube flags bots:
1) Imbalance in Engagement Data
Let’s say that your channel has 10,000 subs. You’ve published 10 videos, and the average numbers of views and likes per video are 50 and 5, respectively. YouTube will detect that something is wrong.
2) Location Mismatches
This is usually a dead giveaway if your channel’s content is tailored for viewers in a particular region. For example, if you run a cooking channel where you make videos about how to prepare American recipes, your primary audience will most likely be users in North America.
Now, imagine that your bot provider uses proxies from Southeast Asia or Eastern Europe. You end up with bot subscribers that are “located” in India, the Philippines, and Poland. This may make YouTube suspect your channel.
3) IP Address Clustering
IP address clustering refers to a situation where multiple bot subscribers have the same IP address or IP ranges. If a bot provider wants to mask the real location, they may use a proxy or a VPN server. This server may assign the same IP address to several bot subscribers, which makes it easy for YouTube to detect bot activity.
VPN servers may also assign a bunch of IP addresses within a certain range to a batch of bots subscribing to a particular YouTube channel. For example, bot A’s IP address may be 192.168.1.2, bot B’s IP address may be 192.168.1.3, while bot C’s IP address may be 192.168.1.4. When this happens, the bot subscribers will have serial IP addresses, causing YouTube to flag them.
4) Machine Learning and Behavioral Analysis
YouTube has officially disclosed that it uses machine learning algorithms to detect violations of Community Guidelines.
The algorithms alert YouTube’s human reviewers of suspicious activities while they manually review the flagged activities before implementing penalties. YouTube updates its algorithms from time to time to combat new tricks used by those trying to game the system.
How Subscriber Bots Affect Your Organic Growth
“Can’t I just use YouTube subscriber bots to get my channel off the ground and then focus on its organic growth?” , you wonder.
Most people who have used YouTube sub bots share the same thought process. Some individuals are fortunate enough to experience organic growth after buying bot subscribers. However, for many, their channels suffer irrecoverably.
How exactly do subscriber bots affect your organic growth on YouTube? Here’s how:
1) They Don’t Engage With Your Content
As the bots subscribe to your channel, they don’t engage with your content. YouTube’s algorithm detects the low engagement rate and presumes that your content isn’t appealing.
2) YouTube’s Algorithm Won’t Recommend Your Videos
Since the algorithm believes that your videos don’t appeal much to users, it’ll recommend your content to fewer people. This reduces your organic visibility and makes it harder for real viewers to find your content.
3) Viewers Won’t Trust Your Channel
Potential viewers will notice the mismatch between your subscriber count and the view counts of your videos. So they won’t trust your channel and won’t care about your content.
4) You’ll Have a Weak Content Strategy
Misleading analytics make it harder to understand your real audience and create content tailored to their interests. This slows down your genuine growth.
5) Your Videos Won’t Go Viral
Going viral on YouTube depends on real engagement, shares, and watch time, which bots cannot provide. This implies that your videos are less likely to gain organic momentum.
If I Don’t Use Bots on My Channel, What Are the Alternatives?
You can grow without using bots on YouTube! Here’s how:
1) Buy Real YouTube Subscribers From Trusted Advertising Methods
The main issue with bot subscribers stems from the fact that they’re bots. When you pay for real subscribers from Lenostube instead, you get all the benefits that you’d have gotten if you had stuck to organic growth, but at a much faster pace.
The sweetest part about this deal is that you won’t experience any of the cons of using bot subscribers. Prior to subscribing to your channel, real subscribers will watch your videos, thereby offsetting any imbalances that may arise from adding subscribers without a corresponding increase in your engagement rate. Slowly but steadily, you’ll get your channel off the ground.
2) Wait and Grow Organically
This advice is as old as YouTube itself. If you’re a content creator trying to get more subscribers or views, keep working hard at your content. Capitalize on captivating video ideas. Need help coming up with ideas? Use a video idea generator. The rest of the journey is simple but requires patience and dedication.
Craft compelling outlines for your videos, write awesome hooks, and complete your script. Don’t forget the importance of engaging video titles and thumbnails as well. As you patiently put the best YouTube SEO tactics to work, your channel will make progress.
You can also check out our ultimate guide on how to get more views and subscribers organically. Although it takes over 30 minutes to read, it will transform you into a YouTube growth expert.
FAQs
Can you get banned for botting YouTube?
Yes. YouTube will give your channel a warning strike if it detects that you’re making use of bots to manipulate your engagement metrics. After three strikes, your channel will be removed from YouTube.
Can bots subscribe to your YouTube channel?
Yes, bots can subscribe to your YouTube channel. However, bot subscriptions are fake. You see the numbers, but there are no real people behind those figures.
Can I get verified on YouTube with bot subscribers?
To verify your channel on YouTube, you need 100,000 subscribers. Unfortunately, buying bot subscribers won’t help if you want your channel to be verified because YouTube will check the authenticity of your channel before verifying it.
How much money do 500 subscribers make?
A YouTube channel with 500 subscribers can earn around $1 to $20 from YouTube’s Partner Program.
How can you tell if someone is a bot on YouTube?
To tell if a YouTube user is a bot, check their username, profile picture, and view their YouTube profile. If they’re a bot, they’ll most likely have a generic username and no profile picture. Also, you may notice that they recently joined YouTube.
How many YouTube subscribers do I need to make $2000 a month?
The number of subscribers you have doesn’t directly influence your revenue from YouTube ads. What matters more is how many views you get per month. In order to make $2,000 monthly from YouTube ads, you’ll need a total of 400K to 800K views per month.
Conclusion
YouTube subscriber bots aren’t worth your time and money. Although you may enjoy the initial thrill of seeing your subscriber base rise, this thrill is short-lived and comes at the expense of your channel’s success. To give your channel a genuine opportunity to grow, focus on real, organic growth strategies. For an added boost, consider purchasing genuine YouTube subscribers to kickstart your journey.
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