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Comment by swighton | Hacker News Reader

I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency. This is because there’s a nonlinear relationship between views & quality. For example a video that is twice as good might be capable of getting 10 times as many views. If that’s true it implies that (within reason) spending more time to make a better video is the best strategy. Intuitively this makes sense: would it be better to make 1 mediocre video every day consistently OR 1 really good video every 1-3 weeks that gets 100x the views.

I’ve heard the argument that YouTube rewards consistency, but I am anything but consistent with my videos [1](every 1-3 months) and I haven’t noticed any negative consequences.

[1] YouTube.com/stuffmadehere

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This is absolutely crazy. OP is like asking for acting advice from internet randos. Suddenly, Al Pacino drops in!

stuffmadehere is famous shit. Middle schoolers watch it in the classroom because the science teacher plays this. He has millions of subscribers & each show ( I refuse to call it video. Its a proper show. ) is very professionally done. It's so popular, if you were in India & you were speaking in Hindi, you would legit be on TV. Over there people are glued to content because some guy is explaining centrifugal force in hindi with some string & tincan. Meanwhile, look at your production values! Huge respect. Thanks for everything you do.

As someone who spends a bunch of time paying attention to the YouTube meta, "consistency" is a virtue that's been professed for a long time, but YouTube has been pretty clear that it's not a factor in how recommendations work.

I still think it's decent advice for new YouTubers, because you only get better at a thing by doing it a lot, and over time. The value of consistency isn't in the algorithmic properties, but instead in developing the skills that lead to quality.

It’s also worth noting that the algorithm is not the only meta and posting consistently might be more or less expected depending on your audience, topic and so on.

Absolutely, each audience has different expectations for what "quality" even means. Though I'm not really sure where "the algorithm" (I kinda hate how anthropomorphized it is) doesn't play into even in your scenario. Browse and Search are the two largest ways to grow traffic, and both are algorithmic to different degrees... unless you just mean like, growth is not a goal on YouTube for you, in which case, yeah you can just ignore all of this for sure.

But the language used around this topic is often implying that "the algorithm" will "punish you" if you like, post too often, post too little, post at different times... and I personally believe that that is empirically demonstrated to be not the case, and is also something YouTube (at least lately, I've only been paying close attention for a year or two) has never implied is important. And they've said things that imply that it's totally irrelevant, recommendation wise.

> But the language used around this topic is often implying that "the algorithm" will "punish you" if you like, post too often, post too little, post at different times...

These are all kinda true though?

- If you post too often your notifications get bundled, so now it's "x published two videos" instead of "x published that amazing video",

- if you post too little then people are less likely to recognize your username and thus just not click on it unless the creator really left an impression (this is probably the most dependent on the audience however).

- if you post at differing times you suddenly have to increase your audience significantly as your usual watchers won't be on YouTube at that moment, so you're effectively missing out on the initial upvotes by your fanbase until much later, reducing the chance of the video going into trending.

I mean they're not the only variables and they become pretty much non-issues as the channel grows, but all of these effects can be directly measured in clicks when the audience is still pretty small

Another value in consistency is that when people are browsing aimlessly, they know when they can check your channel for new content. If I check some channel for new content a few times and there is none (and no indication of any coming), I will simply forget about it. Not intentionally. Someone else who posts predictably will have captured my idle time.

This is not how most views occur, please don't hurt yourself to produce content regularly just to satisfy this edge case.

As my sibling says, this may be how some users use youtube, generally these views ("channel page views" is the term used in the analytics) are a small minority of overall views.

In fact, this sort of behavior you're talking about is one of the reasons why "the algorithm" is a thing. If there's something you'd like to watch, but you've forgotten about it, it's YouTube's job to surface it to you, even if you've forgotten. This is one of the reasons why browse is the default view and not your subscribers feed, for example.

I would agree with that. I've been posting consistently every day, at the same time for 8 months and hasn't seen much return. But my vids are highly automated and pretty niche weather content, so wouldn't expect it to go crazy either. https://www.youtube.com/@aussiefromspace

I'm pretty happy, as a user that YouTube no longer pushes constancy over quality.

> I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency.

I know "The Algorithm" gets a lot of hate, but surfacing quality-over-quantity content is one place where recommendation algorithms excel over pure chronological feeds.

When I switched Twitter to chronological mode, I had to unfollow several people because they posted all day long. The most valuable Tweets I wanted to see were buried in the noise. The algorithmic feed is far from perfect, but it does a good job of highlighting posts I've missed from people I've interacted with previously. It takes some time to see the algorithm with enough likes and interactions, and it won't work if you never click the like button, but it's actually not half bad once it's up and running.

Reddit is another platform where quantity over quality prevails. If you click through to the post history of people who get content to the front page, it's basically a firehose of posts using recycled content and slightly altered headlines to as many subreddits as they can get away with. Eventually one of them clicks and rises to the top, but by that point the headline is often so mangled into clickbait that it doesn't accurately reflect the content of the article. Redditors don't really read articles, though, so it doesn't matter. Spam away.

> If you click through to the post history of people who get content to the front page, it's basically a firehose of posts using recycled content and slightly altered headlines to as many subreddits as they can get away with.

I’ve seen this too. It seems like a lot of work and I’m unclear what the reward is. It isn’t like most of that content is pimping some brand of burger or something…

It makes your karma go up which is appealing, probably half the reason I keep coming here tbh.

> I know "The Algorithm" gets a lot of hate, but surfacing quality-over-quantity content is one place where recommendation algorithms excel over pure chronological feeds.

Do you find great content on youtube via YT's recommendations? I practically never have, everything I like I've stumbled upon on other sites where something is discussed and a channel is mentioned, or from someone who's work I like mention someone else. YT's recommendations have always been garbage for me, so I eventually just hid them completely because it's mostly noise.

I personally have found some excellent content through YT's recommendations. For example, the algorithm introduced me to LockPickingLawyer, Taskmaster, and Jet Lag: The Game.

It's nice that Twitter allows you to switch modes. Normally I'm in chronological mode, but I can go to the mobile.twitter.com site on desktop too, and that is in the "Algorithm" mode. So it's pretty easy to just swap and see if I'm feeling in the mood to let the algorithm discover new things for me / catch some interesting replies or likes of people I follow / etc. It'd be interesting to go full power user with more customization and easy swapping, but such features don't tend to last if they ever get implemented in the first place...

Your videos are awesome. I've watched every one of them multiple times. I love when you go deep into the technical details of the problems / solutions you run into (especially with your code) -- especially in _integration hell_.

I'm sure not-your-entire audience is interested in these things. Have you ever considered making a second channel where you go into more detail about the details of the technical problems / solutions you run into? The videos could be a lot less well produced, I'm just desperate for the info.

Thanks for all you do!

https://youtube.com/c/StuffMadeHere2

Perhaps it varies by category. I think your "mad-science" niche disproportionally rewards quality because (1) there's a high barrier to entry, (2) each project stands up on its own, and (3) your channel already has a positive loop of subscribers.

You have infinitely more Youtube experience than I do (love your videos, by the way!), but maybe those other categories are in your blindspot, just like they are not in my Youtube suggestions.

I'd expect vloggers, celebrities, podcasters, game streamers, political pundits, etc to benefit more from consistent uploads. More videos = more rolls of the viral dice, and furthermore frequency is required for building up fame, parasocial relationships, or just reliably filling the silence during commute.

"reliably filling the silence during commute" - this has never made sense to me. There are an infinite number of creators I can subscribe to. So I can always have unwatched content available just by subscribing to creators with high signal-to-noise ratio.

Do normal users tend to just subscribe to a smaller number of channels, so they want channels that publish a lot?

Your new videos are a family night event at my house, complete with popcorn. There are so many great ones, but the chainsaw robot is our favorite - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix68oRfI5Gw. That and the "robotically perfect mullet." And we all say "Oh wa cool."

In short, thank you for your awesome videos and take your time to keep the quality so high!

It’s good to see you here! I totally agree with quality there (although not from personal experience) but taking as an example your videos, Idk how you first came up with the idea of the “wife mode” but now your video have gone from something I totally nerd on to something I call my wife to watch with me, which she does with minimal eye rolls and actually enjoyment from her part! Haven’t found that many other maker channels that I share with her (with the obvious exception of Simone Giertz!)

Keep up the good work!!

Not a maker channel, but Technology Connections fills a similar niche in our household. Simultaneously in-depth enough for me and accessible and interesting for my wife.

Yeah! His video about dishwashers completely changed and greatly improved our dishwasher experience!

Brother you literally are the definition of quality over quantity. I've never seen anyone else rise so fast in the youtube world as yourself, especially on the back of only a handful of videos. Really incredible work from a truly inspiring engineer. Keep it up.

You post extremely good quality videos. I agree with your arguments. Every time you drop a video, I make sure to watch it. It would not be the case if you posted everyday.

Yeah, and I believe the reason for this behavior is the fact people subscribe if they found a video worthwhile. Then, once they're subscribed, they'll check their feed every once in a while and it will contain recommendations based on which channels they're subscribed to. It then doesn't matter how often you post or when (quantity), it is all about whether the video interests them (quality).

The mistake here is thinking that high quantity / low quality would lead to satisfied customers; not in the long term. When the quality is too low they'll unsub, simple as that.

My problem with YouTube videos in general is they don't cut to the point. They have too much fanfare around the point, stuff which does not interest me. I expect such behavior in advertising, not in content. To me, it lowers the quality of the content because it lowers the signal-to-noise ratio.

This was my first thought as well. However, it’s worth noting that your videos are _exceptionally_ good. I drop everything to watch one when it comes out.

Your videos are on the extreme end of the quality distribution. I wonder if your observation applies as much to the middle part of the bell curve.

For most of us, making content consistently leads to making more top quality content over time, through helping us increase our skills: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Atomic_Habits/XfFvDwAAQ...

There's also a confounding factor in pushing yourself to do a lot of videos all at once: you may get some good practice in. Are you getting more views after a few months of consistently publishing videos because you are consistently publishing videos, or because you are getting better at making interesting videos?

I don't know if this is true, but I've heard the algorithm has changed over the years - in 2015 during peak Vlog, there wasn't much content on Youtube made by creators targeting (and putting professional-level effort into) the platform, so the algorithm rewarded creators that were creating enough content to really hold a user on Youtube.

Now, there's enough content that the algorithm favors quality more, because YT can more easily keep a user by recommending similar content from a different creator of a higher quality.

.. again, no idea if that's true, but it does feel like it makes sense.

As a consumer of YouTube videos, I couldn't agree with you more.

I think the consistency of popping out videos on the regular is about working the algorithm and grinding out content for views, and with those views: ad dollars. I've seen too many channels just turn into churning really awful, boring, long videos with little in the way of direction in the hopes you'll just mindlessly watch it. But I think the math just works out better (marginally) to pump out low-effort, low-value content more often than for example, what you are creating. And like I said: blame the algorithm.

Wow I see what you mean. I was planning on cutting down to 1 video a week once my channel had grown a bit but I can see from your channel that quality > quantity so I might do that sooner! Thank you.

I wonder if Youtubers are mistaking consistency with quality? They don't realize that their consistent production is causing an increase in their quality (via practice/learning)

Hey there, would you be open to discussing how you became such an amazing maker?

I work with an org that funds and supports a really large community of young makers (mostly young people in their teens, but we also have folks in their mid-twenties and beyond). I'd love to talk to you about how you honed your skills. A lot of them watch your videos and I suspect they would be really interested in reading about how you honed your skills and achieved your currently glorious skillset. (I would be too!)

More and more, Youtube's algorithm seems to surface a mix of newer and older stuff. The "Caipirinha" and "Caramelldansen" meme videos from the late 2000's have reappeared on my recommended's, and Gen Z accounts are commenting on them too.

So I agree that quality is an important factor. While there has to be some weighting to favor the needs of advertisers in play, it's not as strong lately as it has been.

> I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency

If anyone is giving you any kind of marketing or content distribution advice, and at no point do they mention product-market fit, or content quality, then they are selling you a dream.

This is solid gold coming from a YouTube Legend. Thanks for the comment, love your content.

Maybe if you are starting is good strategy to have consistency with weekly uploads? And later when you build a small audience, yes, you can apply your strategy of quality over quantity.

Some popular videos are just random off the cuff talking with no effects or editing. It’s not so simple…

Then there's channels like stuffmadehere that consistently produce hit videos, due to their superb quality. It's not luck if you can do it many times over.

yes, agreed the "consistency" thought leadership is mostly published by Mids who have never done any real work themselves

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