I consistently hear people on YouTube complain that the subscribe button doesn’t do anything for viewers, now that channel notifications are controlled by the bell. But it does do something: it puts the videos from that channel in your subscription feed, which is readily accessible on all versions of YouTube. So why do people act like it doesn’t exist? I think it’s super convenient, especially if you’re subscribed to a ton of channels and don’t want your notifications feed flooded with new videos.
On youtube, the time of day you post something is far less important than several other factors. It doesn’t really look at a video’s age for the scoring and often brings back 6 year old videos. By far the most important is consistency, as YouTube’s recommender largely works on a basis of like-You preferences, and if people like-You are seeing something, it tries to give that to others like-You. If they are driven away early on, YouTube just decides to not recommend at all.
An example: Here’s oddheader making a consistency mistake.
https://youtube.com/@oddheader
4 days ago he made a video ranking every single Barbie game. That is not an unpopular category of video. But he still gets punished as that video is over an hour long while his usual is 15 minutes long, that video is very focused on a topic while his typical video is just a thematic excuse to talk about random shit, he usually present alone but here he has a guest, and his title to the video breaks format. Which means his subscribers didn’t click it, which meant the recommender didn’t think it had any virality, which meant it never went forward.
So instantly got punished with a 80% penalty on engagement.