⚠️ DO NOT Buy a YouTube Channel... 🫣 · Contentpreneurship.com (FREE)

⚠️ DO NOT Buy a YouTube Channel... 🫣

We have FIVE monetised YouTube channels, with just over 200,000 subscribers combined between the five that we DO NOT USE. We could sell these by the end of the week without question and pocket an average of $20,000-$40,000 for all FIVE. Not bad, right? So why are we NOT doing this?

We'd be selling a broken dream to an unsuspecting buyer....

Here's why we WON’T be selling them and why buying a YouTube channel probably isn’t going to give you the YouTube dream you had in mind.

Why do you think we do not use these YouTube channels?

It’s because they didn’t work. Without sounding big-headed, if we can’t make them work, there are very few people in the YouTube space who can.

First, let’s give some backstory to how we go about launching a new YouTube channel.

We don’t just throw a channel together and upload random videos; we often spend 3+ months planning a channel before we upload the first video. This is our business, and we can’t afford to do this half-heartedly.

So when we launch a new channel, we like to do something called ‘The Test’...

The test is simple:

If the channel shows ZERO signs of growth within SIX months of launching (almost no views on the videos). We will usually KILL the channel.

If the channel is showing small signs of growth within SIX months (a couple of hundred or even a few thousand views per video), we give it another SIX months. If, after those SIX months, it’s still only showing SMALL signs of growth, we will take a deep dive into the analytics and determine if the channel needs a new direction or should be stopped.

Most of our channels show strong signs of growth within SIX months, and we will carry on as usual until we have another powerhouse in our YouTube channel collection. BUT, this doesn’t happen every time.

No matter how good your videos are or how well-researched the channel is, sometimes it just doesn’t work, and that’s life.

“But combined, they have 200,000 subs and are all monetised; what do you mean they didn’t work!?”

A channel can die as quickly as it can grow, and we’ll chat more about this another time, but this is one reason why quitting your job to become a YouTuber immediately after getting monetised might not always be the best option because things can turn quickly. We’ve seen it happen multiple times, not just with our own channels but also with creators we know and work with.

4 out of 5 of those channels got monetised within six months but struggled to move past that stage, even after 12 months of giving it everything we’ve got; some we gave close to 2 years before calling it quits because we just ‘knew’ they were not going to work.

Over our 10+ years of being full-time YouTubers, we’ve built a pretty good gut feeling for what works and what doesn’t, and this has helped us determine when it’s time to stop a channel.

Now, one of our ‘dead’ channels did show HUGE signs of sucess in the early days.

However, something happened…

We stopped uploading for about TWO years.

We were busy with other ventures, and this particular channel fell by the wayside.

Stopping uploading regular videos when you have a good schedule is an absolute killer, and despite our best efforts to revive it two years later, it was dead…

We have an amazing team of YouTube experts, and like I said, if we can’t make those channels grow, not many people will be able to. So how in good conscience could we possibly sell these channels? When it’s a 99% guarantee, the person buying them will never break even?

Now, there are SOME rare instances when buying a channel CAN work:

You're a highly trained YouTuber who can see potential in a channel that is either relatively new or has flatlined, and you believe you're in a STRONG position to take the channel to the next level.

You can create videos on such a low-cost basis that even if the channel isn’t performing well, you can still make some money.

You’re buying an already successful channel as an investment, but the channel will stay the same, and you won’t interfere with it (there are some big companies who do this) in exchange for a revenue share.

“But what about buying a channel that’s already monetised so we can earn money sooner?”

Getting monetised is a REALLY important part of YOUR YouTube journey, if you bypass this by buying an already monetised channel, a few things happen, as we have seen many times:

That channel has usually been built up using fake views and subscribers to get past the threshold for monetisation, and YouTube will hate you forever.

The channel ‘foundation’ is based on content you won’t be creating. So what’s the point? You may start from scratch and build up an authentic audience. YouTube will love you forever.

99% of people reading this should not buy a YouTube channel. Period. We’ve been doing this YouTube stuff for a LONG time, and have met very few people who have made meaningful, long-lasting revenue from buying a channel (apart from in the instances mentioned above).

So, in closing. If you’ve ever been tempted to buy a YouTube channel with the false hope of it already being monetised and becoming the next big YouTube star, ask yourself this question:

WHY IS THIS CHANNEL BEING SOLD?

Most of the time (unless under the circumstances mentioned above), it’s because it’s impossible to earn the person selling it any revenue, and if they can’t earn money on it, what makes you think you can?

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