quantifica april

Hey team. This one's a bit less fun.

BURNOUT

There was no release this month, and work was sporadic and scattershot. Got another cold, had a lot of travel, and dealt with burnout from the Cornetto video. Having a bit of the Doing Too Much, but don't have anything I can reasonably stop doing, so I'm going through my enormous list of Things I Have Going On and trying, instead, to optimize. Can't work less, time to work smarter.

This is an ongoing process, but I can tell you the (current) plan for May.

My current plan is to spend this month working on these mini Alt-Right Playbook videos, finishing three end to end before releasing them. Basically treating them as one large video: all the slides in one go, then all the audio, then all the editing. Get three in the can and then release them (probably in June) in more rapid succession. It has, in the past, been very good for traffic, subscriptions, ad revenue, and patronage to release a video and then release a second that rides the first one's wave. I also think grouping the different phases of production will be more efficient than finishing one video front-to-back before starting on the next one.

This runs the risk of releasing nothing for April or May, which I don't think is a wise financial decision, so I have a small thing I wrote last month in a fugue state that I want to turn around quickly before starting on this larger project. I'm using this to experiment with mana caps - limiting myself to a predetermined amount of effort and planning my workdays around that. I want to see how good I can make something look while doing less. (Not sure when this video will go public; I will probably seek a sponsor once it's done.)

Oh, and I guess this is a good time to announce I will be writing an Afterword for Jacob Geller's book, How a Game Lives! It's a collection of his essays, all taken from his various videos throughout the years, with tons of new annotations from Jacob on each essay, and a unique Afterword from a different writer following each one. I'll be writing the Afterword for Who's Afraid of Modern Art?, and will almost certainly be talking about a short story by Nick Hornby called "NippleJesus."

FINANCIALS

This is my first time coming up short. This is for several reasons:

• low ad revenue from not releasing a video this month

• a (now overturned) copyright claim holding back most of the ad revenue for the Cornetto video; the money should be released and sent to me in time for next month's financials

• non-ARP videos not doing as much traffic, and so making less ad revenue

• the Patreon is not growing

That last one is a concern. So far, between Nebula and ad revenue, the lack of growth here on Patreon hasn't stopped me from meeting my targets. But not only has the Patreon fallen short of my growth targets, it does not seem to be growing at all. (This is, again, hard to fully determine, because there's always a trickle of late pledges coming in throughout the month, so that -10.5% will probably shrink by June; right now I appear to be down since last month, but it may correct to slightly higher but still below target.) I know, usually, the best way to grow is with regular releases, and we'll see what three ARPs in a row does for that, but it's an uncertain fix.

So, after those videos come out, I'll be doing that Patreon revamp I've been considering. Working out what the reward tiers will be going forward, announcing all the Patreon-exclusive stuff I've been doing that the general public doesn't know about, and teasing things like Classic Noir Bingo. I have a few ideas for additional activities to do with patrons, but need to do research on how much work they'll be. Last thing I need is to bring in a bunch of new patrons only to promise more than I can deliver.

I also wanna stress: we're not in actual trouble. The last few months have been very good and I am still several thousand dollars ahead of target; I've done the math and we could underperform by about this much every month for the rest of the year and still hit target. So -11% is cause for concern, not panic. We'll see how the next few months shake out.

BINGOS

First bonus box! Not helpful for making a line with the box I've already ticked, but still cool.

APRIL MINIMIX

More tunes.

Holy Touch
- discover weekly

II MOST WANTED
- partner asked my opinion on the new Beyonce, gave it a listen, this was an immediate standout

Good Luck, Babe!
- I am not immune to the charms of Chappell Roan

I Just Wanted 2 Yell LOL
- Spotify recommended a LOT of cool music after I listened to AKWAEKE's album, this was one of many

GODDESS
- discover weekly (I think?)

Fools
- got a craving for The Dodos (a band I got into after hearing them playing over the speakers of a vintage clothing shop on Thayer Street in Providence, Rhode Island, 16 years ago)