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If you’re an aspiring YouTuber, then you’ve most likely asked yourself this question: “How often should I post on YouTube? Should I post once a week? Twice a week? Every day!?”

I did a little test last month hoping to answer this very question and I think I may have the answer you’ve been looking for.

In November of 2020, I did a test on my YouTube channel. At that time, I used to post one video every week, but I decided for the month of November, I would post twice a week to see how it would affect my overall channel analytics.

I wanted to know if I should be posting once or twice a week. The only way to find out was by trying.

First, we are going to dive into the backend of my channel and check out my analytics. After that, I’ll tell you guys everything I learned, because while the analytics tell one story… I have another.

How Often to Post on YouTube: The Analytics

Below, there’s an image with both my October and November channel analytics.

Without having to dive too much deeper into the stats, it’s easy to see there’s quite a big difference. When comparing November to October, you can see my analytics doubled in every area: views, watch time, subscribers and revenue.

By just uploading two videos a week instead of one, my monthly views increased by 49.7%, my watch time (in hours) increased by 51.3%, and my subscriber count increased by 49%.

Most impressively, my revenue increased by 53.4%! When was the last time you got a 50% raise at work for doing twice as much work for only one month?

Immediately, it’s rational to assume posting twice a week is way better than once a week. But I’m looking for a definitive solution; not assumptions.

Let’s dive deeper and take a look at when my views and other analytics started increasing.

Total Analytics From September to November

Even though my channel analytics show an increase in all areas for November, my views actually began ramping up around mid-October.

As you can see in the screenshot above (my total stats for all of September – November), my views were pretty consistent through all of September. I only got around 3,000 views a day.

Around mid-October, I started slowly increasing to about 5,000-6,000 daily views. While my daily views were much higher in November (around 11,000 views a day), there weren’t any noticeable increases. November was a steady, consistent month in terms of views.

Why was there an increase in October?

On October 16, 2020, I uploaded a video that, even to this day, drives most of the traffic to my channel and gets thousands of views. That video is “10 INSTAGRAM HACKS YOU DIDN’T KNOW EXISTED”

Analytics of My Top Videos

*Note that the green line is the video I uploaded on October 16. For the other videos in this graph, refer to the legend on the left.

When looking at this graph showing my views per video, it starts to make more sense where this increase in views came from.

You can also see how the views of that one particular video increased substantially all the way through mid-November when it started to even out a little.

Why is it worth mentioning the stats of just one video when we’re discussing how often you should be posting on YouTube?

I’m glad you asked. Here’s my take from my testing posting once vs. twice a week.

How Often to Post on YouTube: My Interpretation

While the analytics tell one story, my interpretation of how often you should be posting on YouTube is different. Sure, it appears that posting twice a week is the better solution by just looking at those numbers, I actually came to a different conclusion.

Since I was posting twice a week, I noticed the quality of my videos dropped. I’m not talking about the physical quality. I used the same camera gear for all of my videos.

I’m talking about the content and information within my videos!

My goal is to provide you with the BEST information I can when it comes to social media tips, tricks and hacks. I thrive off of giving you content that no one else is putting out there.

I noticed that for the month of November, my content ideas were almost lazy. Posting twice a week meant I had half the time I normally would to research and script my videos.

More Videos = Less Quality

Because of that, I found myself writing scripts for videos that I knew wouldn’t perform well, but they were just “easier to write” because they involved less research. Thus, the views of the November videos individually actually didn’t perform well compared to the views from my other videos!

The surprising thing is, this is what I do full time! I work for myself and make my own schedule, yet I still felt I didn’t have the proper time to make two videos every week with the quality information that I would’ve liked.

Since the quality of the videos dropped, these videos also had a lower subscriber conversion. That’s hard to see at first glance because my subscriber growth doubled from the previous month. But those subscribers were NOT coming from November’s videos.

My increase in views and subscribers actually came from videos I posted in October and months prior. Most notably, my Instagram Hacks video we discussed in depth.

Only one video gained a significant amount of views in November compared to the rest, but that’s because I began scripting that video before I started my test to see how often I should post. My other videos only got anywhere from 500 to 2,000 views total for the whole month.

(Also, I know I’ve been talking about analytics a lot in this post. I mainly referred to YouTube’s analytics, but TubeBuddy is also an amazing tool for both analytics and growth strategy. I highly recommend it.)

The Official Answer to How Often to Post on YouTube

How often should you post on YouTube?

For me, posting ONCE a week is best!

I say “for me” because the answer is different for everyone. For my niche of educational, informational content, my job is to make sure the education you get from my channel is the best you will ever come across. So, it takes a lot more time to carefully craft each video.

The data shows that when posting twice a week, I just don’t have the time to create the quality content you deserve.

But the question is, what’s your niche? If you’re creating educational-type videos, then once a week is going to be more realistic if you want to pump out quality.

If you’re doing vlogs or candle hauls (or any haul for that matter), then making two videos a week or more might be something you can try!

I would suggest figuring out what your niche is, looking at channels that are a little bit bigger than yours and finding out how often they’re posting. Are they posting more often than you? Just as often?

If it’s more often, try posting more videos per week (with the same quality!) and see what happens to your channel!

Quality > Quantity

No matter what you try for your channel, remember that quality always beats quantity. There is an unfathomable quantity of videos uploaded to YouTube every day. The quality you put into each and every video is what will help you stand out from the millions of other videos and creators out there.

If you’re able to pump out high-quality content twice a week or more, do it. If you can pump out high-quality videos once a week, do that.

It’s the quality of your content that will get you the most success on YouTube.

Now, I want to hear from you! How often do you post on YouTube? What have you seen to work best for your channel and niche?

Comment below any additional tips you have that I didn’t cover.

And, as always, follow your joy!