Avoid 8 YouTube Mistakes — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:01] very innocent mistakes that I see so many creators making that's getting their channels buried in the algorithm. And at the very least, it's making it reason I know this is because I built up tons of different YouTube channels and I

[00:15] YouTubers. And I've been doing YouTube for the past 10 years. And in that time, I've seen channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers get completely wiped off the platform because of mistakes that seemed completely harmless

[00:29] at the time. There are creators who thought they were doing everything right only to wake up one day from an email from YouTube saying that their channel saying, Matt, they had to have been doing something wrong, something that

[00:42] lot of these creators that have gotten banned are genuinely good people trying what I'm about to teach you right here. Because nobody teaches this stuff. You have to literally siphon through pages of the YouTube terms of service to find

[00:56] some of this. And the scary part is that creators don't even realize they're making these mistakes often times until it's too late. And now I've tried my best to distill down everything for you into eight mistakes that consistently

[01:08] triggers YouTube automated systems to flag your account and cause YouTube to work against you rather than working for you. Because when YouTube works for you, potentially of your dreams. YouTube has made me a multi-millionaire at a very

[01:21] It's the best place to build a business, but it's not if you're doing these mistakes, your journey is not going to be as pleasant. Now, before we get into these specific mistakes, you need to understand something crucial about how

[01:34] saying, "Matt, it's unfair that YouTube is taking down a lot of these creators." What you need to understand is that YouTube processes 500 hours of content that's uploaded on the platform every single minute. So, 60 seconds go by,

[01:49] boom, 500 hours over the course of a day, that's more content than you could literally watch in several lifetimes. So obviously they cannot have humans reviewing every single video and every single channel behavior. So instead what

[02:03] YouTube does is they rely on automated systems and they look for patterns. And designed to be aggressive because YouTube would rather accidentally flag a legitimate creator than let a spam network or a copyright infringer slip

[02:16] giant lawsuit for YouTube which YouTube relationship with advertisers and content owners is worth billions of dollars. And if brands start pulling advertising because of content that they

[02:29] might see as controversial, or if media companies start filing massive lawsuits because of copyright infringement, then YouTube's entire business model collapses. So when their systems detect patterns of behavior, they don't wait

[02:41] around to investigate whether you're actually violating the policies or not. They act first and they ask questions later. And unfortunately, the appeals you're lucky enough to get a human review at all. And this is why

[02:53] understanding these patterns and just avoiding them completely is critical to your long-term success on YouTube. Now, let's start with what's probably one of channels making, which is getting involved in subscriber exchange schemes.

[03:07] does that even mean?" Well, basically, when you're just starting out on YouTube, getting those first 100 subscribers seems absolutely impossible. comment sections saying things like, "Hey, I'll subscribe to everybody who

[03:20] like, "Small YouTube supporting each other." And it seems like a harmless way to give each other a boost. But here's what you need to understand. YouTube systems are incredibly sophisticated when it comes to detecting artificial

[03:33] engagement patterns, which doing that would be. Now, you might be saying, they're just doing it out of the kindness of their heart? Isn't that what There's nothing wrong with genuine community support, but the problem is

[03:47] how you do it. Because what YouTube systems actually detect when a bunch of channels, YouTube sees this as coordinated inflation, especially when engagement and watch time increasing proportionally. If you want to support

[04:02] that are within your niche and leave genuine comments because doing sub for than helping it. Now, the second mistake that's killing channels is hashtag abuse. Now, hashtags are simply things that you put in the title or the

[04:16] have heard that hashtags can help your videos get discovered because anytime someone clicks one of those hashtags, they'll see all the videos under that. hashtag as other popular videos, you might naturally think that adding more

[04:29] hashtags equals more discoverability. But here's where YouTube's guidelines according to their official policy, and I want you to pay close attention to this because it's directly from the Google support website, they say if a

[04:42] video has more than 60 hashtags, YouTube will ignore all the hashtags on the literally all of them. But it gets worse. YouTube explicitly states that overtagging may result in the removal of your video from your uploads or your

[04:57] you. If you're trying to game the system by stuffing your videos with hashtags, hashtags. They can literally remove your video from search results entirely and then your content basically just becomes invisible. So, I've seen channels with

[05:12] thousands of subscribers suddenly lose 90% of their views because they're trying to game the system, stuff their descriptions, and their titles full of hashtags because they saw some outdated YouTube growth tutorial telling them to

[05:24] anything with hashtags whatsoever. So, I say feel free to skip them because if likelihood from somebody clicking a hashtag on another popular video and then going to watch your video next. It's probably pretty low. People are

[05:38] more likely to search something directly on YouTube than to even use hashtags. But I say if you are going to use hashtags, then the optimal strategy for that would be to just use three to six highly specific ones that directly

[05:50] relate to your content and your audience. And the key word here is specific. Don't use generic hashtags like hashtag YouTube, hashtagviral, or hashtagsubscribe. These are so broad that they basically mean nothing.

[06:04] Instead, what you want to do is use hashtags that someone genuinely interested in your specific topic would actually search for. For example, if you're making a video about productivity apps for college students, your hashtags

[06:17] would be #productivity apps # college # studytips # college hacks. These are for them are genuinely interested in your content, but they're broad enough I mentioned, I don't do anything with hashtags. I think hashtags are less than

[06:33] 1% of your discoverability strategy. The other 99% comes from YouTube understanding what your video is actually about through your title, description, and most importantly, how people interact with your videos. And

[06:46] now let's talk about something that can get your channel terminated faster than anything else, which is copyright violations. And this is where I need to address something that a lot of YouTube educators, including myself, have taught

[06:59] in the past, which is the concept of viral replication. Now, viral replication, when it's done correctly, is about studying successful videos in work, and then creating your own

[07:12] original content inspired by what you saw on those videos. It's about learning from success of other people and then applying those lessons to your own here's where a lot of creators go wrong. They confuse inspired by with copied

[07:26] from. I've seen creators literally take viral video scripts or take an article from online where they literally just copy paste this exact same thing word for word as their script and then upload it as their own video. And I've seen

[07:38] people literally download other people's videos, slightly edit it, put maybe just it's literally the same exact order of clips that were being used and everything else, and then they present it as their own original video. And I've

[07:51] seen creators copy entire segments of popular videos, word for word, and literally just change the narrator. This is not viral replication, as I recommend it. This is copyright infringement. And YouTube's content ID system is

[08:03] incredibly sophisticated and is getting better and better at detecting copyright issues. So the truth about viral replication that actually works is that if you study successful videos to understand why they worked, then you

[08:16] create original content that serves the same audience need, but from your unique issue on YouTube that I literally built an AI spending over six figures developing it just to help me with this

[08:28] process of doing viral replication the right way. So, what Tube Magic does is videos that you're modeling and then information from each of those videos, and I recommend putting several so

[08:41] video. And then it runs it through a bunch of the best practices for writing scripts, including great hooks, great open loop strategies to keep people plus advanced psychology to also keep

[08:54] an original script based off of that. And this will be a god tier script not just copying stuff. You're not just copy pasting stuff from somebody else's Also, if you're using other people's clips in your videos, make sure to abide

[09:09] like having an original voice over on your videos, using multiple different the original. This isn't foolproof, by the way. Channels still have copyright but I think you'll be in a much better position abiding by all the terms of

[09:24] could always run like a stock footage get the stock footage the right way, you'd never have to deal with copyright issues whatsoever. That's why I built my second software, which is Vid.AI, which

[09:37] allows you to generate full 20inute videos using stock footage. And these deal with copyright ever. And now, let's talk about something that most creators never think about until it's too late. And that is channel security. As your

[09:51] channel grows, it becomes a target, unfortunately, not just for viewers, but also for scammers, hackers, and competitors that might want to damage your reputation or steal your channel. And I personally have seen very

[10:03] successful channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers get completely compromised because of basic security mistakes. And once somebody has access damage to your reputation, your relationship with YouTube. They could

[10:16] things like fake live streams. I actually got hacked on my channel. We'll that's what they did. I made a very rookie mistake though that you can easily avoid and I'll tell you about that in mistake number seven. But the

[10:28] first biggest security mistake that I see constantly is using the same email address for your channel management and then making it public facing. Meaning about page or in your video descriptions for business inquiries, that email

[10:42] of people who might not have good to that email address through hacking, social engineering, or data breaches at other companies, they potentially have access to your entire YouTube channel.

[10:55] So, the solution is to create a separate business email that's only for public communications, but to keep your actual YouTube account email completely email that you actually made your YouTube channel on. This way, even if

[11:09] someone compromises your business email, your channel itself remains secure. password for your channel as well. And I recommend using Bit Warden, which is a you can get to store all your passwords and also generate very complex

[11:23] thing on a bunch of different stuff. Now, this next mistake led me to almost losing my entire channel that you're watching right now in the past few months. And that mistake was falling into something that I like to call the

[11:36] make money online trap. Basically, what happened was YouTube started going after make money online channels. And I saw this happening on other people's playlist of all the biggest videos in the make money online space. And one

[11:49] half of them were gone. They're just completely gone. And I was like, "What receiving warnings on my channel, which I kind of brushed off at first cuz I was like, "Okay, it's just a warning. I'm sure everything's fine." But then those

[12:03] warnings turn into actual strikes. And when you get three strikes, your channel is completely deleted. So, I tempted to appeal these strikes thinking that there just reinstated almost immediately. So, then I panicked and I tried to figure

[12:16] pattern with the make money online videos. So, what I did is I went in and I deleted every single video on my channel that had to do with making money online or having make money online in my titles or my thumbnails or anything else

[12:29] like that because these are YouTube's automated systems automatically going after those videos because they probably did some type of AI update or something. for all we know from agencies like the FTC who don't want people making, you

[12:43] you could make this much money if you just watch this video." So, that reflects badly on YouTube. YouTube probably retrained their AI and then channels like that. That's at least my guess what's going on. I'm not 100% sure

[12:57] what I did seems to have worked. I didn't get another strike and luckily those two strikes expired and I started uploading again on the channel. And a that you never have to deal with this is to make a custom GPT within chat GPT

[13:12] terms of service. And this is what I did as well. And then this will allow you to then run any title ideas you have. Run any scripts that you have directly through this GPT and then ask it is there anything within this title or

[13:26] script or anything else that will violate the YouTube terms of service and then it can also give you tips and tricks of adjusting certain things to make sure that you do abide by the YouTube terms of service. Now, this next

[13:39] mistake is something that is hugely prevalent right now on YouTube and it's John Oliver, who's the host of this TV show in the US. And he was saying that I was part of the problem with propagating something called AI slop online. And

[13:52] little feature from one of my software companies about a type of video that it could produce, which I 100% agree. If you just relied on making content like real big business online. So, the point they're making is 100% correct. You want

[14:07] to make sure that your videos on YouTube give people value. Now, value can be value. So, I've been doing my best to build my AI tools around that. Like, for will produce very valuable videos cuz

[14:22] videos that have done incredibly good and writing them in new and unique ways. But where people go wrong and where this sixth mistake really gets a lot of channels is the fact that they don't use a specialized tool like that. They use

[14:35] scripts and then they AI generate visuals on top of that. Or even worse, they copy paste stuff directly from Reddit and then use that to AI generate a visual behind it. Like I've seen all these revenge story channels popping up

[14:47] just copy pasting stuff from subreddits. That is not the way to build a unique channel that actually gives a lot of value. That's just robotic mass might get entertained by some of it, but that's a recipe of also producing a lot

[15:00] are going to like. So, don't fall into that AI trap. If you're going to use AI, make sure to use tools like Tube Magic or Vid AI and make sure that your videos actually give value. Always do a QC quality check before any videos go out

[15:14] to the public as well. Now, this seventh mistake led my channel to getting certain that my channel was gone for good. Now, thankfully, I was able to get this channel back, but what basically happened was I received an email that

[15:27] request. Someone was saying that they wanted to sponsor the channel and they attached a PDF document to it. Now, I downloaded the document and I attempted the mistake. And the reason it was a mistake is because that document was not

[15:41] a PDF document at all, even though it looked like it was in the file name, but it was a specific type of file that installed a malicious program on my computer that then downloaded all of my Google account data and all of my logged

[15:54] in Google account because it downloaded all the cookies and cache files from my browser. And this allowed a hacker to be able to log into my channel. And so one day I just wake up and I see that my channel is running a fake SpaceX live

[16:07] And I was like, what the heck is going on? Now luckily I was able to send a tweet to team YouTube on Twitter and ask for it to be fixed, which thankfully creators getting their channels hacked and not getting their channels back

[16:22] ones running those crypto live streams. So, you got to be really careful and because I don't want that happening to you. That was one of the scariest years and years of dedication and trying to help people online that almost got

[16:37] wiped out in an instant. So, to avoid this fake brand deal disaster, make sure someone saying that they're a sponsor, if they attach a document and they ask you to open it directly on your computer, do not do that. You can send

[16:50] documents via Google Docs nowadays. you don't need to be downloading stuff on just want to put that out there so you can stay safe. Now, the final mistake that's killing channels is something called tag stuffing. Now, YouTube gives

[17:03] you a specific section where you can put in video tags. And there's a lot of useful anymore or whether they're not. I'm going to make a video soon about my tags is that they're limited. You can only add so many that describe your

[17:16] video. And what I see a lot of creators do in an attempt to game the system is they put a bunch of more tags in the description of their videos. That is not the place to put tags. And YouTube obviously does not allow this. Because

[17:29] while you think you might be being smart by giving YouTube more information about triggering YouTube spam detection systems. YouTube's official policy explicitly states that while adding hashtags is allowed, adding ordinary

[17:44] descriptive tags or repetitive sentences in the description is still prohibited. If you violate this policy, your videos or playlist may be removed or penalized. algorithm is sophisticated enough to understand what your video is about from

[18:00] your title, your description, and your actual content. When you just stuff additional keywords in your description unnaturally, it looks like you're trying to game the system because you are. So, what smart creators do and what you

[18:12] should also do is write your video description for humans first and the algorithm second. Because at the end of the day, the algorithm just amplifies description something that provides value to the viewer. Put a brief

[18:25] your own words. And it should clearly explain what viewers will learn or discover or see from watching your video and why they should care about it. And sounds like how you would actually talk to somebody. And just remember also

[18:39] YouTube's algorithm pays way more attention to how people actually keywords you have stuffed in your description. Now, at this point, you might be thinking, Matt, this all sounds pretty scary, honestly. Like, are you

[18:51] just saying that YouTube is waiting to ban creators for innocent mistakes? That's not the case. YouTube wants creators to succeed because successful creators makes YouTube successful. But they also need to maintain the quality,

[19:04] also have to keep a lot of advertisers happy as well because at the end of the day, YouTube is a business. And the creators who get caught up in these problems are usually ones trying to find shortcuts, game the system instead of

[19:16] focusing on what actually matters, which is creating valuable content that people genuinely want to watch. And if you want to discover my secret for growing on millions of dollars off the platform, and how I've built a gigantic business

[19:30] instead of just focusing on vanity metrics like views and subscribers, then here, which is a full course which is going to show you that new way of growing on YouTube, the new way of monetizing as well, and the way that I

[19:43] off of YouTube without even showing my face on the majority of my channels. Matt Parr. Thanks for watching and I will hopefully see you