You work hard to earn a YouTube subscriber, so when they unsubscribe it’s a big deal! Here’s 3 reasons why they leave your channel and 3 things you can do to keep your YouTube subscribers coming around your channel for a long time to come. It really all revolves around the value you deliver, the value the subscriber wants, and the connection between those two. That’s what keeps you from losing subscribers.

  • Learn more about how to offer lasting value to your viewers in my book, “30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel.”

    • Claire, The Aware Beauty wrote and asked this– “I lose about 1/3 of the subscribers that I gain. It would be very helpful if you would, at some time, make a video about this topic of losing subscribers. Thanks!” I totally feel your frustration. You put all that work into getting that viewer, converting them into a subscriber. And then why would they then unsubscribe and leave your channel? What’s happening?

    Well, I’m going to give you guys three reasons why this is most likely happening in the first place. And then I want to give you guys three ways you can keep your subscribers and prevent them from unsubscribing or at least make it less likely that they do so.

    Differing Value

    But first, let’s talk about why you are losing subscribers in the first place. Number one is what I call differing value. And basically, that is that the value that someone subscribed to your channel that they were expecting to get is not the value that they are actually getting.

    So for example, here on “Video Creators,” I have a video about how to record your iPod, or your iPhone, or your iPad screen on iOS, and record it and make a video of it. That video is doing fairly well. It’s getting a decent amount of views and people subscribe from it. But then they find out that this channel isn’t really talking about mobile devices, and Android and iPhones, and things like that. And so the value they subscribed for, they end up unsubscribing because actually, we’re talking about YouTube.

    So on your channel, maybe someone subscribed because they saw one video that was really funny. They thought it was hilarious. They subscribe. But it turns out your channel isn’t actually a comedy channel. You just happened to be funny in that one video, but you’re not really funny in the rest of your videos. You’re actually providing a different kind of value. And so those people unsubscribe.

    Actual Value

    And as soon as the actual content value of your channel becomes less predictable, then those people become more and more likely to just stop watching when they see your video in their feed. And then eventually, they just unsubscribe to get you out of there altogether. So this problem you do have some control over. And that is to make sure that every video you publish on your channel has high content value for your viewer.

    Though what I’m not saying is that you shouldn’t publish a video until you’ve spent an enormous amount of hours on it, and it is just perfect, and everything’s completely right. That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that you should make sure that every video you publish has the potential to be equally as valued as the one before it and all the other videos so that they grow to expect a certain level of value from you. If that fluctuates a lot, it becomes easy for people to unsubscribe.

    Lost Value

    And number three is lost value. And this is when someone subscribes to your channel because it was valuable to them at the time. But now, for example here, maybe someone is no longer actively creating YouTube videos or developing an audience, so they want me out of their feed. And this is actually something that you have absolutely no control over.

    Know What Your Value Is

    So let’s talk about three ways you can keep people subscribed to your YouTube channel. And the first one is to know what your value is that you’re actually proposing to deliver to your viewer. In order to consistently deliver value to your subscriber, you have to know, first of all, what that value is that you’re proposing to offer.

    And the reason for that is very few people actually make the time investment to watch a lot of your videos to figure out for themselves whether or not your channel and your content is going to be valuable for them. So just tell them, make it very clear right up front– this is what my channel’s all about and this is why you should care.

    Demonstrate Your Value

    And then number three, you have to demonstrate that value for your viewers and your subscribers consistently in every video as we’ve already talked about. So there are many other reasons why someone might unsubscribe from your channel, of course. These are the big three that I see.

    I would love to hear from you in the comments below– what are some common reasons that you see people unsubscribing on YouTube? Maybe it’s from your own personal practice. Why have you unsubscribed from the channels you’ve unsubscribed from? Or maybe the feedback you’ve heard from people on your own channel. Share all that in the comments below.

    And if you are someone who wants to dig into this topic a little bit more, definitely read the comments that people are leaving down there. Always really helpful, awesome people here leaving a lot of really valuable stuff. So you can learn a lot from them down there as well.