YouTube has been mainstream for a while, so it follows that the YouTube Famous have truly become notably famous, as well. People will go to extreme measures to achieve fame on YouTube, and things get a bit interesting when methods aren’t exactly traditional. When it comes to marketing, you need to be careful. There’s a fine line between good marketing and getting your account completely banned. Let’s talk about how most people end up banned.

Step #1: Stealing Content

The easiest way to get your account removed is by stealing someone else’s video. This doesn’t mean borrowing ideas, it means straight copying. You can borrow ideas and work them into your own – in fact, it would probably be a smart move to do what works. If someone has a fast food review series, you can definitely make your own fast food review series as well. The problem would be if you downloaded someone else’s video and re-uploaded it with your watermark and ads.

This might seem like a pretty obvious thing, but there are a surprising amount of people doing this. If you’re one of them, don’t be fooled by the success you may experience. It won’t last, and you’ll end up having to start over again from scratch. Taking the time to create your own unique and high-quality video will save you from a headache later on.

Step #2: Buying Cheap Views and Likes

Buying views, likes, subscribers, and other signals can be useful with the right strategy. But, you need to proceed with caution if you plan on doing this. There are thousands of websites offering these services, and a lot of them can’t be trusted. Certain providers will send extremely low quality metrics to your account. Low-quality likes, views, and subscribers will raise huge red flags on your account.

Beyond reflecting poorly on your channel, low-quality providers often sell your information to other websites as well. This results in spam showing up in your inbox, and even on some of your videos.

When you’ve got comments on your videos advertising paid YouTube views, you’re in trouble. People will see that and immediately categorize your video as spam, fake, or irrelevant. Whenever you go to buy views or anything of the sort, look into the website you’re buying them from. Read reviews, testimonials, guarantees, and gather all the information you can. For complete ease of mind, do a trial order on a secondary YouTube account to see the results before unleashing them on your main channel.

Step #3: Using Bots and Spamming

Unlike buying views, and likes, there’s not really a silver lining to using bots. You should avoid doing anything that spams other channels as well. Sure, you’ve likely seen others doing this, and it might even seem like it’s working for them. It isn’t. A handful of views and subscribers might come a result, but they’ll always end up banned.

YouTube is owned by Google, so you can expect them to be pretty good about cracking down on bots. Anything you find on the internet for free will be detectable by YouTube within a week, if it isn’t already. Even paid services often end up failing in the end without continued support. We know this, and account for it when we rate and recommend providers.

The only type of spamming that won’t get you in big trouble is casual comments on related channels. If you copy and paste the same message on a thousand channels, it’s not going to help you grow. Instead, you take the time to find related channels, watch their videos, and offer a real comment. Within your real comment include, “I have a similar video on my channel,” or a simple call to action.

Step #4: Being Inappropriate

A few people fall into the trap of thinking they can get away with mature content on YouTube. Just like using bots, this isn’t going to last long. Uploading graphic or mature content is a sure fire way to get your account banned forever. With this type of content, you don’t even need to worry about YouTube “detecting” you because there are millions of users who will quickly find your content offensive and report it.

However, be wary of inappropriate text content as well. Make sure you remain civil and level-headed in the comments section of any YouTube video. Remember, YouTube is a social network – people will report you if you say something that they find offensive.

Be smart and stay clear

Avoiding these four common mistakes is crucial to being successful on YouTube. Getting banned is one of the most frustrating things imaginable. All your hard work immediately goes to waste, and you’re left to start over from scratch. You’ll lose every view, every like, and every subscriber you had earned.

Be smart – don’t risk it with gimmicky marketing strategies!