The best growth strategy to grow rapidly is to upload videos daily. If that’s not possible (as in our case), at least once a week. For this article, we conducted multiple experiments on our test channels (over the course of several months): taking breaks, increasing upload frequency, and launching a new channel. How did these experiments impact the growth of our YouTube channels? We’ll discuss this in this article.
To clarify, many people talk about “uploading videos”, but they actually mean “publishing videos”. In our case too, “uploading” in this article means “publishing videos”. We experimented with both uploading and not publishing videos; we’ll see the results later in the article.
Logically, the best growth strategy is to publish as much content as possible, since more content means greater chances of being discovered and growing quickly. So, the best strategy is to upload videos daily. However, daily uploading might not make the difference we’d like, as we’ll explain later.
Publishing one video a week is a sort of unwritten rule for YouTube, but there are successful channels that publish only one video a month. Some content takes days or even weeks to produce, so publishing videos daily isn’t always possible for all types of content.
With a less frequent schedule (like once a week), you can prepare some backup videos for future weeks. This way, you can give yourself some “rest”, like going on vacation or being sick. Working ahead keeps us from feeling the pressure of feeding YouTube’s insatiable appetite.
In any case, it’s not about how many times you publish, but about the right timing. This is why publishing lots of content in a short period of time (like in our previous experiments) didn’t have much effect. You need to do it over a longer period with high-quality content (content with long average watch duration, high click-through rate, and high average percentage watched) to gain momentum.
We tested this when we launched a Motoclub channel, a channel in an extremely competitive niche. We prepared 25 videos before starting, so we could publish them quickly. The schedule was as follows: first day 3 videos, first week 1 video a day for 3 weeks, then the normal schedule with 2 videos a week. We noticed that this gave us the advantage of getting past the first hurdle of 0 views on a video, which is very discouraging. With each video we published, we saw views in the first 24 hours gradually increase.
In essence, what’s the best strategy for you depends entirely on your goals and the time you have available. The most important thing is that you’re able to maintain your upload schedule and avoid reaching a nervous breakdown. So, choose an upload schedule that works for you.
Uploading quality content is important to gain momentum. Momentum is more important than uploading daily instead of weekly. Growth on YouTube is positive, but your health is even more important. We’d rather reach the top slowly than burn out quickly.
