What is The Optimal Number of Videos to Publish Each Month? July 2025 YouTube Report
In the video above, we're exploring a way for you to figure out the ideal number of videos for you to publish each month to maximize your watch hours based on your historical performance.
To get to that clarity, we need to review the number of videos we've published each month and then compare it to the watch hours generated.
I'm seven months into taking YouTube seriously. I started with 68 subscribers, and I'm now at 331 subscribers.
In June, I pulled back on the number of videos I published, with 14, and that continued through July, slightly higher at 18.
Videos Published and Watch Hours Generated
In January and February, I published a ton of videos. 77 in January and 110 in February. I thought I could leverage mass volume to hit the monetization requirement, but that didn't work. So, I got smarter and pulled back.
But I pulled back too far.
Here's a graph with the number of videos published each month this year. You can see my mass activity in the first two months dropping dramatically in March.
Here's another graph, with my watch hours per month for the year.
You'll notice that while my number of videos dropped off dramatically, my watch hours stayed strong, until I went too far and had my worst month of the year. In January, I got a little over 60 watch hours. In July, I was not able to hit that 60 watch hour mark. But I did get close with far fewer videos, so that's progress in a way.
Part of the reason my hours were so low compared to my prior months is that none of my new videos got any meaningful traction. Usually, I've gotten a mini hit or several that increase my watch hours.
So the lesson here is that if you publish a lot fewer videos, it's going to decrease the odds of one of your videos gaining traction. Publishing fewer videos requires having a higher hit-to-dud ratio.
If we compare the two charts, we can explore the sweet spot for the number of videos published related to the watch hours generated.
March through May was the sweet spot.
Finding the Ideal Number of Videos to Publish
If we create a new chart, we can explore the optimal number of videos to create based on that period.
From left to right in this chart, we have the number of videos published, with February dominating. From bottom to top, we have the number of watch hours generated divided by the number of new videos, with May being the top performer.
To maximize my chances of doing enough videos to get traction, I need to publish between 23 and 28 videos, which is 25.5 per month. This means I need to publish 6 videos per week.
This should result in a little over 5 watch hours per new video, which should result in about 132 watch hours per month.
Hypothetically, if I got more efficient and effective, I could publish fewer videos. But right now, I'm not there, so I'm going to lean into my past level of effectiveness for the next few months.
At this optimal pace, I still won't hit monetization, so I'll still have to get more effective. But, this pace will maximize my momentum at the least amount of work required.
And since I've pivoted my strategy to earn money in other ways, this should work out perfectly for me.
Figure Out Your Sweet Spot: Number of Videos to Publish
If you want to figure out your sweet spot number of videos, walk through the data of the last 6-9 months. Divide the number of videos you published by the number of watch hours generated each month and make a list of each month's numbers.
Put that list for each month into Google Gemini or ChatGPT and ask it what the ideal number of videos you should publish to get the most watch hours per video. It'll give you the number. Set that as your goal, or if you can't, set it as close as you can to match your capacity.
Reliable Videos Won't Always Perform
My last YouTube report video for June, when I took a break, was a dud.
Sometimes these report videos don't do as well as others, but usually they have been a reliable staple video for me, so hopefully it was a one-off or I'm in a bit of trouble for reliable watch hours. Help me get this one to gain some traction by hitting the like button.
One lesson here is that I've got to do things that create worthwhile insights. Whether it's an experiment or a challenge, I need to give in these videos. Hopefully, the ideal number of videos insight will have made this video worthwhile for you. Let me know in the comments.
Making Money Another Way
After pivoting, I'm making videos in a more strategic way that have a specific goal. I want to leverage YouTube to grow my income without AdSense monetization.
Promoting my two books for small business owners and freelancers is one example.
Updating My Free Course
I've got a free course on how to flourish as a freelancer that helps promote Path of the Freelancer.
Many of the videos are old, so I've been re-recording new versions of them and switching them out. It's been motivating to go through that process of upgrading these older videos as well as revisiting my book published in 2017.
Cycles of Creation
On the video publishing side of things, it's interesting how I go through cycles of the types and formats of videos I'm creating.
This past month, I had 5 podcast episodes, and in August, I've got one recorded and no other episodes slated.
I'm doing more fireside chat videos and testing out strategic clips from podcast episodes again. Podcast episodes are not as great for having a specific strategic call to action, so I've pulled back on them for now.
Growing My Old Watch Hours
I'm finally moving up with the number of watch hours from old videos, which are videos published four months or older.
I've noticed some videos are slowly growing over time, rising in the ranks of the most-watched videos. These slow-burning videos are great because they keep clicking away over time.
Ultimately, getting monetized on YouTube is tough. I'm a third of the way there with subscribers and a little over a quarter of the way there with watch hours. It still feels out of reach.
But one of the things I discovered with my blogging is that I would publish a ton of posts, and some would get wild traction. And those big hitters would come every once in a while. Over time, I blogged so many times and had enough hits that the traffic has grown a great deal. And this extensive activity also helped grow the long tail of traffic.
I suspect the same is going to be the case for YouTube. It's going to be a time and volume game with little improvement at every step of the way. Eventually, I'll get hits and pass tipping points.
With my shift of focus on earning more income and less on getting more watch hours, I've increased income from content created, but there has been a dip in watch hours. So it's hard to balance it all, but the income will help me make this journey more sustainable.
Last week, I watched Joe Rogan's interview with Mr. Beast, and it was inspiring and informative to hear his stories, his approaches, and his advice for creators. It got me thinking about how to take bigger swings with my YouTube channel. It does not have to be gigantic swings like he does, but what's a swing I could take that would be bigger than I have taken so far? What's some type of experiment or approach I can do to try something worthwhile?
My most successful video was trying something big and hard. 77 videos in one month. Another top video was 77 shorts in 30 days. I've got an upcoming video where I talk about publishing 48 shorts in 4 days.
So, what are some other big challenges I've done and could do that I could share here? I'll be thinking about that over the next month.
- Created on .
- Last updated on .