In this tutorial, m par outlines a step‑by‑step checklist of actions that smart YouTubers should take in the first hours after a video is uploaded. He begins by recommending that creators upload the video as unlisted (or private) so YouTube’s AI can fully process the content—transcribing speech, analyzing visuals, and checking policies—to earn “trust points” that boost early recommendation. He then shows how to use his TubeMagic “Warp Upload” tool to generate optimized titles, descriptions, and tags while the video is still unlisted. Next, he advises enabling all ad types and manually placing mid‑roll ads at natural breaks (about every 3 minutes) to maximize revenue without hurting retention, noting that YouTube actually rewards videos with higher ad revenue. For channels not yet in the YouTube Partner Program, he introduces the “money video” concept: a long, evergreen video that promotes a paid product or affiliate offer, with every new upload funneling viewers to it via description links and end screens. He explains how to set up end screens—preferably linking to a relevant playlist rather than a single video—to keep viewers on the channel and increase session time. The fourth and fifth actions focus on community interaction: replying to early comments with probing questions to spark deeper discussion, and pinning a strategic comment (often a link to the money video) to increase click‑through. The sixth recommendation warns against sharing a new video with a broad, unrelated audience (friends, family, sub‑for‑sub) because low‑engagement views can signal poor relevance to the algorithm; instead, share only with niche‑relevant audiences. Finally, he counsels creators to avoid obsessively checking analytics immediately after upload, suggesting a weekly or monthly deep‑dive instead, so they can focus on producing better content and protect their mental health. Throughout, he intersperses a brief AI avatar segment (“AI Matt”) to illustrate YouTube’s processing steps and promotes his Tube Accelerator program for further training.
Chapters
Congratulations on uploading a YouTube video, or if you're about to upload a YouTube video and now you're here because you want to know what every smart YouTuber does after uploading a video. Because the thing is, the success of your video is not just determined by what you do before it's uploaded, including your thumbnails, packaging, titles, and content. All of that stuff definitely matters, and I've talked about it a lot here on the channel, but what you do in the first hour after uploading your video can be the difference between getting a few hundred views and getting hundreds of thousands of views. And I know this because I personally run tons of different YouTube channels. I've gotten millions of subscribers across my channels. And so I've put together a checklist of a few different things that you need to be doing after you upload every single video on your channel. And thing number one is to initially upload your video as unlisted. This does several things. Number one, it allows YouTube to fully process the content to see if there's any potential monetization issues. And so I'll upload a bunch of different videos, take some time, let them process, go through them all, adding titles and descriptions and tags. And by the way, another added benefit of uploading as unlisted is you can then take that unlisted video link, go to my tool TubeMagic, and then go to the Warp Upload feature, and then upload that unlisted link there. And then it'll generate you 3 titles, a description, and a great set of optimized tags that you can then go ahead and just easily copy paste onto your video. That'll save you a ton of time, and it's what I personally like to do. And then after everything's finished processing, then you can go ahead and schedule those videos to be released at a regular interval. For the majority of my channels, that's like 3 videos a week. I have a few that upload daily as well, and it takes a a little bit of time as well for YouTube to fully transcribe your video, to index all of the words that are said within it and everything else. So I think it makes a lot of sense to upload as unlisted at first and let it process fully, so you're not just publishing the second it finishes uploading. Because I just want to do every single little thing I can that might give me any sort of advantage when I'm uploading videos, and I'm sure you want to do the same if you're here watching this video. Now you might be saying, "Matt, that sounds great in theory, but how does YouTube's system actually work? What's going on in those first few hours after you upload a video that YouTube is actually all processing?" And that's a great So YouTube's AI is doing a few specific things. And since we're talking about AI, why don't we call AI Matt to explain exactly what YouTube is doing in the background? Hey guys, I'm AI Matt, and I'm going to tell you how YouTube's AI system analyzes your video. First, it transcribes every single word you say in the video and matches that against search queries and trending topics. Second, it analyzes the visual content frame by frame to understand the context. And third, it checks your video against community guidelines and advertiser-friendly content policies. And here's the important part: if your video passes all these checks and YouTube fully understands the content, your video gets what I call trust points in the algorithm. It's basically YouTube saying, okay, we've analyzed this thoroughly, it's good content, we can safely promote this. And that trust is what helps your video get recommended to more people when you finally make it public. So what you wanna do is upload your video, set it to private or unlisted, fill out all your metadata, which we'll talk about in a second, and then just let it sit there for a full day or two. Then when you flip it to public, YouTube is ready to promote it to the right audience immediately. All right, back to the real me. I hope you thought that AI avatar was cool, by the way. I'm gonna have a tutorial on how I make those AI avatars, and he's got his own YouTube channel now and everything as well. But now it's time for the second thing you should do if you're smart after uploading your videos, and that's setting up your monetization settings correctly. What you wanna do if you're monetized is go to your monetization settings and make sure that all monetization types are enabled. Display ads, overlay ads, unskippable ads, and all of it. Enable everything unless you have a specific reason not to. And now YouTube, if your videos are longer than 8 minutes, will automatically put mid-roll ads throughout your video. But I found that the automatic ad placements aren't always the best, and personally I think I can place the ads better than YouTube's system can. So I like to add manual ad placements throughout the video after I upload it, but before I hit publish still. And I usually place mid-roll ads every 3 minutes or so throughout the video, and you can feel free to taper off towards the end of the video as well. And now I know what you're thinking, Matt, won't that hurt my audience retention and annoy my viewers having ads popping up throughout the video? And the answer is that if you place ads at strategic points, it won't hurt your audience retention at all because people are left on a cliffhanger and they want to get the answer to whatever question they had. And they have to keep watching to get that. And then it benefits you because you make significantly more money per 1,000 views. And oh, here comes AI Matt again. Now you might be thinking, Matt, I wanna make money, but I also don't wanna ruin the viewing experience. How do I find that balance? But that's actually easier than you think. The key is to place your mid-roll ads at natural breaks in your content. So if you're transitioning from one point to another, that's a perfect spot for a mid-roll ad. If you're finishing one section and starting a new one, put the ad there. Never place an ad right in the middle of an important point you're making. And here's something interesting: YouTube actually rewards videos that have more ads because it means YouTube makes more money. So if your video is making YouTube more revenue, they're naturally going to promote it more. I've personally tested this across multiple channels, and videos with properly placed mid-roll ads consistently get more views than videos without them, even when the content quality is identical. So don't be afraid of monetization. Just be strategic about ad placement and both you and your viewers will be happy. Yes, perfect AI Matt, that's 100% correct. But this strategy is for people who are in the YouTube Partner Program. What if you're not? What if you're not yet monetized on your channel? Well, if you ask me or any of my students, I always recommend getting your channel monetized from day one. And no, I don't mean YouTube's monetization, I mean your own monetization. So the first video that my students and I always make for our channels is something called a money video. And this is a super long holy grail video that you offer then a paid solution at the end of it. This can be a course, an affiliate program, an affiliate software, or a service. And just anything you think you're good at, you can offer as long as there's a market for it, of course. And then every other video you upload on your channel will all funnel people to that video via a link in the description as well as via end screens. And the best thing about it, you don't have to wait to get 1,000 subscribers or 4,000 hours of watch time just to be eligible to earn money. Plus with the money video method, you'll likely make a lot more money per 1,000 views. But let's get back to the topic at hand and talk about the third thing that you need to do immediately after uploading your first video, and that is to add an end screen. So when we're on the subject of money videos, for your end screen, you should always link back to your money video. Now you might be saying, Matt, what if I don't already have my money video uploaded? What should I put as my end screen? Well, my recommendation is not to put an individual video then, but rather to put a playlist. By putting a playlist, you get people into an environment where the next video will automatically play for them. Now you want your playlist to be about the subject of the video that you're linking from. So if you're linking from a video about bodyweight exercises, then link to a playlist about a bunch of different bodyweight exercises. And also what will really help the click-through rate to that end screen will be doing a verbal call to action in the actual video saying, "And if you got a ton of value from this, then check out this playlist right here." It's basically a free course for doing exercises, and then people will go through that and they'll get a bunch more value. Plus, you're keeping people on YouTube for an extended period of time, which increases your session time. That's how long people spend on YouTube after watching your video. And ideally, you have enough videos in that playlist to make up at least the next hour of their time. So you're giving viewers an option of how they're going to spend their next hour with you instead of just leaving it up to chance. Now the fourth thing to do immediately after uploading is to respond to a few comments in a very specific way. If somebody says, "Great video," don't just reply to them and say, "Thanks so much." That ends the conversation right there. Yes, it builds a bit of goodwill, but you're not gaining any additional feedback or additional engagement. And you can actually change that by saying something along the lines of, "Thanks so much. What did you really like about it? What was the most valuable thing about the video?" Then they'll come back to the video they might watch more of it as well to remind them about what the best thing in the video was. And then they'll leave a more in-depth comment. You can also say, thanks so much. Do you have any questions? Anything I can help you with? Then they'll leave a question and you can go ahead and answer it and you can keep that conversation open and then you can even end it with another question. And as long as you end your comments with a question, it causes people to come back to leave another comment, watch more of your videos and build more of a relationship between you and them. And this works for faceless channels or personal brand channels. And in fact, if you want to sell something from your channel specifically, and you wanna monetize outside of just ads, building a relationship with your community is incredibly important. Now I'm not saying that you have to do this for every single comment, obviously, but in the very beginning of your channel, this is especially very crucial. And even as it grows, even if you take 5 minutes to reply to a few comments in a very thoughtful way, I always try to do it even when I upload videos here on this channel. If you go to the comments section, you'll see that I always make an effort to reply to some comments.. So if you're getting a lot of value from this video so far, make sure to hit that subscribe button and comment "I subscribed" down in the comments, and I'll do my best to reply to you. Now, since we're on the subject of comments, the 5th thing that you can do would be to add a pinned comment, and you can do a few different strategies for this. Number 1 would be to pin a very thoughtful and a very supportive comment in your comment section from anybody. This definitely builds the goodwill even more, but strategically, if you just want to grow your channel as much as possible and get as many views as possible, the best strategy for a pinned comment is going to be a comment that directs people to that money video on your channel. Now, if you don't yet have that money video, then you can just pin a comment saying, hope you got a ton of value from this. Feel free to check out this video next, which goes on this subject more in depth, and then link it from that comment, pin it, like it yourself. And that's just one more place that people can see the link to that video, and it gives them one more option for going to it. Because if you think about it, your description section will not display the entire section unless someone clicks show more. So if you have links in your description that you're trying to get people to click, oftentimes they won't be able to even see them because they're hidden below the fold, so to speak, of that Show More button. Now, thing number 6 is more so something not to do. Never after uploading a video should you share it with most people that you know, due to the fact that if you share your video with friends, with family, or even with an audience you built online that isn't particularly interested in the subject of the video that you're uploading on, it's gonna actually hurt the performance of that video more than helping it. And this actually gets into kind of how paradoxical it is to do things like sub for sub, or where you like someone's video and they like yours in return. This is actually hurting your algorithm more than helping it, and it's really important that you know this because I don't want to see you make this mistake and inadvertently ruin your channel. Now, I made a video about this on my channel a few months ago where I talked about why you should never share your video after you upload it, and that's due to the fact that most of your friends, most of your family, and most of your network won't be interested in the subject and even worse, they might watch your video, but they'll only watch a few seconds of it, maybe leave a comment, and then YouTube sees this as showing that people aren't that interested if they're just watching a few seconds of the video. So they're not gonna promote it to a wider audience. Or even worse, if they do promote it to a wider audience, they're promoting it to people similar to the people that you just showed it to, who may have a completely different avatar to the people who would actually get value and actually enjoy that video. Now, the one exception to this would be if you have an audience in the specific niche of the video. You're uploading. If you have an Instagram account about basketball and your channel is about basketball, then definitely promote it on your story when you upload a video. If you have an email list about online marketing and your video is about online marketing, send an email to the list. You should promote, but only if you're promoting to the correct audience. I just don't want to see you ruin your channel. Now, this does matter less as your channel grows more and more, and once you have a really big channel and you're getting over 10,000 views a video, one person's really not going to make that big of a difference. For example, if you share it with a family member. But when your channel's small, don't take the risk. I really want to make sure that you can grow a big channel on YouTube. You don't inadvertently mess that up. Now, thing number 7 is to not check your analytics. This is the hardest thing ever. When you upload a video that maybe you put a lot of work into, that you're excited about, you just want to go check your analytics every 5 minutes. I give myself a rule when I upload new videos, I upload and I leave. I either do some other work, ideally focusing on another video, or I just leave my computer completely. And that's because because if you obsess over your analytics when you just upload a video, it's going to drive you crazy and it will not give you any useful information at all, especially when your channel is smaller. First of all, you're not getting statistically significant data. And even if you do have a big channel, I don't recommend making impulsive decisions when your click-through rate is maybe 0.1% lower than it usually is, so then you swap out the thumbnail. But if you would have left that thumbnail up for another few days, it might have actually performed better than your other videos. Your analytics can go up and down, and in my opinion, you have to give it time. Now, some people might disagree with me on this. This is just what I personally do, but I've had a lot of success with it. And more importantly than that, it's really helped my mental health as well, because you can drive yourself crazy if you're constantly going in the analytics every 5 seconds, refreshing, seeing if you got a new view. This will drive you crazy. You will get much bigger results on YouTube, at least in my personal experience, if you put that time into just making another better video and don't focus on anybody else. Just focus on yourself, trying to consistently do better than your past videos. Now, you might You might be saying, Matt, you're telling me not to look at my analytics, but how am I gonna know if I'm growing? Should I ever look at my analytics? Absolutely, make sure to look at your analytics, but do it on a weekly, monthly basis. Don't be too in the weeds like right after you upload a video. You wanna do a deep dive in your analytics every month on your channel and see the general direction and the general trend of the videos that are doing the best on your channel compared to the ones that are doing the worst. And then you can go ahead and craft your content strategy for the next month This will save you so much stress and you'll live a much better life. Plus, it'll probably actually help your channel perform better. And now you might be saying, Matt, I want to learn more about that money video that you talked about. If you do, I give you my script template and everything else within my YouTube program Tube Accelerator. I'll leave a link down below if you want to book a call and see if that program is a good fit for you. We can work together. You can potentially also even get access to my content team. Also, by the way, if you're kind of on the fence on the program, you're not exactly sure yet. Feel free to check out this video next to me right here, which is basically a free course that goes over my method very in-depth. This course right here is going to help you a ton, give you a ton of information, showing you the best niches, the best ways of doing YouTube right now, and a new way of doing faceless YouTube channels right now in this video right here. Check it out. My name is m par, and I'll see you there.
