13 Fatal Mistakes You Must Avoid After Posting on YouTube to Ensure Growth

The exhilarating feeling of finishing and publishing a video on YouTube is unparalleled. You’ve invested hours in research, recording, and editing, and now your content is live, ready for the world. However, what happens in the minutes, hours, and days following publication is just as crucial as the quality of your video. Most content creators, especially beginners, commit a series of self-sabotaging errors that, without realizing it, signal to the YouTube algorithm that their video doesn’t deserve promotion.

If you are frustrated with videos that “flop” or feel paralyzing anxiety every time you hit publish, you are about to discover the 13 commandments of post-publishing strategy. These are the mistakes even seasoned creators make that prevent growth and virality. Understanding and avoiding these pitfalls is the dividing line between a stagnant channel and one that takes off.

Let’s dive into the practices you must abandon immediately to stop fighting the algorithm and start making it work in your favor.

The Danger of Anxiety and Impatience

One of the biggest enemies of the content creator is impatience, primarily manifested as post-publication anxiety. Success on YouTube is rarely instant; it is a marathon of consistency and optimization.

1. Getting Anxious and Obsessing Over Analytics Graphs

The number one, and most common, mistake is the immediate obsession with performance graphs. Many creators post a video and, within minutes, they are in YouTube Studio refreshing the page to see if the view count has risen. This practice is purely destructive.

Expert Analysis: The YouTube algorithm does not work instantaneously. After publication, it goes through a testing phase, exposing your video to a small group of users to measure click-through rate (CTR) and retention. If you analyze performance in the first 30 minutes, you are analyzing irrelevant data. Many viral videos take days or even weeks to find their ideal audience. Remain calm. Publish and go do something distracting. Virality is a process that requires patience.

2. Deleting Videos That “Flopped” Too Soon

The frustration of seeing a video with low views is real, but prematurely deleting content is a fatal mistake. You are removing an opportunity for future growth. As mentioned, the process of finding the target audience can take days. If YouTube is testing your video with different segments, deleting the video after a few hours means interrupting the algorithm’s learning process.

Remember: every channel starts at zero. Your first videos, even if they don’t hit big numbers, are crucial for your history and for the platform’s learning curve. A video that performed poorly today might be discovered organically in three months and become a traffic engine for your entire channel.

6. Comparing Yourself Excessively to Other Creators

Comparison is the thief of joy and progress. Seeing other channels with millions of views while you are just starting can be discouraging. However, it is vital to understand that every person and every channel has a unique journey. You don’t know the years of study, work, and failures that led that creator to their current success.

Internal Focus: Concentrate on your own metric of progress. Is your video today better than the one a month ago? That is what matters.
Channel Timing: Different channels go viral at different paces, depending on the niche, content quality, and consistency. Focusing on your own path prevents you from giving up because you feel like you are falling behind.

13. Failing to Celebrate Small Victories

Success is built on small accomplishments. If you don’t celebrate 100 views, you will never be satisfied with 1 million. Celebrating milestones like 10 likes, 500 views, or the first constructive comment is fundamental for maintaining long-term motivation and resilience. The journey is long; immediate satisfaction with progress is the fuel to keep going.

Protecting Your Algorithm: Do Not Sabotage Your Audience

The biggest mistake a creator can make is sending confusing signals to the algorithm about who should watch their content. YouTube relies on retention and engagement data to know whether it should recommend your video.

3. Sharing the Video With Friends and Family

While it seems like a harmless act of asking for support, sharing your video with people who are not your target audience is highly detrimental. Your friends and family, no matter how much they love you, probably won’t watch the entire video. They might:

Watch at 2x speed.
Skip to the middle of the video.
Click and exit quickly (high abandonment rate).

YouTube interprets these poor retention behaviors as a sign that the video is low quality. If you posted a cooking video and your friend who only watches soccer watches it while skipping, the algorithm will try to recommend your video to more soccer fans, resulting in even worse retention and burying your content.

4. Buying Views or Using Promotion Incorrectly

Buying cheap views is a death sentence for your channel. These views usually come from bots or completely wrong niches, resulting in near-zero retention. The algorithm will see 1000 views but 5 seconds of retention, and conclude that the content is terrible.

Even YouTube’s official boosting button (ads) must be used with extreme caution. If you misconfigure the targeting, you will attract the wrong audience. It is infinitely better to have:

100 views from engaged people who actively searched for your topic and watched 80% of the video, than to have 1000 views from people who watched 5 seconds because they couldn’t skip the ad. Always focus on audience quality, not just quantity.

Technical and Strategic Optimization

There are technical steps in the publication process that are crucial for giving YouTube enough time to correctly understand and categorize your content.

8. Publishing Directly to “Public” Mode

Never click “Publish” directly. The ideal is always to upload the video as Unlisted or Private. YouTube needs time to process the video, analyze the content (transcript, tags, title), and understand the target audience before starting to distribute it.

The recommended procedure is:

Upload the video as Unlisted.
Leave it in this status for 20 to 30 minutes.
After this analysis period, publish it or schedule it for a specific time.

This small pause ensures that YouTube has time to index your video correctly, increasing the chances of it being shown to the right audience from the start.

9. Obsessing Over the “Best Time to Post”

Early in your journey, consistency outweighs the perfect time. Many creators waste time trying to guess the “best global time” to post and end up breaking consistency.

The Consistency Principle: Posting a video is like taking a shower: the important thing is to do it every day (or at the promised frequency), regardless of the exact time. If you promised a weekly video, deliver it.

Only when your channel reaches millions of subscribers, and you have robust audience retention graphs in YouTube Studio, will the time become a relevant metric. Until then, focus on building the habit of posting regularly on the day that is most convenient for you.

12. Not Using A/B Testing (Thumbnail and Title)

YouTube has released a powerful tool that many ignore: A/B testing for thumbnails and titles. If you are not using this feature, you are leaving algorithm leverage on the table.

A/B testing allows you to upload up to three different thumbnails and three different titles for the same video. The algorithm will show these variations to different segments of your audience, and based on the click-through rate (CTR) and watch time, it will automatically select the most effective combination. This turns guessing into data science, ensuring your video has the best possible chance of being clicked.

Ignored Growth Levers

Often, creators focus only on long videos and ignore powerful features that YouTube is actively pushing.

5. Ignoring the Community Tab

The Community tab is often seen as a secondary resource, but YouTube is heavily investing in its promotion. It is a fantastic tool for maintaining engagement between videos and driving traffic to your main content.

Cross-Viralization: YouTube recommends Community posts even to non-subscribers.
Direct Engagement: Use it to run polls, ask questions, or simply promote your latest long video. Posts with photos or simple questions can generate thousands of likes and comments, warming up your audience for the next video.

11. Not Posting YouTube Shorts

The idea that Shorts “ruins the channel” is a dangerous myth propagated by outdated gurus. YouTube is prioritizing Shorts to compete with TikTok and Reels. Not using them is ignoring the fastest route to gain views and, yes, monetization.

Monetary Fact: Shorts generate revenue. By 2025, revenue from Shorts can be significant, proving they are a legitimate source of income and growth.

Integration Strategy: Whenever you post a long video, create one or two related Shorts. Use the “Related Shorts” feature to link the short video to the long one. This creates a fast traffic funnel, introducing your channel to new viewers through Shorts and converting them into long-form viewers.

Creator Mindset and Resilience

Long-term success on YouTube depends as much on your mindset as on your technical skills.

7. Giving Up or Failing to Learn From Mistakes

Giving up after a few videos that didn’t perform well is the costliest mistake of all. Content creation is a process of continuous learning. If a video “flopped,” don’t delete it; analyze it.

After a week of publication, go to your analytics and ask:

Where did retention drop drastically? (What did I say or show at that moment?)
What was the click-through rate of my thumbnail? (Was the title or image not appealing?)

Learn from your own mistakes, but more efficiently, learn from the mistakes of others. Invest in knowledge: binge-watch free videos, read books on the subject, or invest in courses. Knowledge is the only asset that no one can take from you, and it accelerates your learning curve, allowing you to avoid paths that others have already proven fruitless.

10. Wasting Time on Negative Comments (Haters)

The internet is fertile ground for haters and negative comments, often motivated by the commenter’s personal frustration. Wasting time debating or stressing over these people is an energy drain you could use to create quality content.

Golden Rule: Respond to constructive criticism and positive comments. Ignore pure hatred. If even historical figures had detractors, you, as an imperfect creator, certainly will too. Your focus should be on the community that supports you and the continuous improvement of your product.

Conclusion: Embrace the Journey

The path to living off YouTube is paved with consistency, cold data analysis, and, above all, resilience. The 13 mistakes listed above are not just technical failures; they are, for the most part, failures of mindset.

By avoiding post-publication anxiety, protecting your algorithm from unqualified traffic, and utilizing all the tools YouTube offers (like Shorts and A/B testing), you position yourself not just as a creator, but as a content strategist.

Remember that every small victory, whether it’s 10 views or your first million, deserves to be celebrated. Start where you are and use every video as a lesson. Success is not a destination, but the sum of all lessons learned along the way.