As some of you noticed, I was banned from YouTube. No reason given!
That account had 160 videos, 50 subscribers, has been around for 2 years and responsible for a couple of extra accidental sales per week. Some of the videos on that account had over 2,000 views.
Long story short: the Thursday morning of April 23, 2009 I drove from Turlock, south down Highway 99 and then Interstate 5 through Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles then finally San Diego to meet a few people who were in town for Mass Control 2.0…. Jason Fladlien, Lance Tamashiro, Dale Maxwell, David Risley, and Bryan Blyss (Faceman).
Tragedy Strikes!
We check into Jason’s room at the Hard Rock Hotel, break out the laptop like usual internet marketing nerds and check out our Video Sales Tactics blog. Try to play the latest YouTube video I have posted there… and it’s been “removed for terms of use violation.”
That’s weird, I say… and try to play another YouTube, same message. I load my YouTube profile… it says, “This account is suspended.” Try to login to that account, same deal.
YouTube never sent me any e-mail about any videos being a problem or about the account being taken down. YouTube has no phone number of e-mail address, but after filling out a 10-part form I was able to get this canned response:
Hi robertplank,
Thanks for your email. Your “robertplank” account has been found to have violated our Community Guidelines. Your account has now been terminated. Please be aware that you are prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts.
YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week to determine whether they violate our Community Guidelines. When a video or account is brought to our attention we investigate and take action if necessary.
We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video’s removal. For more information on our what we consider inappropriate content or conduct while using YouTube, please visit our
Community Guidelines and Tips at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines and our Help Center article http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92486.Regards,
Roberto
The YouTube Team
So YouTube tells me my account violates their community guidelines, but won’t tell me which ones, and it’s obviously none because their community guidelines refer to copyright infringement, anything illegal, hate speech, etc. of which my account had none. It was ALL talking head and PowerPoint how-to videos.
The icing on the cake is that being “suspended” from YouTube not only means your account is gone, but you aren’t allowed to create any new accounts. (The guys from Traffic Geyser told me to create a new account at a friend’s house, but there’s no way I’m doing that.)
That Sucks!
The lesson to all this is: post videos in Camtasia format on your blog so you aren’t stuck with a bunch of “this video has been removed” links all over your blog. I have the originals of all those videos and YouTube only accounted for 5% of my traffic, but it still sucks.
Build your own site, not someone else’s. You shoud be posting your YouTube videos on your OWN blog, including hosting the video itself. It’s just like how you should be posting your own articles to your blogs, and not just EzineArticles.
Matt Levenhagen responded to my tweet on Facebook and mentioned sxephil (Philip DeFranco) who is one of my favorite YouTubers, who does this too. Use your videos to get people offsite and on your list so you can continue posting videos on your blog.
As far as why I was banned? The only thing that makes sense is Traffic Geyser. It looks like I was wrong, other internet marketers not using Traffic Geyser have been banned for the same reason…
What Does All This Mean?
The moral of the story is YouTube throws great parties, but is not trustworthy enough to watch your kids. Use YouTube as a traffic source, not a place to store all your content.
That’s the true story of the last YouTube ever posted by Robert Plank… what are your thoughts on this? Make sure to comment below!
