What should I check before buying a YouTube channel?

A channel is a business whose main asset is an audience, and an audience is easy to describe and hard to verify. The seller’s numbers may be accurate, but a buyer who relies on a summary has only seen what the seller chose to show. The checks below aim to replace claims with things you can see yourself. They sit alongside the general steps in how to check a business’s online presence.

See the analytics yourself

Ask for live, read-only access to the channel’s analytics, or sit with the seller while they share their screen. Screenshots are easy to edit and out of date the moment they are taken. Look at how views and subscribers moved over time, which videos carry the traffic and whether a few old uploads do most of the work. Ask what caused any sudden jumps or drops.

Who is watching, and from where

Check the audience’s location and age. Ask whether the audience’s location and age fit what the channel’s sponsors and ad networks expect. Ask how viewers find the channel, through search, recommendations or outside links, and how steady each source has been.

Revenue and standing

Separate the revenue sources: platform ads, sponsorships, affiliate links and anything else. Ask which are repeating and which were one-off, and ask to see the agreements behind sponsorships, and ask your lawyer whether they can pass to a new owner. Then ask about the channel’s standing: any warnings, strikes, removed videos or demonetized uploads. Music and clips from others deserve a close look, and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s guide to copyright is a useful starting point.

The face behind the channel

If the audience follows one person’s face and voice, ask whether that person will stay on, for how long and on what terms. A channel that depends on its presenter carries a risk if the presenter leaves. Ask, too, what exactly is transferring: the channel, the editing files, the brand and the email lists.