The 1 tile start, Video metrics deep dive.

A notification pops up at the bottom of my screen. "Task Complete" This is quite a familiar thing to see as I finish a project. It means the video I just put the finishing touches on is ready to upload. I already feel the anxiety flowing into my veins as I click on the file in the YouTube Upload screen. "How will it do? Will people like it? I spent at least 40 hours working on this. Was it worth it?" Stress aside I finish editing my video description text and adding video tags. When everything is set and ready to premiere the following day I pause with my mouse hovering over the "Publish" button. Clicking it make will the soon to be released video available to everyone. After waiting for a few moments I exhale and click the button with my mouse.

This video was unique since I took a much longer amount of time off to work on it than normal. Generally when I'm making something like this I take about five days off of my normal schedule of streaming. The first day, I review and cut down the footage to get an idea of what the video will look like. After that I build a rough outline by cutting the video down a second time. After that I complete a rough edit and record my voice over. When all of that is done I do the fine, edit adding memes and effects throughout the video.

It always takes about a week to figure out how well a video is doing. This is because YouTube is strange. The platform sends the video to your built in audience first. These are filtered into three categories. Regular and casual viewers and new viewers. Often what happens is the video gets sent to regular viewers first and, if they watch it more than usual, then it gets sent to a larger portion of the channel's casual viewers. If that audience also watches and interacts with the video more than usual then it can "break containment", and is sent to a large number of potential new viewers. However, if at any point people stop clicking or watching all the way through, the video can hit a wall. If this happens then it'll return to only regular viewers and casual viewers. If the numbers continue to slow then it moves to just regular viewers. Then as time goes on it'll be sent to a smaller and smaller portion of those viewers.

Initially this video did quite well, with the regular viewers. It got a decent amount of momentum out of the gate, and even performed better than about half of my previous major uploads.

• The bad news. All of these comparisons have something in common. They all attracted a much lower number of New subscribers than videos that take off. Below are some videos that did take off. You can see that in the first 24 hours these videos gained much higher new subscription numbers, which helped push the video to more viewers, more quickly, compared to other uploads.

• The much lower new subscriber count concerns me. It means two things, either this video simply was sent to mostly people who are already subscribed which is a good thing in a vacuum or I am hitting the upper limit of audience for this type of video. Unfortunately if this becomes a trend it means I'll have to shift the format in the future to reach new people. While satisfying an existing audience is important YouTube will eventually push new things to that audience and if you can't keep up. They'll diminish.

Videos can gain momentum again and get redistributed again. This normally happens when the topic gets some public press. That could be anything from a patch, an announcement, a sale or even a major YouTube channel releasing a video.

• Good news! Thankfully the video was not a failure. Why? Because it has done about as well as my vampire fortress and water disaster fort did in the first month and even though the two videos both did better out of the gate. My one tile fortress video has managed to land 73k views in the first two weeks. Roughly the same as both the Vampires and Water videos.

Before I started working on this project I took a few days off. This made for a roughly five day break. I really needed it at the time since I was dealing with some seasonal burnout and needed a mental rest. Most of that time was spent fully cleaning and reorganizing huge chunks of my apartment and office space. The video itself took five days to edit. But I delayed the release of it by a day cause of some unavoidable outside factors. (I broke my foot and had to get an x-ray) During those days off I inevitably lose Subscribers on Twitch, merchandise sales slow down dramatically and my net income drops significantly. During those days off I made roughly a quarter of what I normally would. Combine that with slower advertising revenue in January my income was significantly lower than normal. In total about 40% lower.

Now the video is done. It is out there and people have enjoyed it. It was worth making it and accepting the slower-than-normal month. It will continue to get re-distributed and periodically pushed to find new members of my audience, and will slowly bring a trickle revenue as it exists. I am starting to realize that I make a lot of these videos as a way to give back. I'm not rich but I am doing better than many, and I am extremely lucky to be where I am. I have gotten back into the swing of streaming, and will make up the revenue that was lost during video production. Until the time comes where I take another week off to build a new project.

Whats next?

I hired an editor at the end of last year. I've had him editing the Future of the Fortress videos and Shorts for me. But the main reason I hired him was to allow me to complete projects without taking time off of streaming. We are in the slow process of recording a complete read through of Roomcarnage."The video is going to be similar to my Boatmurdered deep dive, and extremely long. It might even get split into parts. I fully expect to not break even on these for awhile. If ever, I am starting to put projects into two categories.

• Projects that I complete that will grow my channel.
• Projects that I make as a way to give back. Making something that I want people to see. Even if it ends up costing me money.

Here is a teaser in the meantime. Thank you so much for supporting my work. If you keep scrolling there is a section of this post that is paywalled. It contains details about recent videos total income if that interests you then you can unlock it for as low as a few dollars.

Detailed metrics for members.

All in, How did my most recent video perform since I uploaded it. It has gained 73k views 25k watch time 185 Subscribers and has made $678.78 ($498.70 usd) cents in Canadian dollars. In parts that equals $463.72 cad in ads and $215.06 in Premium revenue. All the while the advertisers are paying $22.92 average per 1000 views. Not great but not bad for January.

• So how much did I actually make from this video so far?
  I have to subtract 24% from the total. This is roughly the amount I pay in tax annually. It is a combination of federal and provincial taxes. The actual number is a bit lower and tends to be closer to 19% after deductions. Since that can change from year to year I stick to the baseline of 24%. This leaves me with $515.87 cad. But then I have to subtract an additional $163.61 cad. Why? Every video I commission some artwork. In this case it was the "START" that was used in the thumbnail and the "Brainrot" key art early on in the video. Additionally I commissioned a writer to write the ad space promoting my merchandise shop.
• All in the video has made $352.61 cad ($259.03 usd)

As time passes these videos continue to generate revenue. The amount of witch is determined the amount of hours people watched it for. Higher watch time equals higher pay rates per 1000 views. Time of year will also effect this. The number of ads in rotation drastically effects income.

Thank you for the support as always.

Gregory.