Trail Thoughts ✦ August 2021 (Patreon)

Hello everyone! I'm back for another Trail Thoughts post and also wondering how it's September already. This year is FLYING and am having a difficlut time coming to terms with that. In any case, let's recap!

August Stats:

• # of Streams: 14
• Avg Viewers, incl. Hosts & Raids: 42 
• Avg Viewers, excl. Hosts & Raids: 31
• Unique Viewers: 2,055
• Unique Chatters: 288
• Chat Messages: 16,931 (avg 1,209 per stream)
• New Followers: 73 (avg 5-6 per stream)
• Subscriptions: 116 (avg 8-9 per stream)

August Thoughts

August was an incredible month for one very obvious reason: the launch of my rebrand! I'm so pleased with how it went and I'm so happy that everyone likes the new look, sounds, and feel. Now that we're over two weeks with the new stuff, I couldn't be more pleased with the direction I went with it and how I feel about everything. To celebrate the launch, I also offered 20% off my merch store and a BUNCH of amazing folks took advantage of that. I had ELEVEN people place orders. I'm shocked. To anyone here on Patreon that placed an order, thank you SO much. I couldn't be more thrilled and I can't wait to see photos of the items! Along with the rebrand, I implemented a new one-time Adventurer print for Patrons (both existing and new) and rearranged the Discord server to condense it and make it a better feeling place overall. I also opened up movies to everyone instead of subs and we've already had a few folks come by who haven't been in previous movies with us, so that's been lovely to see!

I mentioned this last month, but streaming has been feeling really amazing recently. I feel like earlier in the year, things felt rocky and I was cancelling streams often. I feel like I'm really in a groove now. I didn't outright cancel a single stream in August. I did shift one back a day when I wasn't feeling fully up for it which was a good call. I'm just really pleased overall. 

In August, I continued through the main playthroughs of Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Mass Effect: Andromeda. I also played some Stardew Valley, attempted to play Do Animals Dream? (but only lasted a few minutes before it turned into a Just Chatting stream), and played through the live-action FMV thriller, Erica. There were some great streams this month; a lot more chatting than normal, which I cannot complain about. We had some really wonderful conversations this past month about so many topics. It is always a great time to connect with everyone about the ups and downs and confusion that adulthood brings.

The stats this month dipped a bit from July, but I honestly have nothing to really say about them in detail. I am having so much fun playing these games and connecting with everyone in the community and that's the best part about this journey.

Thoughts for September

September is going to be a quieter month and I'm not upset about that as I genuinely need a bit of a chill month after what's gone on the past few months. My two-year streaming anniversary is this month on Sept 17th, but I'll be pushing that to October to combine it with my 30th birthday, and I'll have one big celebratory stream on Saturday, October 30th. This will likely be an all-day stream where I start around noon and go until whenever I feel like stopping. I haven't quite yet fleshed out all the details as we have some time, but stay tuned for a post here where I ask for YOUR help and feedback to plan out some fun things for the stream and some goals!

During this month, I really hope to finish Mass Effect: Andromeda. I'm going to spend some significant time off stream completing the littler things so that we can truly laser focus on the larger stuff while I'm live. I'd love to wrap that game up this month, and then I plan to consult the community as a whole for what comes next. Will get you all and everyone else to choose from one of the three options. I'd love to know in advance what you would be curious to see!

• Option #1: Play Mass Effect Legendary Edition on both Sundays and Tuesdays until the whole trilogy is done
• Option #2: Start the mean/bad playthrough of the Dragon Age trilogy and play this on Tuesdays alongside MELE
• Option #3: Wait to start the bad DA trilogy PT until MELE is done. So while MELE is going on, dedicate Tuesdays to a new series, or multiple standalone games back-to-back. There's a decent amount from my library to pick from, such as: Alan Wake, Control, Beyond: Two Souls, Death Stranding, Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered, KOTOR, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and 4, The Outer Worlds, Tell Me Why)

As for the Mass Effect Legendary Edition playthrough, the first game will definitely be completed this month without a doubt, and I can't wait to get to Mass Effect 2. It's gonna be good and I'm just excited to romance Garrus already.

For Flex Fridays this month, I have some loose plans for games that I want to play. After Her Story and Erica, I've learned that I really enjoy the FMV category and I really want to continue to find more games to play in that genre. I also have one Nook Summer Charity Event goal that I want to fulfill this month, which is the Destiny 2 stream with SoEverdream and TheHereafter. I still have to work out the exact details for this stream, but stay tuned! I also believe that at some point this month, I will be on Ever's stream with the rest of his mods for some Sea of Thieves shenanigans, which was one of his charity goals that was reached. That will be a fun time. There is also going to be another Girls Night stream with Pho, Bree, Goist and Toadie and I maaaaay be the next one hosting? As always, stay tuned for things and stuff!

Final Things

Ko-fi:

So, when it comes to direct tips on Twitch, I have always used either Streamlabs or StreamElements, and while this has been fine up until now, it's also been boring. This week, I decided to move my tipping platform off of StreamElements and onto Ko-fi instead!

For those of you who haven't heard of Ko-fi, it is a direct tipping platform where you can "buy a coffee" for someone (tip a few dollars). But it is also so much more. In my opinion, it sort of takes the best features of tipping platforms, Patreon, and Fiverr and puts it all together. Ko-fi allows supporters to set up recurring tips on a monthly basis, and creators can set up membership tiers, small shops to purchase digital items, and open up commission slots. 

The way that I have set up my Ko-fi at this point is just a simple "Buy me a coffee". The "coffee's" (tips) are defaulted to $3 CAD each and people can select any amount of "coffee" to tip me. Ko-fi doesn't take any fees on that money so I receive 100% of it (less the PayPal fees anyway). I am obviously not going to be implementing membership tiers on Ko-fi at this time because that's what this Patreon is all about. I still really like this platform with the integrated merch options and don't plan on switching. I do want to take advantage of the small shop and commissions feature of Ko-fi though in the near future, so like anything, stay tuned. 👀

SUBtember:

SUBtember is back on Twitch starting today until month end. This year it is 20% off all NEW monthly subs (as in, to a channel that you've never been subscribed to before), AND 20% off all gifted subs to a channel. I took my sub goal away last week because I genuinely have mixed feelings at the moment about Twitch's revenue split and income diversification is at the front of my mind, BUT I have brought it back for the month of September for the event. I decided to also test out Twitch's new goals feature instead of running it through my usual platform. I'm sure the meme gift subs across Twitch will be a plenty!

Patreon-Exclusive Merch:

Even though the merch sale is over, the items are not going away! If you are still interested in purchasing merch, you can visit kaiielle.com/merch any time! Reminder that there is Patreon-exclusive merch available here: https://kaiielle.com/product-tag/patreon/ and to access the items, type in the password happytrails.

And once again, I do have the ability to customize merch for you. If you want any of the Adventurer, Explorer or Wanderer designs with your name on it instead of those labels, I am happy to whip that up for you and put it on any product of your choice for purchasing. OR you can save up Channel Points in the stream to get one of those for free. 😉

Welcome New Adventurers!

To wrap up, a huge welcome to M_C_Hale and Little Mustardseed to the Adventurer fam. Thank you for choosing to support me through Patreon. 💚

And thank you to everyone else for continuing to support me here and for being amazing members of the community. It truly means so much to me and I am grateful every day.

With that.. nearly 2:30 am so I should get some sleep!