What Subscriber Count on YouTube Really Represents And Who it Truly Benefits

Here’s a hint: it’s not for the actual person subscribing to your channel.

Image screen captured and the word “clout” written in digital color pencil by the author

When we see a channel with a high subscriber count, what comes to mind?

I can only speak for myself and maybe that’s what this entire article will do. But when I see a channel with a million plus subs, I think, “Oh this person is very popular.” I immediately know that the number is not for the viewer per se, but for the actual channel creator.

Per se meaning that a viewer may use this metric as a way to determine if they should waste their time on a channel or not (though that’s not always true either).

I recently commented on a Medium article titled, “Why Starting a YouTube Channel Is a Terrible Idea”, where the author weighed a channel’s success on it’s subscriber count.

If you are a YouTuber enslaved to the almighty algorithm like the rest of us, then you know that watch time is more important. Heck it’s almost the control metric for how well your channel will perform.

The author of that article emphasized subscriber count, but for the wrong reasons, I believe. Subscriber count matters (and is still relevant regardless of naysayers), not because of it functioning as a backend stat, but it’s power to alter…