What I Learned By Posting Videos Every Other Day?

YouTube is a very lucrative platform for people who are looking for “easy fame” or want a creative outlet. Whatever kind you’re, it’s a platform that provides you equal opportunities.

I started making YouTube videos a long time back, but I am not even close to calling myself a real YouTuber. But with time, I have been focusing more on the platform, and recently, I took a New Year Resolution to post videos more regularly. To be precise, I resolved to upload a video on every odd day.

The post answers the following questions:

1. Why did I do it?
2. How did I do it?
3. What results I got and What I learned through it?

Posting Videos Regularly

1. Why Did I do It?

Consistency is the key to get successful on YouTube.

That’s not something I am saying, but that’s what all the Youtubers who make videos on how to get successful on YouTube as well as all the channels dedicated to creators say.

Pick up any channel based on the objective to help video creators, and you’ll see them talking about posting more videos. They say it’s the SECRET strategy to grow on the platform.

I was curious if it makes a difference.

What do I mean by regular videos? 

Most of the advisors who are actually YouTubers with significant subscribers base have been diplomatic till date. They talk about consistency and would go to the extent of saying that one video a month if posted regularly, will work.

But that’s not the truth at present. One video a month or even one video a week may make your subscribers appreciate your consistency but will never give you quick growth. You will most probably die waiting for millions of subscribers or quit even before that. Only one out of the millions of such channels will go ahead to become Jenna Marbles.

Rest of them need to consider posting videos regularly synonymous to posting videos every day or every alternate day. 

Some dilemmas I faced

• If I increase the upload frequency, what if my existing subscribers start getting annoyed for uploading too much?
• How would I maintain the quality of the videos?
• How will I come up with so many video ideas? I was facing going from approximately three videos a month to 16 videos a month.
• Wouldn’t the views per video decrease due to increased upload frequency?
• Would people really watch my videos?

So, the why is clear: I wanted more subscribers and more viewers. And there were too many people telling me that posting videos regularly makes a difference. I needed to try the strategy.

2. How did I do it?

Were my existing subscribers annoyed?

They loved my decision. They always wanted me to upload more videos, and that’s exactly what I gave them.

If you’re making helpful, interesting videos, they won’t be annoyed.

Maintaining quality of the videos

It was tough, and I wouldn’t say that out of all the 16 videos, all of them were high quality. Now, the quality of production when it comes to lighting, filming, and editing was on point but content? It needs some discussion here.

I did this experiment on my Booktube channel, and the kind of content I could create was reviews, to-be-read videos, wrap up videos, recommendation videos, and discussion videos.

But for most of them, I needed to have read the book. It meant increasing the numbers of books I read as well. But unfortunately, that couldn’t have happened due to my work commitments. So, I had to look for alternatives.

I grabbed some ideas for making a yearly wrap up videos and then some videos I made were list videos purely made on research.

These are the only videos which I wouldn’t have made otherwise if I hadn’t taken up this posting videos every odd day challenge.

In my case, these research-based list videos were the only concern when it was about content quality. Apart from one video, I got a great response for every video I made like that.

My learnings?

If you’re putting in enough effort, enough research about the topic and content, people are going to like it. There’s no way the quality will go down. Look at it! You’re first searching for what people are already searching for. Then you’re doing your research to have a complete answer to that topic. Then you’re making a video. It achieves the purpose.

Obviously, some people didn’t like the fact that I was making videos about products that I didn’t try/read but then I never claimed anything false. I made everything clear, and those who needed to watch the video (the ones searching for such videos) loved it. Others didn’t matter in this case.

It did do some research, and that equals time. So, some videos could be made spontaneously. All I had to do was stand in front of the camera and shoot. But some videos made me sit for hours to research. So, yes that part was tough for I needed, even more, time to make my videos. But that’s a must. And you shouldn’t avoid it.

Coming up with video ideas

It was my biggest challenge after my lack of consistency and will power. I literally had no idea what I’ll post about. You see, three videos a month is a very easy thing to do when it comes to Booktube niche, but 16 is a whole different thing.

But I used several tools to research ideas and precisely, I could compile three months worth of ideas in an hour. So, that problem was just in my head. It took just an hour to search for videos ideas.

Tools I used

• I asked directly from my subscribers about videos they want to watch
• I searched on Quora
• I searched on Facebook groups
• I made videos I wanted to make

Would the views per video will decrease by upload frequency?

That was again something in my head. I had the same number of approximate views per video by posting videos regularly as I got when I was posting three videos a month. Some videos did better than the rest, but that was because of the titles and topics I was choosing. So, upload frequency doesn’t make a difference, at least will not decrease the views.

Would people really watch them?

We need stats for this. Let’s pick the three primary attributes for that –  watch time, views, average view duration.

In December, the stats looked like this.

In January, it looked like this.

What do you see from both the screenshots? None of my stats went down. Everything is up. You may see it’s just one month and it could be by chance. I agree. I am still continuing the upload frequency to verify the results, but currently, everything seems awesome to me.

The views went up. That means by posting more videos; I made more people watch my videos. It positively affected my earnings, my subscriber growth and my overall popularity on the platform.

The watch time also went up which means even when I was posting so many videos, people were watching them.

The average view duration went up which means the quality of the videos was good enough to make people watch each video for a longer period.

Now, we have verified what I was blabbering in this post. Haven’t we?

3. What results I got and what I learned?

I got amazing results. I got 182 new subscribers in January 2017 as compared to 132 in December 2016. That’s 50 more people I could get on my channel in a month. In November 2016, I got 111 subscribers. In December, I grew by 21 subscribers whereas I doubled my growth of subscriber base in January by posting videos regularly.

What did I learn?

1. It’s tough to post a new video every other day, but it’s totally possible.
2. The more videos you post, the more subscribers you get.
3. But don’t let the quality of your videos come down.
4. Maintaining content quality while posting so many videos is tough.
5. Again, it is tough but not impossible. You can do it by being careful and taking help.
6. It gets easier if you ask for help. Have someone else edit your videos, like I did.
7. Try to save time in the production process by batch production and pre-shooting your videos on weekends or days when you don’t need to upload.
8. Work on weekends if you literally have no time because of your full-time job. I had two of them for half of January, and I could still do it.
9. Be prepared for setbacks. Your footage will get lost, the internet will stop working, and hell will break loose. However, make sure you still get the video up on time.
10. Prepare and do it.

You can do it too. Posting videos regularly is the key to growing your YouTube channel. Guess what! In February, I am continuing the same strategy and trying out a new one as well. If you want to know the results I get, make sure you subscribe to my email list or keep coming back to my blog to not miss an update.