Contacting a YouTuber or the manager of a YouTube channel may seem quite difficult at first glance. But, if you want to contact a fellow creator for a collaboration or a YouTuber regarding your business, there are many ways to get in touch.
You can contact a YouTube channel via the business email on the About page. If the channel doesn’t have an email attached, you can contact them via their linked social media accounts or their website. And if that also doesn’t work, you can comment on an older video to get their attention.
That’s the short answer; here’s the longer one. And you may be asking yourself, doesn’t YouTube have a way to send private messages?
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Has YouTube removed the option to send private messages?
Yes. As of September 2019, YouTube has removed the private message functionality. This applies to both YouTube on desktop and the mobile version of YouTube in iPhone and Android apps.
While you cannot send private messages anymore on YouTube, you can still send public messages in the form of comments on videos or community posts. Many YouTubers also have an email address in the about section of their profile that allows you to contact them, their manager, or their team.
Why did YouTube remove private messages?
YouTube removed private messaging on September 18, 2019. They announced this in a support post because they want to focus more on public conversations with updates to comments, posts, and stories.
With YouTube now also allowing creators with only 500 subscribers to create posts and tag other YouTubers in them (albeit two years later), they seem to be working on more ways to communicate publicly on the platform.
However, private conversations can still be had, and you can still contact YouTubers and their channel managers using the four different methods below.
4 Ways To Message Someone On YouTube
Even though YouTube has removed private messaging on the platform, you can still contact creators for business or personal reasons using one of these 4 methods.
1. Message Someone on YouTube Via Email
The most straightforward method of contacting a YouTuber is to email them directly. Not all creators have an email set, but most doing YouTube professionally will have an email address for you to contact them on.
To find the email address of a YouTube channel, follow these steps:
Open YouTube.com in a browser and navigate to the YouTube channel you want to connect with.
Select “About” from the menu at the top of the channel home page.
If the channel has a public business email address, you will see the option “For business inquiries: View Email Address” under the “Details” section.
Click the “View Email Address” button, and then you will most likely need to confirm that you’re not a robot. If you are not a robot, go ahead.
Once completed, you can copy the email address and contact the YouTube channel privately.
This is generally the best way to contact a YouTube channel, but you can try the following options if they do not have a public email.
2. Message YouTubers Via Social Media
Most YouTubers are active on at least one other social network, with all of the large ones having a way of directly messaging a creator privately.
The easiest way to find the social networks the YouTuber is active on is to see which social networks they have linked in their About section or linked in their video descriptions.
This also helps you avoid messaging scammers and impersonators if you search for the creator on the social platform directly.
To find the linked social networks in the creator’s About section, open YouTube in a browser or in the mobile app, and navigate to the YouTube channel. Select the About tab at the top and under the “Links” section you will find any social networks they have linked.
You can then head to their social network and send them a direct message.
Alternatively, many YouTubers also leave social media links in their video descriptions. To find these, head to one of their videos and expand the description. You will normally find these links towards the bottom of the description if they have these links.
P.S. Sometimes YouTubers also leave an email address in their descriptions as well.
3. Message Them Through Their Website
If the first two options fail, you may have trouble messaging the YouTube channel via their linked website.
If they have one linked, you can navigate to their YouTube channel and open the About tab like before to find their website. Under the “Links” tab, they may have their website linked there.
P.S. The first five links in the About section appear in the YouTube channel banner above the subscribe button when viewing a channel on a desktop device.
Once you find the YouTube channel’s or YouTuber’s website, use their navigation to find a contact/work with me page for a contact form or an email address.
If they don’t have one of these forms, you can download hunter.io and use the free browser extension to see if any public email addresses are associated with the domain.
4. How To Contact a YouTube When All Else Fails
When all else fails, you’ll have to let the YouTuber know you want to chat publicly.
This can be done easily by commenting on one of their videos or in the community tab if they have any public posts.
If you want it to be seen by as few people as possible, you can sort the creator’s videos by oldest first and then leave a comment on the second oldest video. People tend to watch the first video they have uploaded to see how they started, but the second one, unless it has performed well in the first place, won’t gather many views later on.
Closing Thoughts
Even though YouTube has removed the private messaging feature, there are plenty of ways to get in touch with your favorite creators on the platform.
Whether that’s to collaborate, reach out for a business proposal, or say thanks for an awesome video, these four methods to message someone on YouTube will hopefully help you get in touch.