I have a small youtube channel and I need more subscribers to continue making revenue. The new youtube rules indicate that you require at least 1000 subs in order to be eligible to monetization. I've been thinking about giving away PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS here and in the description ask people if they could subscribe to my channel so I can keep earning youtube money.

Am I allowed to do this?

6 years ago

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Asking: yes
Saying "you have to or otherwise you won't get the gift": no

Advertising yourself is not against the rules. As far as I know at least...
Since it's just optionally to subscribe to your channel

6 years ago
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definitely.
if you're polite and ask, for instance, I always follow curators or join groups, leave a like on facebook and so on..
but saying "you're forced to join or you won't get the key" it's definitely something you can't do here as far as i know

6 years ago
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just a follow up question
could I make a private gib and tell people if they sub my channel I will give them the code for it?
I mean what's the difference to puzzles (who sometimes interact with different websites and also sometimes additional software)

6 years ago
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Haven't seen a puzzle which requires to subscribe on another website or use non-free software yet. Your suggestion otherwise would require to create a Google account (or at least use it) and sub your channel. You may link it, you may ask for subbing, but you can't deny giving the game to the winner.

6 years ago
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but he can't win if he don't has the ga code, so I give it to him only if he subs
(I don't even have a youtube channel, so this is just a hypothetic question)

6 years ago
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Your GA would leak very quickly. And what's to stop anyone from unsubscribing once they get the GA link?

6 years ago
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if it leaks I have the right to delete

6 years ago
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But you lose one slot. And delete too many and you might get into trouble. Just saying.

6 years ago
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i have like 400, so that shouldn't be a problem
also if they leak it they should be punished, not me

6 years ago
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How to separate leaks from those you gave the GA code manually? How shall the staff track this?

6 years ago
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use whitelist instead.or group GA

6 years ago
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Oh, you meant the GA code, I understood code already as key.

Well, theoretically you could do an invite-only GA and then distribute the code to whoever you want (outside of SG discussions/GAs). Can't be tracked by the staff.

6 years ago
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so it's allowed?

6 years ago
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It's allowed to give people a GA code. But then you can't properly blame for leaks.. see above. And they could undo everything you asked for after the GA ended.

6 years ago
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Advertising yourself is not against the rules

Advertising - Default Suspension Length: 3 days [>>]

As quoted by Mihey below, the sole* exception to the "No Advertisements" rule is an allowance for putting such links within giveaway descriptions. However, even there you still can't include referral links of any sort.

*Outside of any time-sensitive sales offers suitable for inclusion within the "Deals" forum.

6 years ago
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So advertising your OWN youtube channel is NOT allowed? oh well..

6 years ago
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Not directly on the forums, no. If that was permitted, the forums would be flooded- there's already the occasional new (and quickly suspended) account trying that sort of thing, as is. On the other hand, you can freely make a "Hey, promoting my youtube channel with some giveaways!" thread, drop some giveaways in it, and put the links to your youtube channel within those giveaways. Staff'll take action if someone is posting fake giveaways or otherwise being exploitative- but otherwise, the only difference between that and any other giveaway thread is the associated narrative [At least, assuming you're not breaking any other site rules, such as linking to content related to copyright infringement or pornography, or making use of referral links].
The main thing is that advertisements shouldn't form the primary basis of a thread, as outside sites should only be referenced directly on the forums if they have a direct relationship to the themes of SG (ie, a site offering a game deal). If giveaways (which inherently have a direct relationship to the themes of SG) are the basis for the thread, then really, who is going to nitpick at the details of a few out-of-the-way comments?

In short, the intent is to avoid spam and exploitative use of the site, not really to prohibit reference of your personal sites altogether.
As an example, somewhat recently a particular storefront had their promotion thread closed, because it wasn't related to any particular time-sensitive offer, and thus just cluttered up the forum with perpetual advertising. If rules weren't in place to prevent such, we'd have a front page covered in youtube and storefront threads, with little else being able to stand out in the flood. By putting in a "claim yourself a spot on the forums with giveaways" exception, the site both sets a standard under which exploitative threads can be filtered out, and encourages support of the site's core theme.

tl;dr version: You can advertise within giveaways, just not on the forum.

6 years ago*
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so i basically understood it right - good to know :P
thank you for the explanation though!

6 years ago
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^^

Please note, in giveaway descriptions we do allow users and developers to link to their related Steam Greenlight, group, and store pages, as well as their social media channels.

6 years ago
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As far as I now you can do that. Making a giveaway and in the description ask if they would like to check the channel out. Doing it in the forum I am not so sure. But if you are doing this you should be aware that:

  • You will not get many subscription if any at all. It is safe to say that 90 % of people don't even look at descriptions
  • People will be suspicious about the giveaway since they have trouble trusting people with a short giveaway history. Although it is technically forbidden to call out some will still make strange comments.

So there you have it. The majority will not read and the rest will be suspicious :P But technically it should be allowed.

6 years ago
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I need at least 500 subscribers. Do you think I can get to that many if I give away PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS ? I mean it's a big game so it will get people's attention.

6 years ago
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Yeah, but that doesnt mean that people will read description, most of people doesnt care about description but about game...

6 years ago
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if you make a private ga and post about it here on the forum, people will more likely read the description and maybe you get some subs
but 500 is a lot, I can't believe you will get this with just one GA

6 years ago
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Highly unlikely. If you want to get 500 subs with 30$ budget (I think that's the price of that game?) you could look into offering that as a task on one of those micro-job sites. Basically you can create a task-job there offering people money in order to subscribe to your youtube channel. With 30$ you can offer 30/500 = 0.06$ per sub.

6 years ago
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Do you know of such a website?

6 years ago
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You might want to do more research on this, but I know Microworkers and Amazons Mechanical Turk are among the more popular ones. Which one would be better for you I don't know.

6 years ago
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Keep in mind that YouTube may ban your account if they see that you got a lot of subscribers (like 100+ in few days) from said sites or sub4sub forums/subreddits.

6 years ago
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Well, others have answered already. But no, 500 subscribers is far outside of the scope. If you make this one public lvl 0 you will get at best something between 10000-20000 entries. Reduce it to maybe 2000 which actually read the description. Then they still would have to click on the channel and subscribe which is fairly unlikely. I rarely get people to look at a review of mine (although I used less known games). Even 100 would be a surprising result for me already. But I may be very well wrong about it. I'm not to much into this video creation and watching stuff.

And again. People had not so good experiences with similar promotions in the past. It would affect your giveaway negatively as well.

6 years ago
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Don't expect hundred of subscribers either.

6 years ago
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you can get attention with a giveaway. but it is no guarantee that you will get mores subs. for me personally it depends on your content. good luck!

6 years ago
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Exactly ^ you can't just bribe subscribers with giveaways especially if it's not going to be a common thing. That's why people hate gleam because it is pointless crap that people can mass enter.

6 years ago
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Check this interesting (old) thread and read the "results".

6 years ago
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Curious about the results, could you drop a link or sth? ;-)

6 years ago
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There's been a few experiments to see how many people read giveaway descriptions, which is what I'm assuming Ouinx2 may have forgotten to link to. OP can easily search for more if they're interested, but to get started there's some here, here and here.

6 years ago*
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Oh, I know about those (still, thanks for linking!), I hoped there was a thread revealing how many people actually subscribed to a YT channel linked in a public ga.

6 years ago
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If you place a link in your description then people are likely to ignore it. What you could do is make an unlisted giveaway and put the link to it on your channel, so people would have to click-through in order to enter. As far as I'm aware the mods are fine with this, as nobody stopped me when I used this method for my game. You most likely can't force people to follow/like/whatever to get the key though or you're crossing the line into aggressive advertising.

Forum giveaways here won't give you nearly as much of a return as you might think, though. The average train has only 200 entries per game and my 6-day topic where players got a giveaway link for beating my demo only got me 43 unique giveaway entries (compared to 20 copies given away).

Steamgifts isn't a marketing platform, it's just a service that recycles extra keys and happens to have a fairly active forum. If you really want to advertise your channel then there are better ways to spend $30.

6 years ago*
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So what do you suggest I do in order to get more subscribers with $30?

6 years ago
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