 Hell yeah, what's up guys, it's Chris Pipe. Muffins call me Big C. I'm back again, guys. Today we're talking about direct download links in your video description. We're going to be looking at some best practices and this is one that's come up a lot recently. There's a lot of turmoil and a lot of gray areas in this type of thing, so we're going to get into that. Now, before I talk about it, I want you to know that by direct download link, I don't mean links to your Facebook account or your Twitter account or if you have a blog, maybe you want to send them to your blog page or a website that you own or you write for, those generally aren't direct download links. I'm talking about things like if it initiates a download through the browser or maybe if you click the link and it launches a torrent or alternatively it takes you to another website or another web property that then initiates a download. That's what I'm talking about. This is a gray area and the best practices around this are still kind of getting fleshed out. So anyways, enough of that, let's get right into it. Let's go. Alright guys, like I said, this is a tricky area. It's a gray area but it's one that's YouTube is pretty cracking down on. They're taking a serious look at people that do direct links in their video descriptions. And before I talk about some of the reasons why they're doing it, I want to state up front that there are a number of reasons why it makes sense for a YouTube creator, perhaps like yourself, to do it. If you create graphics packs, for example, maybe you've got a thumbnail pack or you've got some GFX art or you made some art that people can download or you made a VFX pack and you've got intros or maybe you've made a game mod where you've made a game mod for a popular game. You know what, it makes sense. Put that link in there, bang, click that. You get the mod or you get the GFX pack. No harm, no foul. Perfectly legit reasons guys, but I will let you know that YouTube are looking at these things quite in depth. Why? Because, well, bad people, bad actors or spam channels are using and abusing this technique a lot and it has led to a lot of scrutiny. Examples of this might be a copycat channel that takes videos, uploads them and then in the video description they put a link to some sort of virus or download pack or something that screws up your computer. They can totally do that and they can actually hide that by using a URL shortener which we'll talk about later. So guys, bad practices are associated with that so if you do have direct download links there's nothing inherently wrong with it but do keep in mind that they're going to look at that pretty carefully. Now there is a best practice that I'd like to recommend to you and that is creating a free blog or a website if you want to go a little further and you've got some technical skills although you don't need too much skills these days with WordPress but create a free blog or maybe a website. Super simple on that website put somewhere on there a link to download the free package or whatever it is and then that website goes in your video description as opposed to the direct download. People would click on that link they would go to your site or your blog read what you've written and then download off the blog. This completely negates that issue that we just talked about and it is very, very, very easy to do. In fact I could probably do a tutorial on you. Maybe I'll do a tutorial tomorrow for you on how to do that. So that's my best practice that's my recommendation and that keeps you too from, you know, looking at your channel and potentially, you know, not red flagging it but putting it under scrutiny. So there's your best practice. Now we're going to talk about something a little more serious and that is AdFly or paid URL shortners. Oh yeah, let's get into this. Alright guys, this is another really great topic. It's actually not that great it's pretty black and white these days but AdFly or some other paid URL shortners are kind of simple. Here's what happens. You take a link to a download or maybe to a website but it's usually for a download but whatever and then you put it in AdFly and then that AdFly sends you back a URL that you then insert in your video description. It's very similar to Google's URL shortener, bitly, tiny, there's a whole bunch of other ones but it's basically taking these big long URLs as what it was intended for and then turning them into short compact URLs. I'll have an example in the description area below but AdFly is different than the other ones because you get paid per view on AdFly. That's what I was trying to say. I want to make sure I get it right but you can get paid for using AdFly. You get paid per thousand views and I think their minimum payout is $5. It's an extra way of monetizing traffic but here's the issue with it. Right now it's violating the terms of service. YouTube has very vaguely defined terms of service if I remember correctly and I've got it right here, hold on. Yeah, if the main purpose of your videos is to drive traffic off of YouTube and onto another site, you are probably in violation of YouTube spam policies. That is it in a nutshell. That is extremely vaguely worded and people have been defining that and saying is this against the rules? Is this against the rules? But at the end of the day, really the rules are up to YouTube or Google who owns YouTube. They call the shots because it's their network and right now AdFly is being shunned upon. So if you have AdFly links or you're considering putting in AdFly links I recommend staying very, very, very clear of that. If you want to use AdFly, maybe use it on your own website or something else because YouTube, they are hammering people with this right now. What happens is you get a couple of things. There's a couple of ways you're going to get nailed. The first one is they detect that it's an AdFly account. Even if you take an AdFly URL, shorten it in AdFly and then you shorten it in Google URL or another URL so you double shortened it to try and obfuscate it, they can detect it and they're going to nail you for it. What's going to happen? You might get a strike, you might get a video taken down. I've heard that's happening a lot or you might just get your channel closed if you're a really, really bad actor. They'll just hammer you and close the channel and there's not a whole lot of dispute resolution going on there because like I said at the end of the day, it's up to them what they want and don't want. They can interpret their rules the way they want to do it because they own it, it's theirs. So AdFly is pretty much a big no-no and I recommend staying clear of it. Other ones like Google and Bitly and Tiny, they are pretty legit so as long as you're not doing something sneaky or nefarious, you can get away with it because you're not doing anything wrong but if it does link to a direct download, they are going to scrutinize it. They are going to look at it. Alright guys, one more thing. Alright guys, and the last thing I'll mention is I have seen YouTube channels with AdFly on it and they haven't been flagged or they haven't gotten in any trouble and that's totally fine, I get it. But here's what could happen. If somebody, let's say you watch a video that has an AdFly URL or it links you to something that you weren't prepared to go to or it started to download that you're not cool with, you can then report that video and report that channel and then that channel will go up for a review. So if you have done it recently and you're getting away with it or you're thinking about doing it, keep in mind that there is a manual review process as well so they might hammer you for that too. So again guys, my suggestion is don't do it, it's bad, but if you're going to do it, well, I hope you don't get caught. Alright guys, anyways, that's my whole spiel for today. AdFly bad, direct download links, generally not too bad, but there is a best practice that helps you avoid that. I hope this info helps. I'll be back later with some more.