Well, we crossed that line a couple of days ago. I was in the midst of celebrating when I looked around, and saw the goddamn goalposts had moved. So I wanted to share my experience this week, and hopefully ask all the folks in my audience to help me pull off something of a Christmas miracle before we see the end of 2024.
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| It's not a great situation, and I could use all the help I can get... |
Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!
Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!
So... What The Hell Happened?
All right, let me set the scene for you. I started making videos for Azukail Games roughly three years ago at this point. They're one of my primary publishers, and they figured that video content would be a good way to promote the supplements we were making, and to diversify the content options our audience had. The goal was eventual monetization, but we had a long way to grow before we got there. We saw some steady growth over the first two years, and then last year YouTube announced their shifts in monetization policy. This lit a fire under me and Adrian (the fellow who runs the company and the channel), and we started working harder than ever to diversify the sorts of content we were making, to promote it in more places, and to try to get over that finish line. Even when the algorithm change hit in Fall 2023 and cratered our views, we built back, dusted ourselves off, and kept climbing.
Earlier last week we were at 2,980 hours, or thereabouts... roughly 20 hours away from that golden 3,000 hour mark we'd been told to shoot for by YouTube. Then my second World of Darkness video essay, The Problem With Pentex dropped, and had the closest thing we've managed to a viral success on the channel! In less than a week it racked up over 3,800 views, several hundred upvotes, nearly triple-digit comments, and it added close to 90 subscribers to our channel, which is a big damn deal for a channel our size.
So, in short, we blew past that 3,000 hour mark like a sprinter putting on a final burst of speed before they crossed that finish line!
So what's the problem? Shouldn't we be celebrating, and doing a victory lap after working for years to get to this point? Well yes, and we would be... if we'd actually achieved the goal we set out to achieve.
Because, you see, YouTube didn't actually change the requirements for getting ad revenue from your videos. In order to get a cut of that ad revenue, you still need to get 4,000 hours, and 1,000 subscribers. What they changed was that when you hit that 3K hours and 500 subs mark is that your viewers can now leave you tips, and choose to fund you via YT's version of Patreon. Things that are really helpful when you have tens of thousands of subs, but which are basically useless for a small channel, which we very definitely still are.
And that's the situation we're put in. We thought we'd finally achieved the goal we'd been working toward for years, only to find out that now we could accept tips straight through YT itself... something that's basically useless to us since Azukail Games already has a Patreon to fund the channel. And since we don't really do live broadcasts (it's just not the sort of content we make) none of those tools are any use to us either.
And while the above video did really well, blowing basically every video on the channel out of the water in terms of metrics, it hasn't blown up so big that it can single-handedly make up the extra 1,000 hours of watch time we need to hit that 4,000 hour mark and actually get our piece of the ad revenue... which is what we need in order to fund all the future endeavors we've been planning on.
What We Need From You!
While the latest World of Darkness video essay did really well, it really only added a few hundred extra view hours past the 3,000 hour mark. Realistically, we still need between 400 and 700 hours of additional watch time in order to get us over that hump, and to get our channel a cut of the ad revenue we generate. Revenue that Azukail Games can reinvest back into making new, better videos, as well as projects like the Chronicles of Darkness audio drama podcast Windy City Shadows, which is something I've been plotting out and trying to get ready for the day we finally get our piece of the pie (since big projects like that don't just appear out of thin air).
So, in short, we need everyone reading this to go to the Azukail Games YouTube channel, and watch some of our content! If you just have time for a single video, watch The Problem With Pentex, or my earlier video essay The Liminal Horror of Changeling: The Lost. But if you're willing to dedicate a little additional time to helping boost our signal, you could put on one of the following playlists instead!
- Spoken Word: This playlist contains all 50 of my audio dramas, and it's the second longest-running playlist on the entire channel! If you want a preview of what Windy City Shadows will be like, check this one out.
- Speaking of Sundara: This video series is where I talk about my fantasy RPG setting Sundara: Dawn of a New Age for both Pathfinder Classic and DND 5E. So if you're looking for a new setting to try out this holiday season, come and take a tour of my world!
- Discussions of Darkness: A series where I talk about the World and Chronicles of Darkness settings, and how to avoid so many of the pitfalls and bad decisions that can leave serious black marks on your chronicle.
- Tabletop Mercenary: In this series I pull back the curtain, and show folks how you can make a living writing tabletop RPGs. If you've been thinking about doing this as a full-time job, or just as a side hustle, this is definitely a show you should check out!
- Tactical Plastic Report: This is a collection of videos I'm making about my RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic. So if you've wanted to get a tour of this game, and to listen to me talk about it as a creator, check this series out! It's the newest playlist on the channel, and you can currently get through all the videos on this list in a little under and hour.
There are only so many hours in a day, however, and YouTube tends to "revise" watch hours down if there are other videos playing on the same account, if too many videos are watching in too rapid a period of time, and so on, and so forth. So while I would definitely encourage folks to watch my videos as the primary means of helping, please consider doing the following as well:
- Sharing Videos On Your Social Media: You never know what is going to be the shout out that starts a genuine avalanche.
- Comment On Vides: Comments of at least 7 words shake the algorithm awake, and inform it that people are paying attention.
- Subscribe To The Channel: Subscribing makes a big difference to how the algorithm treats you as a creator. The more subs you have (and the more folks who hit the bell to get updates), the more the algorithm weights things in your favor.
At time of writing we have a little less than 2 weeks for us to hit this goal by the new year. So if you're someone who wants to help me end the year on a high note, getting the Azukail Games channel over this hump would be amazing. I have so many projects I want to pursue in partnership with my publisher, but it's really hard to justify putting together bigger, more expensive, time-consuming endeavors when the channel doesn't bring in any money to balance out that overhead cost.
Thank you in advance to everyone who takes a few hours of their time to help... your support of smaller publishers and creators is making a difference. Without you, we simply can't do what we do.
Support The Literary Mercenary
If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!
- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)
- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)
And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!
Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!
Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!
That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!
And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.
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