UPDATE & SSFF Patreon Podcast #22 | CTR - Crash Team Revenue

Hi everybody!!

Wow, what a crazy October! We've had an amazing influx of support we've gotten this month – especially from the Patreon. We had lower revenue than expected from YouTube this month again, but the Patreon made up for it!! 😭💖 We're just floored by it, and we've been thinking a lot about how it will affect the channel in the future. We talked about it in the podcast, but I wanted to also include a summary here and make the whole thing available to all patrons because I want to be transparent with you guys. Also I'm sure you guys want to know what we're thinking and feeling after the wild October we've had!

Since posting our personal YouTube horror story video, we've learned that the algorithm has changed more than we knew. We go over those changes in the podcast, but the gist of it is that we need to update our thumbnails/graphics on YouTube and we need to tweak the way we think about video production overall. 

The biggest change is that videos will likely be a bit shorter, probably averaging at 12-15 minutes versus our current 17-20 minute average. This won't affect content topics however (more on that in the podcast)!!

I expect this change to take place gradually, and we're still working out the details. But it brings up an important question. Does this mean that SSFF will start posting weekly videos? The answer right now is that we're not sure. 

We've been a “per-video" patreon since the beginning (we talk about why in the podcast), but it's made less and less sense to us as we've become more consistent with content. Here's a fun stat: after this huge influx of people last month, going monthly on Patreon would make us about the same amount of money as two videos made us in September, putting us right back where we were financially. Which is kinda incredible?? It means that going monthly will be totally viable for us once we get our status in the algorithm fixed and increase our ad revenue.  Switching to a monthly model is something we’d like to do in the near future, my goal is within the next 5-6 months, but it's hard to say at the moment. 

And with shorter videos, we might be to make 3-4 videos a month, but we won't charge our supporters for each video (PLEASE adjust your monthly limits!! We don't want anyone going broke over us!). We decide on if to charge or not based on the amount of work that goes into it. It's not an exact science, but we will keep everyone updated!

But in the meantime, this means we can start shopping for big-time upgrades like a new camera and microphones! Essentially big changes are coming to SSFF but they’re going to make a few months to implement. We never planned to grow this quickly, and just because we suddenly hit our goal does mean we suddenly have the finances to move on them!

To wrap up, it’s been a wild month! It’s all there on the podcast. If you have any questions, concerns, anything you didn’t think we covered leave them in the comments! Thanks -da & -gk