5 Mistakes You NEED To Avoid AFTER Uploading A YouTube Video

My brother Zach did something simple after uploading his first YouTube video. Something that most creators skip and his views went up tremendously. Not because of better editing, not because of a better thumbnail, but because he understood one thing about the algorithm that most people miss. And that is mistake number five. And there are four other mistakes that are killing your videos right now. And after you upload a video, what you do next matters. These mistakes kill your growth if you keep doing them. They also waste your time and they also confuse the algorithm and your audience in many cases as well. So here are the five mistakes that you must avoid after uploading YouTube videos and what to do instead, just like my brother did, that caused his very first video to go viral and get to over 800,000 views. Now, if you appreciate me making this type of content, let me know by gently tapping that like button. And let's jump into it right now. All right, mistake number one is obsessing over one video instead of making more. You upload a video, then you just sit there. You refresh YouTube every five minutes. You're checking the views, you're checking the impressions. Maybe you're checking the click-through rate. Meanwhile, you're not making anything new. And this absolutely kills new channels because when you're starting out, your videos don't need to be great yet. And you should honestly just be spending all of your time making new videos. What you need is volume. Just as an example, a Redditor puts 100 hours into one video, four months of work. It got 117 views in 13 hours and they wanted to delete it. Don't. Just don't. And here's why. There was a famous pottery class experiment. The class was split into two groups. Group A was graded on quantity, making as many pots as possible. Group B was graded on quality, making one perfect pot. At the end, the best pots didn't come from the quality group. They came from the quantity group because repetition beats overthinking. YouTube works the same way. If you have under 30 or 50 videos, stop obsessing over analytics. The algorithm doesn't know you yet. It doesn't know your channel and your data doesn't really mean anything yet. Your only job after you upload is simple. Make the next video. And the creator who uploads 30 decent videos will always beat the creator who uploads three perfect ones every single time. And I can't tell you how many different times I've seen this and with how many different channels I've seen this with. People will put all of their effort into one video. They post it. They sit there refreshing the video for days. It barely gets any views. They get discouraged and they give up. And then maybe months later, they'll get an idea for another video. They'll spend months on it. They'll upload it again. Same thing happens. They get discouraged and they quit YouTube forever. I've seen this pattern again and again and again. What you need to do is find the right video ideas and then make a ton of videos on those ideas. And by doing that, you will end up making better videos. Just like the students in the class that made a bunch of pots ended up making better pots. It's kind of like going to the gym. Who do you think is going to have more muscle at the end of three months? The person who went once a month and worked out as hard as they possibly could or the person who went three times a week and they worked out 80% as hard as they possibly could, but they went consistently for the entire three months. Obviously, the one who consistently went to the gym and only worked out 80% as hard as they could is going to have more muscle. And it's the same with any other thing as well. Especially when you first start, you need to be consistent because putting in the reps is what's going to make you better. All right, quick break. I'm hanging out with my brother Zach right now. And I just wanted to let you know that this week, we are hosting a free live one-time workshop. So one thing that people struggle with the most is finding their niche. And that is why we actually created an AI called the Niche Validator that's going to help you find your niche or help you dial in your niche if you already have one. And we're going to be giving away this Niche Validator this week at a live workshop. And it's called How to Get Money Quickly with YouTube. If you're struggling to find your niche or you don't want to commit months or even years to a niche that ends up not being profitable, then this is for you. So click the link in the description and the pinned comment below. And once you register, hit add to calendar so it shows up on your Google, Apple, or Outlook calendar. And if for whatever reason you're watching this in the future, still check the link in the description in the pinned comment below because we may be doing another live workshop in the future and it'll tell you when. Now, you'll also be able to ask me questions live, so I look forward to meeting you. And you'll also get an update on how this guy is doing on YouTube as well. So see you this week and back to your regularly scheduled programming. Mistake number two, turning on altered content. Okay, so inside YouTube Studio, there's a setting called altered or a synthetic content. And when you're uploading a video, you're going to see this setting. And a lot of creators see it and they panic and they turn it on just to be safe because they used chat GPT to help write their scripts or they used an AI to help create their thumbnail. And that can hurt your video. When you mark your video as altered or synthetic, you're telling YouTube that this content might be misleading or artificially generated. And just because you used a little bit of AI to make some B-roll in your content or to help with the thumbnail or to help write the script does not mean that it's altered content. The only reason you would mark it as altered content is if it had a fake AI voice or a fake AI person and it was not clear that that was AI. And so it might be deceiving to people. So basically just ask yourself, is my content deceiving or could it be perceived as deceiving? And if the answer is no, then don't mark it as altered content because YouTube will likely treat your video more cautiously. So normal editing does not count. Jump cuts don't count. Even using AI tools to edit your videos doesn't count. Also B-roll doesn't count. Captions don't count. Using AI to help with the scripts of the ideas doesn't count. This setting is meant for things like deep fakes, AI generated people or voices, manipulated footage meant to mislead or not normal YouTube videos. And as an example, a Redditor got an email from a YouTube employee. The employee said that they don't have to turn it on, only if the video is meaningfully altered or synthetically generated and seems realistic. So you heard it straight from YouTube's mouth, right? Straight from their employee. It's a small toggle, but it can quietly limit how hard your video gets pushed. Mistake number three, not telling YouTube where to send viewers next. So after you upload a video, YouTube asks one simple question. What should this viewer watch next? And most creators don't answer it. They hit publish, the video ends, and the viewer just leaves. No end screen, no pin comment, no clear direction. And that hurts your video. YouTube doesn't just care about how long someone watches your video, it cares about how long they stay on the platform. So if your video doesn't extend the session, YouTube has no reason to push it harder. And this is especially bad for small channels. You don't get automatic recommendation chains yet. Every viewer matters more. And a bunch of Redditors said it made a difference to them in a good way. And you can see those comments right here. And these are beginner YouTubers. So after every upload, do this immediately. Add at least one end screen. Link to the most related video that you have and tell people what to click out loud. Even if you only have a few videos, it still matters. Because if you don't tell YouTube where to send viewers next, YouTube won't either. Now, here's the thing. Small settings like this one absolutely matter, but they're just one piece of the puzzle. And if you want to know exactly what to do after every upload to maximize your reach, I'm doing a live training this week, which you can check out by clicking the link in the description and the pinned comment below. In this training, I'll walk you through the exact post-upload checklist that I use on my channel. You can ask me any questions about it as well. Link's in the description. I'll see you there. Now let's keep going. All right, mistake number four is not pinning a comment that drives engagement. So after you upload the video, the comment section becomes the next test. Most creators completely ignore it. They upload the video, they get a few comments, and they don't pin anything, and that's a mistake. And early comments influence how people interact with your video. So when someone opens the comments, the first thing they see sets the tone. And if there's no pinned comment, people don't know what to do. Plus, they think that you're not there. The pinned comment lets them know that you are there. But if you don't do this, they're not going to comment, they're not going to engage, and they're not going to click anything. And of course, engagement drives distribution. Now, if you don't believe me, this newbie YouTuber said that a pinned comment helped them gain subscribers. So immediately after publishing a video, pin a question related to the video, or pin a link to the next most relevant video. That single pinned comment can increase comments, let people know that you're actually there, extend watch sessions, and give YouTube stronger engagement signals. And a simple rule is if you don't guide engagement, you don't get it. Mistake number five is deleting a video because it's doing bad. I see this mindset all the time. A video gets 117 views in 13 hours, so they delete it, and that's a mistake. YouTube does not decide a video's fate in the first 13 hours, or the first day, or even the first week. When you delete a video, you're not fixing it, you're erasing all future upside. And this YouTube newbies channel stopped getting views because they did this, and the average went from thousands to almost nothing. So don't do that. So YouTube constantly retests videos through search, through suggested, through new viewer pools, through changing demand over time. And a video that looks dead early can come back months later. This has happened to me so many times. I've had videos that were dead or relatively dead that blew up months later, or even more than a half a year later. But once you delete it, the watch history is gone, the data is gone, the learning is gone, everything's gone. And re-uploading doesn't reset anything, it just throws away progress. So if a video underperforms, leave it up, let it age, let the algorithm keep testing. And if you want to improve it, update the title later, update the thumbnail later, but don't delete it. A simple rule is a video that's struggling today still has a chance, and a deleted video has zero chance. You don't grow YouTube by protecting one upload, you grow it by building a library. All right, I'm gonna give you an extra mistake here, which is mistake number six, and that is trying to optimize something that isn't working yet. Now, after you upload a video and it underperforms, most creators immediately try to fix it. They tweak the editing, they adjust the pacing, they obsess over retention graphs, they AB test the thumbnails, they change fonts, music, transitions, all the little things on their next video. And that's a mistake, because optimization only works after something is already working. And on YouTube, the idea does almost all of the heavy lifting. If the idea isn't strong, both the idea of the channel as a whole, as well as the video as well, the video idea, then better editing won't save it, better lighting won't save it, better pacing won't save it. Because if you try to split test and optimize, you're going to split test yourself into poverty. Do not optimize something that isn't already working. The only time you start optimizing something is if it's already doing really well, and you wanna make it do a little bit better. This is like putting salt and pepper on a rotten egg. It doesn't matter how much salt and pepper you put on it, it's still a rotten egg, right? Don't try to put salt and pepper on something that isn't edible. But if you find something that's edible, you put a little bit of salt and pepper on it, you're gonna make it even better. But this is the mistake that I see people making all the time on YouTube, is they try to optimize something before they found something that's working. And that's a massive mistake. Your whole goal when you first start on YouTube is to find winning ideas, right? Find the winning idea for your channel as a whole, as well as the winning idea for individual videos. And by the way, that's something we're gonna help with in the live training. Click the link in the description, in the pinned comment below to attend. We're even giving away an AI that helps you select your niche and the best video ideas for your channel. So do not miss out on that. Click the link in the description, in the pinned comment below to get ahold of that. But it's only for those who show up to the live training. All right, mistake number seven is not replying to comments after you upload. Now, to be fair, this one isn't absolutely necessary. I just think it's really helpful, especially when you first start your channel. So you're gonna do your pinned comment right when the video goes live anyways. So you might as well reply to a few comments right after you upload. Now, it's not only the comments that you get on that video, but you can also reply to comments that you got on past videos. The whole point is you want to train your audience to know when your videos go live because you want them to go live at the same time. And then after your videos go live, train your audience to know that you're gonna be there commenting during that time. And this is going to be so unbelievably useful because it's basically gonna make your comment section one hour after uploading into a forum. Now, like I said, this isn't 100% necessary. I just think it's really helpful. Just as an example, my brother, Zach, replies to every single comment on his channel. And it's not gonna be overwhelming until you start to get like a lot of comments and then it starts to get overwhelming. You know, I do not reply to every comment on my channel anymore because I'd be spending all day doing it. But for a very long time, I did. Now, real talk. If you're watching this and you're serious about YouTube, not just curious, there's a link in the description to book a call with my team. Now, this isn't for everyone. It's for the 1% of people or maybe even less than 1% who watch my content and actually want to take action and treat YouTube like a professional. So we're talking about business owners who want to grow on YouTube. We're talking about YouTubers who are already crushing it and they want to crush it even more. We're talking about YouTubers that are getting views, but they're struggling to monetize. And we're talking about people who want to treat YouTube like a business. Treat it really seriously and skip the line and get to the point where you have a functioning channel that's set up for success when it comes to the niche, as well as monetization from the beginning, aka treating it like a business. If that's you, book a call by clicking the link in the description in the pinned comment below. Only do it if you're very serious about YouTube. We're very picky about who we accept into our coaching program. And also check out this video right here about someone that we recently worked with.