One of the problems with uploading videos to your YouTube channel is that there is no way to define when a video is published for public viewing.

Let’s say you created a viral video and want to publish it at a particular date or time. Either you have to upload the video the same day or you have to upload the video on an earlier date and make it “Unlisted”. Later, when you want the video to be available for public viewing, simply login to your YouTube channel and change the privacy mode from “Unlisted to “Public”.

This trick works fine but it’s certainly not comfortable for video bloggers who upload a good amount of videos on YouTube every week. You have to manually change the privacy mode from “Unlisted” to “Public”; when you want your channel subscribers or viewers to know that a new video has been uploaded on your YouTube channel. This is unlike the post scheduling feature of WordPress or Blogger where you can write blog posts and schedule their publishing time at a future date or time.

However, it seems like YouTube is now allowing scheduling of video uploads for publishers who are enrolled through YouTube partner program

Ashish Mohta who runs a Tech podcast channel at YouTube, reports that YouTube is allowing scheduled publishing of videos only for publishers who are enrolled through YouTube partner program. The screenshot he provides shows options to choose a custom publishing date and time along with the privacy level of public, unlisted or anyone with a link

Ashish adds that you have to select the publishing date and time before hitting the upload button on the video upload page of your YouTube channel. Although channel owners can edit the publishing time of a YouTube video later on, but the option will appear only when you have selected “Publish at a custom time” on the video upload page.

This is a useful feature, imagine a situation when you are travelling but want a video to be automatically published on your YouTube channel on a particular date. Simply upload the video from your computer and choose “Publish at a particular time”, pick the scheduled date and finish the upload process.

Next, you can embed the video in a blog post or on your website and schedule your post to go live after a week or so. When the chosen date arrives, YouTube will automatically change the privacy level of the video from “Private” to “Public” so your channel viewers and site visitors can see the video as they normally should.

Note: I also run a screencast channel at YouTube but since I am not a YouTube partner yet, this feature is not yet available in my YouTube account. However, it’s really exciting to know that YouTube partners can now enjoy scheduled video publishing, I am exploring some tricks and workarounds which will allow common YouTube publishers to achieve the same. I promise to write a follow up post, if I am successful in exploring the trick.