As you’re growing your channel, you may fall victim to losing YouTube subscribers. There’s a few reasons that things like this happen, including purges done by YouTube themselves. We recently wrote an article about that, too. In this article, though, we won’t stop there: we’ll focus on all reasons there could be for losing some of your subs on YouTube and, more importantly, how to avoid this happening in the first place!

Why It Happens

Lost a large amount of subscribers? YouTube likes to spring clean periodically

YouTube’s spring cleaning happens every now and again. Nobody can really predict the when, but what they do when it happens is that they purge a large number of idle/inactive accounts, or ones that they feel are expressing bot-like behavior. On a small scale, this can lose you a few subscribers, too little to even notice. On the large scale, YouTubers like PewDiePie can lose upwards of five hundred thousand subscribers.

Subscribers can also be lost to over-flowing content feeds

There’s other reasons people might unsubscribe from your channel, too. If you post too many videos in a day- especially 5+ videos or videos in bulk- you risk overwhelming the subscription feeds of the people that follow you. This means that even if they like your content, they’re left to dig through a flood of it to get to the work of other content creators. Additionally, exposing them too much bulk, similar content will risk burning them out on you.

You might have said or done something offensive

We’re not trying to judge you. Offensive is a spectrum, and it depends on where you stand. Your beliefs are none of our business. But if you post something very polarizing, don’t be surprised when you lose subscribers over it, especially if you’re a large channel.

How To Avoid It

Don’t pay too much attention to numbers lost during purges

If other YouTubers are posting about lost subscribers, it just means YouTube has done another one of their typical purges. Don’t overthink it- just move on. It may hurt to see your numbers drop, but in truth lost YouTube subscribers in this way has the least effect on your channel, since they weren’t actually watching your videos or interacting anyways!

Be careful not to flood your users with too many videos each day

Make sure you’re a YouTube partner so you can upload long videos and avoid things like this. If this content can’t be combined into one video, get better at editing or evaluate the quality of what you’re putting out. You may also want to consider a release schedule.

Tread lightly with controversial opinions

Losing YouTube subscribers to something controversial you said happens a lot. To avoid this kind of thing, simply try and keep any controversial opinions you might have off of YouTube, unless your channel is about your opinions. For instance, comedy YouTubers may cross a few lines for laughing’s sake, but that doesn’t mean you need to dive deep into highly-politized issues in an offensive manner. Use common sense when putting out content like that.

Moving On

But finally and most importantly, don’t feel bad about some lost subscribers. With the purges, the drop in numbers is solely cosmetic and has almost no bearing on how you’re actually doing as a YouTuber. The best way to avoid lost YouTube subscribers from real subscribers is simply to continue focusing on bettering your content and your channel. A great way to start is by collaborating with YouTubers. With our app, Grin, you can start meeting other creators like you.