How to Fake a YouTube Viral

How to make fake a YouTube viral – If your YouTube video is not showing the viral effect you promised your client, don’t worry. There are several ways to buy yourself out of your dilemma.

You’ve produced an expensive YouTube video for your client but it’s only had 40 views the last couple of days? You are getting restless since you promised your client a massive word-of-mouth marketing campaign and its starting to fail? Don’t worry. Just buy yourself 100’000 YouTube views.

Journalist Markus Hüdgen designed an experiment to test how easy it would be to produce a viral video. With a minimalistic video, which is as boring as a banana taking a nap, he tried to get as many views as possible in one month. The video was kept this simple since it should not get any additional views without the help of a seeding firm. This firm had already been hired. Hüdgen had invested 20$ in the starter package, which guaranteed him 30’000 views.

After one week the video had gathered 5’000 views. One problem remained. A video with thousands of views but no comments or ratings might seem suspicious. No problem for the seeding firm in Pakistan. For an additional 40$ he received 40 video ratings and “the offer of the week” bought him 10 comments for 10$. A day later he received the following E-Mail: “Please send me a list of ten comments in your favorable language, if you would like us to post on your favors.”

After a couple of weeks Hüdgen’s video had received several comments and over 30’000 views. Mission accomplished. This experiment shows how easy it is to fake a YouTube viral. Hüdgen even was approached by a PR company wanting his advice on good seeding firms. As he quotes the PR-guy in his blog: “I need a good seeding firm for a viral video for a DAX-rated company in Germany. I need at leas 100’000 views in one week. Ok. I’d rather have people between 22 and 30 years in Germany but in the end I need the mass”.

Although click fraud is forbidden by YouTube’s terms of services, many PR companies rather risk the chance of beeing caught (I don’t know if YouTube has ever published a fraud?) than admitting having made a viral for 100’000$ that doesn’t reach the promised audience. In the end it’s the cumulated views that count and are sold to the client, regardless where the clicks came from.

Here’s Hüdgens Video:

And these are the comments he bought: