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Trail Thoughts ✦ April 2022 (Patreon)
Content
Okay, well, where the fuck did April go? It feels like just yesterday I was writing up this post for March. 💀 I will say, I am really enjoying the warmer weather that I'm getting in my area and I am super motivated to go out walking every day. Hoping to keep with that, because I'm listening to some good audiobooks right now and playing Pokemon Go and both of those motivate me to get out of the house!
For those of you who joined my Patreon community in April, my Trail Thoughts newsletter is basically a blog post that I put out at the start of each month. Within this newsletter, I share my data and analytics from the previous month on my Twitch stream and YouTube channel. I talk about what happened in both spaces, and I discuss what I have planned for the month ahead. These are posts that a lot of folks look forward to reading. I enjoy writing them and I like being transparent with you all about how I'm doing!
Let's dive in!
April Twitch Stats
- # of Streams: 5 📉
- Avg Viewers, incl. Hosts & Raids: 34 📉
- Avg Viewers, excl. Hosts & Raids: 32 📈
- Unique Viewers: 698 📉
- Unique Chatters: 155 📉
- Chat Messages: 4,063 (avg 813 per stream) 📉
- New Followers: 77 (avg 15-16 per stream, though a LOT of these were offline follows) 📉
- Subscriptions: 65 (avg 13 per stream) 📉
(The symbols beside each data point indicate if the figures are up or down relative to the previous month.)
April Twitch Thoughts
It's clear that there was not much activity on my Twitch stream this month. Ella's medical emergency that happened on the 15th and 16th definitely impacted the stream in a big way, and even prior to that I wasn't feeling Friday streams, so didn't stream them.
That being said, my viewership held pretty well for the few times I did stream, AND I finished playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic! This means that KOTOR II - The Sith Lords will begin on Tuesday, May 10th. You do not want to miss that stream!
I also continued through my Renegade run of Mass Effect and we will definitely be wrapping that up this month. I am super excited to move on to something else, cause I've been playing this Renegade run of Mass Effect since July 4th, 2021.
I passed 2,000 followers on my Twitch channel in April, which was very exciting! Ever since my YouTube channel started growing, the number of follows I have gotten on Twitch has grown. The number of follows I had in all of 2021 was 882 and four months into 2022 and I am at 405. Pretty awesome!
May on Twitch
There are five Mass Effect streams this month and it would surprise me if I needed the rest of them to finish what we have left in the game. As soon as the Renegade run is done, then I will be moving on and starting my evil/ruthless Dragon Age trilogy run! Playing Renegade Mass Effect has been super fun and I was always interested in having a similar type of play for Dragon Age as well. I cannot wait to start this. It's going to take a few months to get through, just like Mass Effect, but I am so ready.
Like I said above, KOTOR II will begin on Tuesday, May 10th and be played every Tuesday evening moving forward until it's done.
I'll be on my best friend Slay3K's stream this Wednesday, May 4th for some American Truck Simulator! Make sure to swing by if you enjoy watching that game. We have a ton of fun playing it!
I think I've had enough Friday breaks now so I'm looking to resume Friday streams this month. Not sure what I'll get up to. I'm kind of tempted to bring back some Animal Crossing: New Horizons, play some more truck sim, as well as try out a new game or two. I can't see myself finishing Alien: Isolation or The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker. I just didn't feel super hooked in by either of those games, so those will end up unfinished for the near future.
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April YouTube Stats
- # of Videos: 9, including unlisted videos for Patrons 📉
- Impressions: 3,984,421 📉
- Views: 201,937 📉
- CTR (Click-Through Rate): 4.0% 📈
- Watch Time: 37,201.6 hours 📉
- Average % Viewed: 19.4% - this means how much of the videos did viewers watch, on average 📉
- Unique Viewers: 116,990 📉
- Net New Subscribers: 1,267 📉
April YouTube Thoughts
I had every intention to put out way more content on YouTube this month, but life certainly happened and Ella's medical emergency drastically impacted this, as I was away from my main PC (recording/editing) for almost an entire week. And since we've come home, my mind has not been in the right place to sit down and immediately jump back into things. More about this in a bit.
That all being said, I am not at all disappointed or upset by the figures for April on my YouTube channel. YouTube is going to fluctuate drastically depending on so many factors. It's certainly going to be a lot more rocky than Twitch ever is. Despite impressions being nearly cut in half from March's ridiculous figure, I still passed over 200,000 views on the channel, which is really cool. YouTube recently changed how their CTR works, so this may have been a huge reason as to why it went up when everything else was down.
In April, I put out public videos for my reactions to the Star Wars sequels, as well as their uncut versions for Patrons. I also published three Clone Wars videos for those of you in the exclusive reaction tiers. When I wrote my March Trail Thoughts post, Revenge of the Sith was at 168,000 views and it is now at 277,695. 🤯 Incredible.
May on YouTube
I am currently working on my C3PO compilation edit to put out, and hopefully that will be done tomorrow or the next day. This was something I could start working on over the past week that didn't involve me having to be "on" for the camera, or feel pressured to get out by a certain date. It has eased me back into all of this after what Ella went through.
I am so heartbroken that my overall thoughts video about the Star Wars saga will not be out on May 4th like I had planned for. That being said, this is still something that will be put out this month. As of right now, I'm just not sure when. But it will be out this month.
The entire Dark Knight trilogy will go out this month, as this is the next series I had planned. I am super excited to get into this trilogy! Once that series is done, this is when PATREON VOTES will begin for all future movies (aside from any that I may elect to do because I really want to do them)! So if you want to have a vote into what I react to next, make sure that you are signed up at the "On the Trail" tier or higher.
Obi-Wan Kenobi's first two episodes release on May 27th and it is my HOPE to get those reactions out by the 31st. I anticipate that my excitement will be through the roof and it will be easy to edit those and get them out.
Lastly, I had done a Community Vote on my YouTube channel a while back to get an idea of how many people would be interested in a Q&A style live stream on my YouTube channel to celebrate reaching 5,000 subscribers. I may push this out to 7,500 instead which will allow me to get myself in a better mindset for it and get prepared. This is something I'm really eager to do though, because I've never done a live stream on YouTube and kind of want to see how it works.
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May on Patreon
For those of you in the Exclusive Reactions tiers, if you check my Reaction Library, I've put up a loosely planned "schedule" for the episodes of The Clone Wars series. I hope to pump out a TON of reactions for The Clone Wars this month because I want to make sure that I keep the show fresh in memory, and I want to provide those very consistently to you all. If I end up following this the way I have planned, then TCW reactions will take us to sometime in November and then we can start a new Star Wars show!
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Patreon Reminders
- Make sure to sync your Discord account in your Patreon account settings to receive access to my Discord server! It's the best place to connect with me and the rest of the community and keep up to date on all things stream/YouTube related!
- For many of you at merch eligible tiers, this month's charge will be the final one you need to get that item sent to you in the mail! Make sure you have set up your shipping address in order to receive this, or you won't get it!
- As of right now, there are 34 spots left in my Snack Break tier which is the discounted tier to get access to the Exclusive Reactions, which is currently The Clone Wars series, and then more Star Wars shows after that point. You can switch your Membership tier at any time in your Membership settings.
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Life Stuff
April was not a great month for me in so many ways. As much as I'm grateful and so happy that Ella was able to come home and is recovering pretty well, it was a rocky month. While I thought I had managed my stress well enough, I'm currently broken out all over my arms in stress hives. I had no idea these were even a thing and thought they were bed bugs, and then was confused why I couldn't find bed bugs. April was the second most expensive month I've had in my life and that hit me pretty hard. Most of you know that I haven't been working full-time since December 2020 as I left my career to go back to school full-time. Ella's veterinary expenses from being cared for by emergency on-call vets and then her time in the hospital hit my savings very hard.
I want to extend a thank you to everyone here on Patreon who contributed to the GoFundMe that I had set up for Ella. There was $3,405 raised, which seriously helped so much towards the expenses. Ella's total costs came out to just over $14,600, and while there'll still be a few more blood checks that will cost a few bucks, that money raised made a massive dent into that and I can't thank you enough. I'm still waiting to see how much my pet insurance ends up covering (it won't be very much).
This experience last month has made me sit here and re-evaluate my goals and plans for this year. I will no longer be able to continue with university the way that I have been, which was full-time, and at this point I would rather not wait until my savings are completely gone before I make the transition to full-time work. So I will be pulling back on school significantly, perhaps even pausing it for a few months before picking it back up again one course at a time.
Instead of looking for a traditional full-time job, I will be making my content platforms my main priority: YouTube, Patreon, and Twitch. So basically self-employment! I really want to try this and see if I can get my content to a place where I am earning a full-time wage consistently and sustainably. I plan to seek out some partnerships/sponsorships in the coming months and continue to build up my YouTube channel and the library of videos here on Patreon. I will be adjusting my Patreon goals (the ones that appear on my page) after my stream tonight to reflect this new shift in my life.
While a change like this might seem daunting or feel scary, it really isn't to me. I've been living the last 16 months on my savings with low income coming in for most of that, and it feels really motivating to make a shift where I'm now "working for me" and putting all of my focus on that. I am really excited to see if I can make it work. And if not, well, I'll cross that bridge if it appears in my path.