You’ve spent hours creating the perfect YouTube video, pouring your heart and soul into every detail. So, when should you hit ‘Publish’ to ensure the maximum number of views and engagement?
Fear not, fellow YouTuber, we’ve got you covered! In this article, we’ll dive into the factors that affect the ideal publishing time, such as audience, geographic impact, seasonality, and more.
However, generally, it’s recommended to upload videos during peak viewing hours to maximize engagement. Based on research and trends, weekdays, particularly Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, between 2 PM and 4 PM (Eastern Standard Time) are considered optimal times for publishing videos.
We’ll also provide examples and stats to help illustrate our points. Let’s dive in!
Know Your Audience
Understanding who your target audience is and when they’re most likely to be online can significantly impact your video’s performance. Consider the demographics of your audience, such as their age, interests, and routines.
For instance, if your target audience is young adults, posting in the late afternoon or evening might yield better results, as they’re more likely to be online after school or work.
For example, if you’re in the United States and have a significant European following, you might want to post in the late morning or early afternoon (EST) to catch the European audience in the evening.
Seasonality
Keep in mind that people’s routines change throughout the year, and your publishing schedule should adapt accordingly. For example, you might see more viewership during the summer months when people have more leisure time.
Conversely, the holiday season might result in fewer views, as people are busy with celebrations and other activities.
Weekdays vs. Weekends
In general, weekdays tend to see higher engagement on YouTube, as people are more likely to be online during work breaks or after office hours.
Weekends can still be an excellent time to post, but engagement might be more unpredictable. Some studies have found that the best days to post are Wednesday and Thursday.
The best time to upload and publish videos on YouTube depends on factors such as your target audience, time zones, and your content’s nature.
However, generally, it’s recommended to upload videos during peak viewing hours to maximize engagement. Based on research and trends, weekdays, particularly Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, between 2 PM and 4 PM (Eastern Standard Time) are considered optimal times for publishing videos.
This allows your content to gain traction as viewership increases during the evening hours, both in the US and internationally.
Keep in mind that these are guidelines, and experimenting with different posting times may help you find the best schedule for your specific audience.
Upload frequency is one of those thing that it can be easy to get turned around on, since you can easily find opposing advice… sometimes from the same sources! In this post, we’re going to do our best to not only give you the information you need to answer this question yourself, but also explain why there are so many conflicting opinions on the matter.
And we’ll start by saying this; there is no definitive answer to the question of “how many videos should I upload a week?”. Like many aspects of success on the platform, it all comes down to your specific circumstances. Let’s dig a little deeper.
A Late Video is Better Than no Video
The first thing to note is that, whatever upload frequency you have been told is the key to success, it will not work if you can’t stick to it. Many YouTubers set themselves lofty goals that they can’t stick to at the start, with declarations like “I will upload a new video five times a week!”
This is especially difficult for new YouTubers, who are often balancing work, family, and school around their channel, so committing to making a lot of video content several times a week is a non-starter.
Unfortunately, it is very easy to get from not being able to stick to your arbitrary schedule to not uploading videos at all!
Whatever your chosen system for creating YouTube content, it should be one that you can stick to, and without burning yourself out. Now, don’t mistake this for “easy”. We’re not saying succeeding on YouTube won’t be hard work, but there is a difference between working hard and running yourself so hard into the ground that you never want to make another YouTube video again!
The Content You Make is a Factor
Many new YouTubers make the mistake of deciding what their upload schedule should be and then trying to make their content creation fit that schedule.
This is the wrong way round, folks.
You need to take a good hard look at your content before deciding on your upload schedule. How long do your videos take to make? What are the upload schedules of competing YouTubers in the same niche?
To give a couple of examples, someone like Philip DeFranco uploads daily videos because he creates news-style content that needs to be up-to-the-minute. He also has the advantage of his style of video not being too intensive to make, as it essentially just consists of recording his video vlog-style and then editing bits of it.
In contrast, someone like Colin Furze makes content around his projects, building various strange contraptions. Sometimes a project can take months to complete—even longer—so it wouldn’t be realistic to expect to put out a video every day.
As far as competition goes, you shouldn’t have to worry about being “undercut” by someone uploading more frequently. Using the Colin Furze example, other inventor YouTubers can’t really upload more frequently than Colin without taking less time to make the videos. At some point, they would cease being direct competition.
Quality Shouldn’t Suffer For Your Schedule
One thing that often happens with YouTubers who find themselves struggling to maintain their pre-decided upload schedule is a dip in quality as they cut corners to get the video out quicker. A common example of this is skimping on the editing—one of the most time-consuming parts of being a YouTubers—and leaving mistakes and awkward pauses in.
The problem is, your content doesn’t just appear and then disappear (unless you delete it). Once uploaded, your content is there for all to see, and someone might stumble across a video that you uploaded months ago as their first introduction to you.
For them, it won’t matter that you have uploaded a new video every single day for the past two year; all they will see is the video they are watching, which you cut corners making and is not your best as a result.
With almost no exceptions, you will find more success uploaded better videos than you will by uploading more videos. If you have to take an extra week to make the video you’re making, do it. It will pay off in the long run.
YouTube Prefers Consistency Over Frequency
And here we come to the most important point; YouTube isn’t all that bothered about how quickly you get your videos uploaded, but they are bothered that you do it consistently.
Being able to count on regular and reliable uploads is something YouTube likes, because they know if they promote a reliable channel, the viewers of that channel will always have a reason to come back. On the other hand, a channel that uploads once a day for two months and then doesn’t upload for an entire year can leave a sour taste in subscriber’s mouths, and YouTube doesn’t want that.
Of course, we’re not saying that you should settle for just getting a new video out every year and leave it at that—there are limits to the “consistency over frequency” theory—but if you have a choice between putting out weekly videos but not always hitting your target, or putting videos out every two weeks and never missing an upload, you should probably go for the latter.
Final Thoughts
YouTube’s algorithm factors a lot of things in when it decides whether to promote a video or channel or not, and, in all honesty, it would appear that watch time and click-through rates are more important to YouTube than any of the aspects related to the upload schedule.
As ever, this should not be taken as an excuse to abandon any notion of a proper upload schedule, but it’s worth noting that it is far from the end of the world if you can’t seem to nail that schedule.
And if we can leave you with one piece of advice; some videos are better than none. Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from making YouTube content, even if it means not uploading as often as you’d have liked.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.
4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube
I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.
I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.
That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.
5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
For a question like “how often should I upload to YouTube?”, there are two answers. There is the idealistic, best-case-scenario answer, and there is the practical, real-world answer that applies to you specifically.
For maximum growth potential, uploading to YouTube daily is the best option. However, there is more to success than merely putting videos online. If, for you, getting videos up on a daily basis means a severe compromise in the quality of those videos, or it is not feasible to make the kind of content you make that regularly, then of course, daily is not the right answer.
If there are no obstacles to getting your content up on a daily basis and that content is not rushed or subpar because of that schedule, then you will give yourself the best chance of succeeding by uploading more often and regularly.
But, as always, there is nuance to this topic so let’s get our hands a little dirtier.
Quality is Key
The closest thing you can get to a guarantee of success on YouTube comes with making quality content.
It is not a guarantee, of course, but if you could only nail one aspect of YouTubing, having quality content would be your best bet. Similarly, if you nailed every other aspect of YouTube except for producing quality content, your channel could—and probably would—still fail.
What this means in practical terms is that if your videos are poor quality, lack focus, or do not provide anything useful to the viewer—be it information or entertainment—it won’t matter that you are consistently managing to get a new video up every day because people won’t be interested in watching it. Furthermore, some types of content cannot realistically fit into a daily schedule, especially for individuals running a YouTube channel. DIY project channels are a great example of this.
The projects depicted on these channels can sometimes take days or weeks to complete themselves, so how, then, can you put daily videos out when each video represents multiple days of work?
So, while daily uploads would give you the best chance of success, you should adjust the “ideal” upload amount to suit your personal circumstances and your channel type. If you can’t realistically make videos more regularly than once a week without compromising the quality, don’t even consider anything more frequent than that.
This is not to say that the ideal upload schedule for you should be as often as you can possibly manage.
The fact that you can make quality videos daily, or weekly, or whatever interval you choose, does not mean that you should. Many YouTube channels fade out—or never get going in the first place—because the effort of running the channel becomes too much for the YouTuber.
Couple this with the fact that the vast majority of YouTubers never reach a level of success where they can earn enough money from their channel to pay the bills, and you have a recipe for disillusioned content creators wondering if it’s really worth the effort.
Of course, we would always recommend going into a YouTube channel with the mindset of it being a labour of love, rather than a money-making venture. That way, you are not only more likely to succeed because you enjoy it, but it will also be a nice bonus if the money does start rolling in.
But if you are running yourself into the ground trying to get content out on a gruelling schedule, and you are one of the overwhelming majority of YouTubers who don’t make enough money from their channel to quit the day job, you will almost certainly reach a point where it doesn’t feel worth it anymore.
Exceeding Demand has no Benefit
Another aspect to consider here is the viewer’s desire to watch that much of your content.
Something like a current events channel with regular short videos suits a daily upload schedule, but if you are making hour-long in-depth analysis videos, even if you could get one out a day, would your viewers have that kind of appetite for what is essentially a lot of intensive content?
People lead increasingly busy lives, and there are far more options competing for their downtime than at any point in human history. Forget the Netflixes, Amazon Primes, Xboxes, and any number of other sources of entertainment. On YouTube alone, there is more competition for your viewer’s attention than you can fathom, no matter how small your niche is.
If you are putting out videos that are over an hour-long daily, you will almost certainly dilute your viewer’s attention. You may find they only come for one or two videos a week, for example, when you are uploading six or seven.
Will this hurt your channel?
Not in any significant direct way, but it would mean you are putting a lot of extra effort in for very little return. It would be a far more efficient use of your time to put that effort into fewer videos, hopefully improving your content and giving your viewers more breathing room between each video.
There are also arguments to be made on the optics of having highly viewed videos. While it is generally a good idea not to obsess over viewing figures, it is an unavoidable reality that highly viewed videos tend to get a prestige boost in the minds of new viewers.
That is; they see a lot of people have watched a video and they are more likely to deem it worth watching. If you spread your views across multiple videos, rather than focussing your energies on a smaller number, you risk your content coming across as less-viewed, which will have an indirect impact on your growth.
Consistency Trumps Frequency
Now, we’re going to level with you, regardless of what we say the best plan for success is regarding upload schedules, there will always be exceptions. The truth is you can succeed on any schedule if the content is good.
For example, YouTuber, Code Bullet, has a very popular coding channel.
His upload schedule is hilariously inconsistent, often stretching to months between videos. This state of affairs has become a running joke in both the comments section and the videos themselves, and yet his channel has over two million subscribers, and his videos (when they eventually come) consistently pass two million views.
It can certainly be done, but if you’re going to go off-book, posts like this won’t be a great deal of help to you.
If you want to play it a little more conventional, having a consistent upload schedule is often more effective than having a frequent schedule.
Consistency works for you both with the viewers and with YouTube itself. For YouTube’s part, they want people to stick around, and a big chunk of that is finding YouTubers that are going to draw viewers back on a regular basis.
Having a consistent upload schedule tells YouTube that you are reliable and that any subscribers you gain have a reason to keep coming back because you will always put out new content.
And, for the viewers, a consistent upload schedule tells them they’re not investing time in something that might just disappear one day without warning.
In much the same way people are more reluctant to watch a TV show that they know was eventually cancelled abruptly without the opportunity to tie up any loose ends in the plot, viewers will be less likely to subscribe to your channel if it looks like you might have stopped uploading because your last video was four months ago.
Evergreen Content
You should always try to make content based around what you are interested in because that gives you the best chance of being able to stick with it in the long term. It also makes the process easier because it’s much easier to work on something you enjoy.
So, when we talk about evergreen content, it may be useless information to you if your interests don’t mesh with this kind of content, but if you can make evergreen content, you will be in a much better position to succeed in the long term.
But what is evergreen content?
Evergreen content is content that has a long shelf-life. Content that will still be relevant and useful to viewers many months—or even years—down the line.
To give a couple of examples that illustrate what we mean, a video on celebrity gossip will only be relevant for a news cycle—something that is getting increasingly short in recent years. A tutorial on how to perform some clever trick in a popular piece of software, on the other hand, will be relevant for as long as that software is in use and the trick works.
It is not uncommon for YouTubers making evergreen content to give up on their channel, feeling that they are not getting anywhere, only to come back to it years later and find that their subscribers have continued to grow in their absence. This doesn’t happen for channels like the celebrity gossip channel we mentioned above.
Again, your content should largely be determined by what you enjoy making, but if you can make evergreen content, the success of your channel will be somewhat insulated against the possibility of failure due to inconsistencies in your upload schedule.
It also makes it easier to take a break from your channel—as you may sometimes feel the need to do—without it damaging your growth.
Make Sure Your Viewers Know What’s Coming
If you have a regular upload schedule, you wouldn’t have to do much more than making sure people know what that schedule is. But a lot of videos—especially videos that are not evergreen—tend to get the bulk of their views in the first few days after upload. The more views your video is getting in a short space of time; the more YouTube is likely to recommend it during that time because it will see it as something that is trending.
What this means in practical terms is that you should do everything in your power—without being obnoxious or spamming people—to make everyone aware that you have new content coming out, and what your upload schedule is.
Take to social media, update any mailing lists or Discord servers you run, etc. Treat it like a campaign, rather than a single blast of updates, such as waiting for a day after uploading and then posting about it in your community tab.
Spend at least twenty-four hours letting people know, so you have the best chance of catching the most viewers in the shortest amount of time.
It may be less important for evergreen videos, which will often get far more views over its lifetime than it does in the first few days, but it still helps to get that initial boost which could lead to YouTube promoting the video more.
As we mentioned above, there is a psychological component to seeing that a video has lots of views, and may increase the likelihood that someone clicks on your content.
Summing Up: How Often Should I Upload to YouTube?
So what have we learned? The more frequently you can upload videos to YouTube, the better the chance of success you have. But this only applies if you can get videos out at that rate without compromising on quality.
The minimum interval you should have between videos is however long it takes you to make the best content you can make because, ultimately, the quality of the content is more important than the frequency with which you upload it.
Evergreen content, if it fits your channel, can act as a kind of buffer against infrequent upload schedules, attracting viewers to your channel long after they were uploaded.
And, finally, promote your content. You don’t want to be in a situation where people who want to watch your content don’t because they didn’t realise there was a video out. Tweet, post on Facebook, Instagram, and wherever else, you have social media accounts.
Encourage viewers to click the notification icon on your video, whatever it takes. But don’t spam or act in other annoying ways because that will just put people off.
And, just to reiterate; the quality of the video should always come first.
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!
2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos
I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
5. Shutterstock helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the Shutterstock website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
