How to run several YouTube channels without mixing them up

Why does a blended number describe neither channel?

Take a channel that is working and one that is starting out, and put their videos in one list. The median lands wherever the mix puts it, which is somewhere neither channel actually lives. Publish more on the new channel one month and the blended figure falls; publish more on the established one and it rises. Nothing about either channel changed. You are watching the mix, and you will read it as performance.

Every finding worth having goes the same way. A best weekday computed across two channels is a weekday for an audience that does not exist. A format verdict across two channels says whether Shorts win on the channel that happens to post more of them. A total subscriber count across two channels is a number nobody can act on, because no single decision affects both channels the same way.

The rule that follows is simple and easy to break by accident: every number is about one channel, and says which. The accidental break is the tool that filters by account rather than by channel. It does not error. It just shows you a library with both catalogues in it, and a median computed from both, with the same confidence as a real one.

A rhythm for each channel

Each channel’s audience learns that channel’s schedule, so each channel needs a cadence of its own, written as a pair of long cuts and Shorts and sized against your worst week. How often to post on YouTube covers how to size one. Doing it twice is where it gets harder, because both channels draw on the same person’s time.

• Add the cadences up before you commit to them. Two channels at two videos a week each is four videos a week of your time, whatever each audience sees. The worst-week test applies to the total.
• Do not let the stronger channel eat the weaker one’s slots. When a week goes badly, the channel that is working gets the footage and the other one goes quiet. Decide in advance which channel drops first, so it is a choice rather than a drift.
• Keep the empty days visible per channel. A combined calendar makes a busy week on one channel hide a blank week on the other.

The cadence planner is free, needs no account, and can be run once per channel.

How does YouTube handle several channels on one account?

YouTube’s own model is straightforward once it is written down, and its help page on switching covers most of it:

• One Google Account can manage up to 100 channels.
• You use one channel at a time. To change, click your profile picture on youtube.com and choose Switch account, then the channel you want. The name and icon in the top corner say which one you are on.
• If a channel on a Brand Account is missing from that list, the Google Account you are signed in with is not one of its managers.

When you create a channel with a business or other name, YouTube connects it to a Brand Account, and that is the kind of channel that can have more than one manager or owner. A Brand Account holds one channel: if it already has one, you cannot create another on it.

For letting other people work on a channel, YouTube’s channel permissions grant access to the channel’s data and tools in YouTube and Studio without anybody needing your Google Account, at levels from viewer up to manager. YouTube’s own framing is that this is safer than sharing a password, which it is.

Quota, and the app you connect through

Any tool that talks to YouTube does it through a Google Cloud project, and the project has a daily quota. Google’s default allocation is 100 video uploads, 100 searches and 10,000 units a day for everything else, and that allowance belongs to the application rather than to you: every user of the tool, and every channel each of them connects, draws on the same pool. Connecting several channels through one tool is several channels’ worth of syncing and publishing from one allowance.

The other limit is verification. Google caps an app that shows its unverified-app screen at 100 new users. Runsheet’s review is not complete, so until it is, at most 100 Google users in total can connect a channel through it. Connecting with your own Google client, under Advanced on the connect page, removes that cap and moves you onto a quota nobody else is spending.

Running several channels in Runsheet

A Runsheet account connects 1 channel on Free, 1 channel on Starter, 2 channels on Creator and 5 channels on Network (the pricing page has the rest of each plan), and it is built around the rule at the top of this page:

• Each channel keeps its own runsheet, library and findings, and no number is ever added across them.
• Today is the one screen that spans every channel, because “what needs me” is a question about the account. Each line on it says which channel it is about.
• Work scales with channels and cost does not: the queue, the watched channels and the monthly publishing allowance are counted per channel, while drafting runs, generated artwork and the YouTube API budget are shared across the account.
• After a downgrade, the channels you connected first stay open, and any beyond the new plan’s count are locked and cannot be opened. Nothing on them is deleted: their videos and recorded history come back when the plan does.
• There are no team seats yet: one login per account. If several people need to work on a channel, YouTube’s channel permissions above are the tool for that today.

Several channels, measured separately goes through how the separation is enforced, including the check that fails a deploy if any read forgets to name its channel.