(Not quite) Officers Club - The Patreon Overhaul (Patreon)

It's still June for another few hours...

Hello Bad Company, my name's Colonel Failure and I need to make a few changes. Not just to this here collective of fine fine supporters but in a more general sense.

This is going to involve a story.

If you've chewed through all the previous Reduced episodes you'll know why I got into YouTubery in the first place. I'll paraphrase here to bring everyone up to speed: I regularly work with YouTube and Twitch folk as part of my role in the games industry (I work in the games industry btw) and in order to better understand how to help them out I wanted to learn what it took to be a YouTuber. Essentially, what had they gone through, what do they care about most, what can a games company do to make their lives easier and as a result get better "results" in return?

I started this as an experiment, learned a huge amount, have given a https://www.flickr.com/photos/126845793@N02/20128398800/in/album-72157656396568039/ talk on the subject at Develop and if I felt like it, could consider the project complete.Except that it turns out I really enjoy it.

For the past year I have worked to produce a minimum of 7 videos per week in order to keep the growth of my channel healthy (I'll talk about channel growth, YouTube's changes and video frequency in the July Reduced) but this is rapidly starting to prove unsustainable. A few figures for you:

- Transport Fever takes (on average) 45 minutes to record the footage, then 10-15 minutes to edit as I rarely edit anything out. This means that during the editing process I don't have to watch it all back. Total time, for the sake of argument - 1 hour.

- Motorsport takes around 75 minutes to record, then 45 minutes to edit as I skip through and remove loading gaps and other pauses in the action. The result is a tightly packed episode with few slow parts. Arguably a better end product even if its appeal isn't as wide. Total time - 2 hours.

- Battlegrounds is recorded in 2 - 2.5 hour chunks, then edited into two episodes which takes around another hour. Total time per episode - 1.5 hours.

- Cold Waters (purely for reference) was 3 hours of recording followed by another 2 hours of editing. The end result was worth it in entertainment value, but it came in at 2.5 hours per episode.

Friends, I don't have that kind of time. To the extent that herself has expressed concern that I'm burning myself out by working a full time job, then a second job. She's right - at present I head out to work at 7am, get back at 7.30pm, eat then record and edit until I hit the hay at midnight.

Now, I make no secret of the fact that I'd dearly love to be able to be a full time Tube Artiste. The truth is I'm still a couple of years away from that, if I'm lucky - and that's assuming my rate of growth is going to remain pretty similar, with constant growth overall and additional accelerators (like last year's Transport Fever launch) in the mix. Again, for the benefit of those new to the party I went from a pretty decently growing 3,500 subs to 12,000 in the space of 2 weeks - this month I'll have roped in 800 new friends, next month will be around 700 unless I do something out-reach based (see below).

So, Transport Fever is the main driver of the channel - that's obvious. A new episode will chalk up a very solid 5,000 views in its first week. Battlegrounds does around 1,500 in the same time, Motorsport 2,250, "something new" around 3,000. I have a classification for series that grades them A, B or C. 4,000 is an A, 2,500 is a B and 1,500 a C. Anything below a C gets cut automatically. C's *should* be cut, B's should be grown and A's stick around. It's a flexible rule, but a rule nonetheless.

When I compare my channel to others it is actually pretty obvious that a grade C for me would be someone else's grade A. I tend to get a much better subs/views ratio than others covering similar games; SkyeStorme (who is my current performance benchmark) gets around 10,000 views for Transport fever off his 100k subs, a ratio of 1:10, makes my 1:4 look pretty awesome. Holding onto a 1:4 ratio will be near impossible as my numbers grow, but right now it's pretty impressive.

So brass tacks time, what's the magic number?

From 16,000 subscribers I currently earn $650 per month from Patreon (thanks as always, by the way!)

From the 200,000 views I serve per month I earn $400 in advertising revenue.

The "magic" number is $10,000 per month. Holy crap that's a lot. It is, I'm not going to lie, but my day job is very well paid, so to justify leaving my career for the turbulent seas of being a full time video maker I'd need to beat my existing income by some margin. Life tip: it is very easy to burn through the salary I'm on. I have no more disposable income now than when I earned a third the amount. I ought to figure out why that is at some point...

The astute among you will recognise that the magic number can be achieved by 10xing my current numbers : 160,000 subscribers and 2,000,000 views per month - assuming the earning ratio stays the same. 

There are 2 main routes to this goal: 

1- Continue as I am doing and it'll happen at some point.2- Upweight the earning ratio somehow. Either make more ad revenue per view, or convert folks to Bad Company at a faster rate.

Remember when I said the current approach was unsustainable? That's option 1 bulldozed.

So, option 2. How does one entice a higher percentage of viewers to become Patreon backers? 

The answer I've hit upon is straightforward - make Bad Company more interesting. It's already pretty interesting, although not as much as when 7 Days to Die was in full flow (which in turn generated a whole host of new backers), but more conversion temptation is required. Before I reveal the plan, one brief note about PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Yes, this is an off-piste selection for my channel. It keeps the same humour and personality, and from your comments it's clear that the partnership of Steggs and I is entertaining. We're honestly nowhere near bored with the series, and while we're on the lookout for other potential games, we've not yet fulfilled the potential for Battlegrounds - and it has nothing to do with us winning.

Battlegrounds, on shooter-related channels, is doing gangbuster numbers. 100k+ views per episode, thousands of new subscribers generated. Basically if I can tap into that audience 10x views is achievable overnight. But I have yet to break in - the people watching the series now are my regular subscribers who don't mind a bit of shooting in exchange for some truly idiotic encounters and a good laugh once in a while.

Breaking into an audience like that involves becoming a "suggested video" alongside someone else's. This is Black Arts of YouTube type material - something I am actually quite adept at, but I'm competing with channels much larger and with greater search authority on the subject so don't get a look-in. Here's a quick education piece on SEO (search engine optimisation) for YouTube.

1. Assume you are a viewer looking for a video based on Battlegrounds.2. Type "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" into YouTube - tadaa, results!3. Those results are ordered according to your own search history, subscriptions and previous views - basically YT tries to serve you a result that will suit you best.4. As a video-maker you need to search using an incognito tab (ctrl+shift+n in Chrome) - this basically removes all your personal information so you are searching as a true neutral.

Now, when optimising a video for search purposes your first port of call is to understand how competitive you're going to be. Will I land in the top ten (and top ten is the goal here) for a primary search - ie someone searching for "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds"? No chance. Way too much competition. So you look to a secondary search - "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds gameplay". Maybe I can break in here, but actually everyone hits "gameplay" as a secondary these days, what about a tertiary: "PlayerUnknown's Battleground gameplay fail"? Now we're getting somewhere.I just tested this for myself. On the primary search I stopped looking when I reached page 20 of search results. On the secondary search (+gameplay) my top rated video (the Longshot episode) came in on page 16 of search results. Meh. For the tertiary search I land 4 episodes on the first page of search. Result. Unsurprisingly this includes the best performing non-part-1 I have "Co-Op Fail Compilation", but even that has only hit 2.6k views.

Breaking into search is critical. The good news is that there is a cumulative effort effect that happens. The more videos on the subject I put out, the more minutes of those videos are viewed, the greater my search authority becomes and as a result the greater the uplift from YouTube's search algorithm. So, Battlegrounds is playing the LONG GAME. Also, as my authority increases, the number of competitors will start to drop as premier league channels move on to the Next Big Thing. This will happen later this year when the next Battlefield and Call of Duty arrive. All being well that could explode things nicely... maybe. 

The overall viewing audience will have dropped by then, but so will the level of competition.

Essentially I need one smash hit Battlegrounds video for it to take off like a rocket, and that's why I'm covering it. 100k subs by year end is very doable if I get one hit with Battlegrounds. There's nothing automatic about this - if your content is poor you'll never get anywhere, but I firmly believe the quality of entertainment in an episode and just how *different* the approach Steggs and I have to everyone else, makes it a near surefire hit. Maybe.

Right, back on topic.

I need to consider the balance of videos, but here's the plan:

1. Drop the number of public videos to 4 per week instead of 7. These episodes will be better polished, but there will be an overall time saving.

2. Current thinking is to cover 2 games only. Transport Fever and Battlegrounds. I don't like it. Still chewing on it.

3. Introduce a Bad Company exclusive series with 1 episode per week. Effectively a pay per view series. This will be available at either the $1 or $5 backer tier and will be in addition to Reduced and a new monthly video  I've just started working on called "One Take Failure" - basically a compilation of all misfires made during recording.

4. Add a highlight reel to the main channel each month. Basically a 3 minute video of nonsense highlights, much the same as my trailer, only longer and using the latest footage. I may do 2 of these - one for each series currently running.

5. Advertise Bad Company. A lot. But not in such a way that people get sick of it. I have a scheme on that front.

That's the plan right now. But "What," I hear you cry, "would be the benefit to us from this plan? And why would we want you to go full time, what you do now is just dandy..."

The benefit from being a full timer would be that I can do more. 10+ new videos per week with better editing, regular live streams, more games covered more in depth - including that one you like. Basically, MORE and BETTER. I'll also be able to get more multiplayer games going, which will result in more Bad Company goofing around. Additionally, more people in Bad Company in a multiplayer game means we can Think Bigger. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...

As far as the benefits to Bad Company, it will be the fuel for the channel rather than an adjunct to it. An exclusive series will be more personal in nature while retaining the same level of fun, and I'll be doing this in a way that will not require anyone to up their backing. All the new stuff will be available to low tier backers - but I'll also make sure that higher tier backers get something truly worthwhile.

Right, enough of this for now. Everything is subject to change, but change is coming. 

GIVE YOUR THOUGHTS BELOW LEST THE EVIL PERSIST.

-CF