YouTube Upload Schedule: Why I Post One Video a Day

My answer to the YouTube upload schedule question is one video a day on each channel. I have uploaded more than 10,000 videos since 2011, and I deleted all of them last year and started fresh, so I have tested most of the alternatives. The short version is that daily posting is the baseline for discovery, and the habit matters more than any trick.

Most people do not like that answer because it sounds too simple. The advice they hear is to post three times a day, to make one big video a week, or to spend days perfecting one title and thumbnail. I have tested the high-volume route, including dumping twelve or more videos a day on a single channel, and pushing past one a day burned me out and burned my audience out too. What I have landed on is a system around the upload, not a bigger number on the calendar.

My view has moved in small steps across three posts from June 2026, and read in order they show how a simple rule grew into a fuller system. The first is One Video a Day: The Simple YouTube Strategy Nobody Wants to Hear from June 13. It set the foundation: one video a day per channel, about five minutes each, published at the same time every day, with separate channels for separate topics instead of forcing one channel to be everything.

The second is Your Upload Schedule Is Not the Problem from June 14. That post says daily uploads are the baseline but are not enough on their own, because uploads do not build the relationship with the people watching. The missing piece was going live and then cutting clips from those live streams: the clips drive discovery and the live stream deepens the relationship. The same post adds three guardrails. Publish at the exact same time each day, keep notifications to about three a day, and never upload more than two videos a day, because beyond that your own videos compete with each other for the same audience.

The third is New YouTubers: Publish One Video a Day to Win Long-Term from June 17, written for people just starting out. It is the bluntest of the three. I publish six videos a day, but that is one per channel across six channels, which matches the June 14 post, so the numbers do not contradict each other. The newest post also adds two ideas I now hold firmly: do not niche, because the channel you can keep running for a decade beats the one that grows fast and then gets quit; and plan to pay the bills through coaching or one-on-one calls rather than relying on ad revenue.

Below you will find the three posts in full, followed by a contents list. If you want to go further on the business side, my notes on running several YouTube channels at once cover the multi-channel setup, and the live streaming versus uploading question lays out the trade-off between going live and posting finished videos.

If you run a channel and want a second set of eyes on your schedule and format, you can book a personal video review at https://jerrybanfield.com/review/.

New YouTubers: Publish One Video a Day to Win Long-Term

From my video published June 17, 2026.

Here's a message to new YouTubers that I think will be extremely helpful for you, based on my own experience. I've been on YouTube since 2011, and I've uploaded thousands and thousands of videos. I have a friend in real life who was just telling me about a fight he had with his girlfriend because he really wanted to do YouTube, and she said no, you should do something else. He asked me for advice, so I'm going to give you the same advice here that I gave him, and that I have for all of you who are new on YouTube.

Publish one video a day

The key thing I'd start with is this: publish one video a day. I publish six videos a day, so don't tell me you can't do one. I publish six videos a day on YouTube because what I've seen in 14 years on YouTube is that it's a grind. If you want to be a full-time YouTuber, if you want to make money and have YouTube be your main thing, then act like it.

Yes, there are channels like MrBeast that do a video a week, and there are these YouTube gurus out there who, in my opinion, generally don't have very good advice. They'll try to make the perfect title and the perfect thumbnail and spend all this time researching. That doesn't work for the masses, and it doesn't help the majority of people on YouTube. Now, that approach will get you views and sell you online courses. But I can tell you what really works on YouTube, as someone who's made a lot of money doing this for a long time. You need to make videos that really change people's lives. You need to make videos that are fun for you to make. And you do all of that on one channel, and you do something every single day.

Even MrBeast gives this advice. If you want to be a YouTuber, make a hundred videos, then we'll talk. That's how I look at it too. You want to do YouTube? Prove it. Do a video every single day. And what happens when you do a video every day is that you're going to get better and better, faster and faster. What you'll see is the necessity of making your videos quickly.

My friend sent me a video yesterday to watch. He spent all week making it and editing it. If that's your path, if you love video editing, then by all means, don't let me stop you. But if you don't love video editing, then in my experience, doing the kind of videos I'm doing right now is what's worked for me on YouTube. Just literally making a video off the top of my head and uploading it. That has worked for me.

The live stream that went viral

Doing live streams worked too. I had a live stream go viral. It got 800,000-plus views and millions and millions of impressions on YouTube. Those would have been called views on another platform like TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook. I got that off of just a quick idea. I thought, I'm going to pay this pro League of Legends coach 30 pounds or euros to coach me while I have him on a Skype call. It was literally super easy to do. I did a live stream for an hour. The first two minutes were awkward, getting to know this guy who didn't even start the game, and it went viral. YouTube just pushed it out to the whole League of Legends community.

Again, it took about an hour of real time. I live streamed it and nobody even watched while I was live. There may have been one, two, three viewers, a maximum of about five viewers while I was live. But that live stream went out there and got me hundreds of people watching my League of Legends streams after that, concurrently. Many of my other videos got hundreds of thousands of views after that, literally off of that one video. It was a simple idea that was easy to execute.

The easiest way to pay the bills

Today, I do a lot of crypto videos. And here's something you need to think about: if you want to do YouTube, you need to think about paying the bills. The easiest way to pay the bills on YouTube is not ad revenue. In my experience, the easiest way to pay the bills on YouTube is coaching, or one-on-one Zoom calls. This is super easy to set up. All you need to do is get Acuity Scheduling, A-C-U-I-T-Y, Acuity Scheduling. Get a simple Linktree-style website. You can even literally start with Linktree to begin. Or I'll have a video up soon showing how to get a website on the blockchain, which would be even better. But you can just use a Linktree, put it in your bio, or put a link directly to schedule a call with you on Acuity.

Then you charge whatever you're sure people will pay. You can start smaller, and as people start paying for calls, you can raise the price up. I charge $345 for a one-hour call with me, and people consistently pay it, especially when the crypto market hits. My calls will fill up all week. That's the main way I make money, and I can make tens of thousands of dollars a month doing one-on-one calls. Not only does it not take that much time, but it also gives me great ideas for videos. I get so many great ideas when people do paid calls with me. I think, oh, I need to talk about this in a video, I need to talk about that in a video. I get so many video ideas.

What people really need online is somebody who has experience to listen to them and then process what they've said. People don't need video courses. In my opinion, if you're selling a video course to me, you're just ripping people off, because you should put your content on YouTube, put it all out there for free, and then directly sell the coaching aspect of it. That's what I often did not do, and I regret it. The areas where I did do that, like Alcoholics Anonymous, where I went to AA 11 years ago and actually got a sponsor, were so much easier. But in my business, with YouTube, I did it the hard way. I just wouldn't ask anybody for help.

Peer coaching and accountability

Now I talk to other YouTubers and we do peer coaching. We'll both look at each other's channels and give each other feedback. We've both been on YouTube for a long time and made a ton of videos. Me and other YouTubers will meet up and have one-on-one calls and we'll coach each other. We'll say, hey, this thing you're doing on your channel is not working, why are you doing this? And the other person says, okay. Well, this thing I'm doing is working really well, take a look at it.

Then there's accountability too. I talked to my friend who has this idea in his head that he's going to be a YouTuber and make millions and millions of dollars. I told him, you'll be lucky if you can even pay your part of the bills living with your girlfriend after you've been doing videos for a year, every day, a year from now. Yes, I've made millions of dollars doing this. But at the same time, I've been doing this for over a decade, and there were years where I barely made any money and I blew whatever money I did make trying to build business ideas, like an online course platform. So I've made money most years. The only year I've actually taken a loss in the last decade is 2019.

Think long-term, and don't niche

Yes, there's great money to be made on YouTube, but what you really want to think about is long-term viability. Generally, where most people go wrong on YouTube is that they do their YouTube in a way they can't keep doing for a decade. If you can't keep doing your YouTube channel for a decade, then I don't think it's worth doing. And the way to keep doing your channel for a decade is: do not niche. Make videos about anything you feel like. You want to make a gaming video? Make it. I make crypto ICP-style hype videos. I make crypto reviews. I make inspirational in-real-life videos. I make vlogs. I make guided meditations. Whatever I feel like doing, I do it.

I've tried the other way. I've deleted more than 10 YouTube channels. I've tried all these niches. I've grown multiple monetized channels besides this one. What I can tell you is that for the long term as a creator, especially if you realize you have a little ADHD like me, you never want to niche. You don't want to lock yourself into being just one thing. Yes, in the short term that can grow a channel faster. But in the long term, you're likely to quit that channel. And the worst thing you can do on YouTube is put a whole bunch of effort into making a channel you quit, or one that, like me, you delete. I've deleted thousands of videos off this channel, and thousands more off other channels. That's because I just grinded these videos out. I was trying to get as much money and as many views as possible, and I wasn't thinking long term.

With YouTube, you really want to think long term. So if you want to go long term, you need a consistent business model like coaching, where people can sign up, and you need consistent content creation, whatever it is. It doesn't matter what it is. I watch so many people stop putting out videos, or take two or three months without making one. If you can't be consistent over time on YouTube, what happens? People stop watching you. The algorithm stops putting you out. People forget you. Then you get distracted and go do other things.

So if you really want to do YouTube, I would do a minimum of one video every day. And whatever you're most excited about, whatever you feel like you have to make a video about that day, make it. What you'll notice is that you constantly get video ideas. I just dropped the kids off at school, I'm about to do yoga, and I constantly get video ideas. I can film six videos a day and I've still only done half or less of the video ideas I've gotten that day. So if you really get into this, you will love it. If you want to go deeper on this, I share a lot more of what's worked for me in my YouTube Coaching playlist.

Your Upload Schedule Is Not the Problem

From my video published June 14, 2026.

On YouTube, your upload schedule usually isn't the problem. The real problem is that you don't have a system in place — a positive reinforcement loop that builds relationships while you create. People ask whether they should post three videos a day or one a week. After fifteen years of testing, my answer is that frequency matters far less than the system around it.

One video a day is the baseline

For discovery, you want to average at least one video a day on a channel. If you really want to grow, I'd rarely go below that — my favorite creators are the ones who put out a short five-to-ten-minute video daily so I can see what they're thinking. Across my six channels, I generally publish one video a day on each. But daily posting alone isn't enough, because uploads don't deepen your relationship with the people watching.

The magic formula: live streams plus clips

Here's the system: live stream, then cut clips from the live stream and post those separately. The clips drive discovery; the live streams deepen your relationships and can get discovered too. Most channels do only one half — they post videos but never go live to build depth, or they live stream but never surface the best moments as clips. You need both. Live streams plus clips from those live streams is the combination that actually compounds.

Don't compete with yourself

There's a ceiling worth knowing. About 24 hours is the window where YouTube pushes a video to your existing audience, with the real peak in the first 12 hours. After that, it's mostly reached the people it's going to reach. So I'd never upload more than two videos a day — beyond that, your own videos start competing with each other for the same audience, and you get diminishing returns instead of growth.

Publish at the same time every day

Consistency turns viewers into a habit. Publish at the exact same time daily so people learn when your new video drops and just tune in. My schedule runs around the clock: Money at 12am, Games at 4am, ICP Crypto at 8am, Life at noon, YouTube Coaching at 4pm, Dating at 8pm. Viewers know each channel has a fresh video at that exact time every day. The live streams, by contrast, I just do whenever I can.

Respect the notification limit

Don't give people more than about three notifications a day. Going live once plus posting a clip is already two for anyone with all notifications on. When I tried uploading three, four, five, six videos a day, it burned people out and genuinely damaged my audience. It's far better to separate topics into different channels and keep each one to roughly a video a day.

The one-channel workflow

If you have a single channel and can commit, the ideal is simple: live stream every day and post one clip a day, offset by twelve hours. If you go live at 5pm, publish the clip at 5am — that way your live stream covers one half of the day and your clip covers the other, with no overlap. I take it further by filming a whole week of content in one live stream, so the superfan who watches the entire thing gets everything at once, which lifts my watch time, while everyone else catches the individual clips.

So stop blaming the schedule and build the system instead. It's the same daily-video foundation I describe in one video a day, the simple YouTube strategy nobody wants to hear. For more, watch my YouTube coaching playlist here.