THE WORST ADVICE FOR GROWING A YOUTUBE CHANNEL IS…
So I asked the question what is the worst advice you’ve ever gotten on growing a YouTube channel and what happened? And by far the most repeated answer to that question was some form of published consistently. Howdy, howdy everyone, Nate here. This was surprising to me because I was getting answers like this. The worst advice I got is if you upload consistently you will always make it or consistent upload schedule one of the most common and most repeated devices in the YouTube health sphere.
And I found it did more harm than good and it wasn’t just smaller channels. Answering this way, there were channels like Austin McConnell with over 1000000 subscribers go daily. No, never ever go daily. Or communication coach Alex Lyon upload every single week. Or the shepherdess upload every day or upload every week. So right off we had to answer the question, why is publishing consistently so Dang dangerous for channel makers like you and me? One, and I have to say this because it was alluded to by so many of the comments on this post, is that it’s one of the most OFT repeated forms of advice. Consistently on YouTube and you will make it.
But I have thought long and hard about this and realize that the big issue with that for you watching this is the second thing, and that is publishing consistently. If it becomes more important than other things on your channel that matter more for the real growth of your channel, then it becomes dangerous. Then it becomes a bad thing. Because I think the assumption behind this advice that’s so often thrown around to publish consistently is that somehow you’ve got to do or die. Publish on once a week, or publish every single day, or publish twice a week, or whatever you set in your mind or you assume in your mind.
Publishing consistently means. So it got me to the point of asking myself the question, is it that we should be publishing on a schedule, or publishing when we have a good video? And I think the answer isn’t as simple as one or the other. It’s yes to both. Let me explain what I mean by first explaining why do we even publish consistently? There’s got to be a reason why that advice became so widespread. In the YouTube help space, why does that even matter? Well, first of all, for the YouTube algorithm, they value recency of data, and if you publish on a consistent schedule, that means you are consistently producing new contents.
Also, if you’re a member of the YouTube partner program that when you publish, in theory if your audience would watch a video, a hundred thousand views on a video in one week, and you up that number to two videos in a week, and that same audience will watch both videos, then you are essentially getting double the revenue, meaning you have 100 And views on one video. And if you publish more often and the audience watches the next video in the next video, then you’re getting more revenue because you’re literally getting more views.
And then the argument on the channel maker side of things is keeping commitments. If you have a regular schedule in which you are saying I am going to publish on this schedule and you keep those commitments, you are also keeping yourself in line and keeping yourself relevant for your audience. So does it matter really if you publish consistently or on a regular schedule? I think that it does, but not in the way that we assume. That it does. You see, I want you to delete from your brain the idea that there’s some sort of single publishing schedule that trumps all else.
And then if you don’t do that publishing schedule, that consistent publishing, then your channel will ultimately fail. The reality here is I kind of like to look at it like fishing. When you are fishing, you put some bait on your hook, you put it in the water, and that is the potential for you to catch a fish right now, in theory, the more lines you have in the water, if you had 10 fishing poles, then you would have more likelihood of catching a fish, or in this analogy, more likelihood of an audience.
Enjoying a video and that video spreading and you getting your desired results with your channel and more lines in the water or more videos published means more potential for a result with each line in the water. Now here’s where things get a little bit tricky and that is higher quality lines in the water is a higher potential of better results. And so higher quality bait on the end of each line or each video that you’re producing means more potential for your audience to enjoy what you’re doing.
And this is where the analogy breaks down because we’re obviously not reeling in fish or audience is not fish. I don’t want you to think of it that way. You’re not. Feeding them worms. But the analogy does hold in that the more lines or more videos you have published on your channel, the more likelihood of a result. So This is why I think that advice is so OFT repeated of published, consistently published every single day, published this certain amount, especially when you’re a new channel, so that you have more potential of getting results, more feedback loops.
But as a result of the responses on this topic and my own thought discussing it with my team, I’m going to propose a new approach to publishing schedule on Youtube and it’s. It’s quite simple. Here it is. Decide how long it takes for you to make a good video and fit your schedule around that. But not only that, but fit it around that generously, meaning add extra time of to your schedule than what you would normally do. If you decide that it takes you a full week to make a good video, then you would be tempted to say, well I’m going to publish every single week, but of course life is going to come up.
So we got to be more generous with the schedule we place around that and give ourselves just a little bit more time padding around the schedule that we decide however. Lest you misinterpret this and say, well, Nate says I can just publish whenever the heck I want, no, that is not the case. Because from my research looking at tons of YouTube channels, you need to prove yourself before you can go fully off schedule, before you can get to the point where you’re just publishing once every two months or once a month. And what I mean by that is, before you can get to the point where you can publish whenever you want and that video will do great, you have to prove it both to yourself and to your audience and the algorithm that you can make a.
Successful video for the audience you are targeting. So whatever schedule you’re deciding for yourself, I would typically aim for at least once every two to three weeks. Any broader than that and you do run the risk of becoming less relevant to your audience. And again, if you were to come to me and say, Nate, how often should I publish on my schedule, I would probably say something different based on what your channel is about, how long you’ve been publishing, and overall your goals for your channel. Which is one of the reasons why I hold masterminds regularly in Project 24 so that we can get those. Individual questions you can come to me and say, Nate, this is my channel, this is what’s going on.
What do you think I should do right now? Now, because of the nature of Youtube I’m not able to give that customized response here. But I will say there are some catch points that I’d be looking for on your channel that might indicate that you are publishing more often than you should be here they are one if you consistently feel like your videos are trash and yet you’re publishing anyway, that is a bad sign. You need to slow down and pull back on how often you’re publishing 2 if you’re not excited about making you.
Youtube videos. That is a problem. You either need to slow down and take a long break and just reevaluate, or you need to publish a little less often so you feel like you have the space in order to produce videos that you are excited about. And three, if you feel like you don’t have the space to breathe or improve on your quality, to get better on your thumbnails for your next few videos, or try out that new awesome drone trick that you’ve been wanting to try it but you just haven’t felt like you have the time for, that’s another indicator.
Now, there are a few false catch points that I see happening here. One is I call the mental gremlins if. All the little voices in your head are telling you that you just don’t produce good videos or your videos are trash just because whatever your mind tells you should be getting results but you’re not. That’s a false one because it’s simply not true. You don’t have enough data, or the idea or the framework, the expectations you have in your brain of how things should be going. Are just not true and that ties closely with the second false catch point I would say is if you are reading your results wrong and by results I’m talking views or clicker rate or similar.
Because here is the biggest thing I’m looking or I’m hoping that you will get out of this video. First of all, Boop the like button. I realized I didn’t ask you to boop the like button. If this has been helpful to you thus far, go ahead and BOOP the like button so it can spread to more people. Thank you. But here’s what I actually wanted to say here. The shift I want you to make here is the shift away from the idea of publishing consistently.
Like I have to set this. Certain rigorous publishing schedule for myself into consistency of effort. There is a big difference between those two things, and I am seeing consistency of effort or consistency of your schedule and producing videos. If it takes you longer, that’s just fine, but that consistency of effort. Is in fact very important for channels to grow and for you as a channel maker to make and keep those commitments that do lead to the results that you are looking for. And if you’re part of Project 24 go ahead and hop on a mastermind or go in the community and ask for your particular channel or your type of content. How often should you be publishing? And while you’re looking at it, give a little background on how much time you have available.
Are you working a fulltime job? What’s the topic of your channel? What’s the quality of the videos? How much footage does it take to produce a single video? How long does the editing take? All of those factors are going to contribute to your consistency of effort for your channels. And then check out this video next, which has another awesome set of skills you’ll want for the next level of growth on your channel.
Thank you for watching and we’ll see you there.
