We had a wonderful Youtube Channel; 3 million views, around 15,000 subscribers, it was GREAT… until the day it wasn’t. Here’s what you need to know:

YouTube seems like the perfect solution for small businesses because its a totally FREE website that 90% of the WORLD uses, so it’s almost ignorant to be a businesses and NOT be on Youtube, right?

When we created our channel around 2010 (maybe 2011) it was definitely a learning process. We had never made videos and knew absolutely nothing about the video industry but after creating a couple hundred videos we became fairly decent.

It took several years to really get a fair amount of subscribers. I figured out that the more Subs you have, the more Subs you’ll get. Getting the first 1,000 followers was like pulling teeth, but the next 10,000 were fairly easy.

By early 2019 our YouTube was rocking! We had built a great following with a lot of interaction on our videos. It was utterly perfect. We had uploaded all of the videos for all of our listings to YouTube and had each video embedded into our website. It was free, simple and fast in addition to a phenomenal way to advertise at no cost whatsoever. But, like the old saying goes, “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is” - no truer words. 

On April 4th, 2019, I woke up in Mexico because I was vacationing with my family. Like every business owner does, I checked my phone while laying in bed and I see a notification from YouTube stating our account had been “Terminated”. Of course I immediately assumed this must be some form of error, because we have never had a single issue with YouTube, therefore there would be no reason whatsoever to give us a “strike”, let alone terminate the entire account. In fact, I even thought the email might be a phishing spam because it was THAT crazy.

I then went to login into YouTube and there it was, a plain page that said “Account Terminated”. Panic immediately started to set in because our website listings all include a video, which was hosted on YouTube…. And now that the account is terminated, all of the listings show a blank, un-playable video that displays the message “This Account Has Been Terminated”. Thousands, and thousands and thousands of videos…. 100% GONE… well technically, it’s even WORSE than “gone” because it outright says our company did something awful to be “Terminated” - ARRRRRGGGHHH!!!

Being that I was in Mexico, I felt so helpless. All I had with me was my cell phone and a Chromebook laptop. If you’re familiar with Chromebooks, they have very limited capabilities versus an actual laptop, let alone a desktop.

After reading over the brief, form-letter-style email from YouTube further I discovered that, apparently, “someone” “somewhere” said “something” about some item we had a video of.  This "someone" claimed that that "something" was “fake” (meaning not authentic merchandise). This was really, really odd because YouTube never reached out to us to ask for invoices about the merchandise that “someone, somewhere” complained about. We were never given any form of a chance to prove otherwise. Being that we had around 10,000 videos on YouTube there was no way for us to know what specifically this “someone, somewhere” wasn’t happy with.  We didn't even get to know who "someone" was or what they said about the "something".  The email simply said "A complaint was made that merchandise shown in a video is not authentic".  ...And now that all access to our account was blocked, it was impossible to even begin to try to figure out the riddle. 

So, now that I thought I had figured out that the problem was, I assumed this would be super easy to resolve. I thought if YouTube can just tell me which video was flagged I can easily trace the date of the video back to an invoice from the store it came from (M*cys, Saks, N*rdstrom, Sears, QVC, whatever it may be)  In fact, I could even get a Letter of Authorization directly from the store the merchandise came from, so my first instinct was to send all of this information to our business lawyer and have him reach out to YouTube to find out which video I need to provide receipts for…. It seriously sounds easy, right?

So Brad, our lawyer, agreed that this must be some form of mistake and sent communications out to YouTube via email, fax and direct mail right away. Since we didn’t know what specifically “someone somewhere” said was counterfeit, or WHO the "someone" was, the paperwork Brad sent to YouTube included copies of all of our contracts with designer stores in addition to a phone number and email of each supplier so YouTube could contact them directly to confirm that we are an authorized buyer. Brad and I sincerely thought we would have this fixed before the end of the week because this is clearly a mistake on YouTube's end.

During this same timeframe I reached out to each of our suppliers and asked if they had accidentally filed some form of complaint against us on Youtube. 100% of our suppliers affirmatively said “No. If we have any issue our lawyers reach out to the video publisher directly”, so now we know that whatever this complaint was, it did not come from any of the name brand stores we buy directly thorough.

A couple weeks passed without any form of response from YouTube.

Then, one day Brad calls me. He says “....Well, YouTube responded…. I have to tell you that I have never seen anything like this…. All YouTube said was This Account Has Been Terminated. There isn’t even anyone's name signed on the response. It looks like a generic reply.”  

Neither Brad nor myself believed YouTube ever read the paperwork. It was beyond depressing.

Brad offered to try again because he felt awful about the whole thing, or, alternatively we could try to sue them, but, at that point I decided that, EVEN IF we could get the account back, it’s too much of a risk to make YouTube such a big part of our business when “someone, somewhere” can say “something” and that is enough to have our entire account closed with no way to resolve the issue, no point of contact at YouTube and no actual way to get a hold of anyone at YouTube, even when using a lawyer!

I then tried using Facebook for videos but within 72 hours I realized that I can’t be a part of any entity that can shut down our company for no reason, so I began looking into paid video hosts.  I knew if I PAID for video hosting, should the host close the account, there is legitimate grounds to sue them because they would be violating the contract between our company and theirs.  I came across Vimeo and reached out to them to ask how they feel about hosting our product videos and if they see any form of conflict arising.  They replied fast, stating that their company would be a great fit for our needs.  In April 2019 we signed up and Vimeo has been a genuine winner, and their customer service is 5-star.

IN CLOSING

If you want to use YouTube for your business, GREAT! Use it. It’s free. BUT I strongly caution you when it comes to making YouTube an important part of your business (embedding videos into your site / listings, relying on YouTube’s free cloud storage, etc). Even if your YouTube account is in perfect standing, all it takes is one person to make a secretive claim. You might think “Nobody has any reason to say our merchandise isn’t authentic!” - and you are 100% correct. Nobody had any reason to say this about us either. Heck, the person who files the complaint could be:

1. A competitor. Unfortunately, competitors can be diabolical. When I used to sell on eBay (2005/ 2006) there were competitors who would report every single listing for no reason. They chose to spend their time trying to sabotage you instead of working on their own business.

2. An upset buyer who wanted to return dress they wore 11 months ago and no longer wants but you said “No”, so they’re out to seek revenge

3. An ex / former employee or someone who knows you and who is bitter

4. A person who doesn’t know you but is just stupid. We have had random people tell us “That Guess shirt is fake! Guess doesn’t make 100% Cotton items!” (which is not only false but also super ignorant). We even had a lady tell us that Victorias Secret doesn’t manufacture in China, which is also 100% incorrect. Like I said, some people are just dumb and you really can’t fix stupid.

5. A person who is seriously delusional in real life. We had this really bizarre dude who kept contacting us, pretending to be Playtex (the bra company). He would send us these very strange emails (from his gmail account) telling us that we are not allowed to sell Playtex bras…. Which is completely incorrect because we are an authorized buyer of M*CYS liquidations and therefore we have permission to sell these items. Anyways, this creepy guy would send us these poorly-written emails, pretending to be a lawyer for Playtex and telling us we need to stop.  So strange. 

6. Someone who is just flatout a hater, Have you ever read comments on social media? There’s so many people who are just rotten for absolutely no reason at all. We even wrote a two-part series about Dealing with Online Haters and Trolls and 28+ Hilarious Ways to Respond to Online Business Haters if you have never encountered these nutjobs you just haven’t sold long enough or advertised enough.

7. Kids messing around and flagging stuff for fun. I’ve seen crazier things in my life. I don’t put this past anyone. 

IF YOU PLAN TO USE YOUTUBE

*****Be sure to backup ALL of your videos to a cloud, such as Microsoft. This way, if your account is closed you will still have access to ALL of your content! Being that Google and YouTube are the same company, I would caution against using Drive as your storage for YouTube because, well, who knows?  If they both were closed at the same time you are totally F'ed. 

Microsoft Storage Prices:

Alternatively, you can use Vimeo as a YouTube competitor and also as storage.  We absolutely LOVE Vimeo!  Plus, unlike YouTube, Vimeo has 5-star customer service.  If you have a business account you can contact a REAL PERSON at Vimeo 7-days-a-week.  If you ever have an issue they address it pronto.  We use the $50 a month plan: 

We currently have 5,100 videos uploaded to Vimeo and we have not even used 50% of our storage space yet.  JUST REMEMBER:  If it is FREE, someone actually IS paying for it, and the entity paying for it can revoke your access at ANY TIME because it is "FREE" for you.  Always hope for the best but plan for the worst.