Le Quan, a content maker on YouTube, who lives in HCM City, said he bought 10,000 views for his video clip on a view trading website. 

“I posted a clip on YouTube. Buying views is the best way to increase the popularity and attractiveness of the clip. Once the clip catches public attention, it is easier to make money from it,” Quan said, adding that he had to pay VND500,000 for the deal.

Quan is one of many people who make money on YouTube.

To make money on the platform, users have to become a YouTube Partner. There are two ways, either registering directly with YouTube, or registering indirectly, through an intermediate partner or the YouTube network.

Thanh Huynh, who works for one of the networks, said buying views on YouTube is popular. Those who have just set up their channels like Quan buy views to increase their popularity and improve search rankings. 

Under YouTube’s new regulation, one channel must have 4,000 viewing hours and 1,000 subscribers to be eligible to make money.

In addition, people also buy views for other purposes. Singers and musicians, for example, want to become better known, and businesses want to advertise their products.

Views can be bought two ways – either ads (Google AdWords, Admicro and Adtima), or the black market. The former is chosen by large companies, famous artists and prestigious individuals because of high reliability. 

Small or newly set up channels tend to seek services in the black market because of low prices. With VND50,000, one can buy 400-500 views on Google AdWords, but can buy 1,000 views or higher in the black market, with additional ‘likes’ and comments.

On average, 1,000 views are sold for VND35,000-70,000 (2 million views at maximum for every package).

A YouTube view seller in HCM City said he has many different packages for customers, from 5,000-10,000 to several million views. He assures them that the viewing time will be over five minutes. 

“If Google discovers, I will compensate with another contract with similar number of views,” he promised.

It is cheaper to use large packages, but service providers won’t give a guarantee if the video is locked because of copyright infringement. 

If clients want to increase the number of views within a short time, views will be created by many systems at the same time, but this can be “easily discovered by YouTube”, he said.

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