Should I move to more flexible release days? (Patreon)

Hello lovely supporters!

I'm currently working on an Atari VCS repair, refurb, & upgrade that is kicking my bum, and has spurred some thoughts. As a result I'm toying with an idea that may lead to more frequent videos, and a bit more creative freedom. I'd love your input!

History: When I hit 20k subscribers Google/YouTube set me up with a channel advisor and I had a few Zoom meetings with her in her cool Google HQ office. One piece of advice was to set a "regular release day" (in my case I chose Saturdays) and put it in the channel banner, so people would know when to manually come and check for a video without needing to rely on YouTube feed or app notifications.

Seemingly good advice and I do get comments from people saying they look forward to Saturdays to watch a new ЯR video which is truly wonderful. However... it's slowly created 2 downsides:

• If I know I can't make the Saturday deadline, I have little choice but to skip a week completely and release it the next Saturday instead
• It puts pressure on me/us to complete what should be a reasonably free creative process by a strict "all-business deadline" (yes I know technically this is "work", but it should never feel like it - I always want you guys to sense my happiness of the childhood nostalgia, not my impending doom of a deadline)

So how would you feel if I let go of the "regular release day", and instead released videos "when they were ready"? I mean, it's worked okay for The 9-Bit Guy... ;-)

Upside: If a video takes me 8 days to make instead of 7 days, you'd get it on day 8 instead of skipping an entire week and therefore getting it on day 14. End result: Video arrives (*does maths in head...*) 6 days earlier than it currently would.

Downside: Early access supporters currently get videos fairly reliably on Sundays, 6 days before release. Whilst you'd still get videos up to a week before public release, you may not be able to "look forward" to them on any specific day like Sundays. They may arrive on a Monday, a Wednesday, or even a day of the week that hasn't been invented yet like... Caturday? (Don't tell Puppyfractic.)

I did some market research in this YouTube poll, which tells me a minority manually check for videos on Saturdays. Whilst that's cool, I'd have to make a clear announcement to convert them to turn on notifications and risk losing a few views. Is the upside worth it?

Let me know what you'd prefer, and thank you for your ongoing support! 👍🕹

Your friend in retro, Perifractic