Post Xmas end of year wrap up

Happy holidays gang!

I hope all of you have had a good one so far and none of you got sacrificed to Crom Cruach over the festive season. It's been a relatively busy few days for myself, just visiting family, buying presents, the usual shit, but I've finally got a few minutes to sit down and try and do a bit of a year end wrap up!

It was a pretty great year for the channel, all things considered. I put out 7 videos, 6 of which were "main" videos, and 1 non-standard video, that being the subscriber AMA special which was in fucking January last year but somehow feels like it was about 3 years ago at this point. For main videos, we got:

• All my Homies hate Jake Paul (Feb 24th)
• Worst of the Worst (Apr 26th)
• The fake fighting fantast of Frank Dux (Jul 8th)
• TUF 3 (Oct 7th)
• TUF Supercut (Nov 6th)
• End of Year Review (Dec 15th)

There was also the joke videos like the Rashguard commercial and the Songs from the Christmas Cave video. The most popular video of the year was... *drumroll*

And obviously stuff that came out earlier in the year has longer to rack up views, so it makes sense, but regardless, the people love Dux, as its had a half a million views, with the runner up being Jake Paul, with just under a half a mil. 

Honestly, I think the Dux video was my personal favourite too. It was certainly the video that was the most fun to make, although sadly, I never got around to recording the scenes i had planned in full Dux cosplay. I even bought the wig and eyepatch and everything. One for the future!

I'd like to keep a similar schedule for uploads in 2024, as it was (mostly) manageable. I had to switch day jobs this year which was difficult and added to a bit of a slowdown in production in the back half of the year, but, with some luck, now that I have a better handle on my work life, I'll be able to get another 6 videos out in 2024.

This was also the best year for the channel in terms of getting any kind of shine from bigger creators and/or celebrities. What with Bob Sapp & Bas Rutten threatening my very existence. 

Its the kind of stuff that honestly, I never imagined ever happening when I sat down to make that first shaky attempt at a video back in 2020. The best I could hope for at that point was for the likes to outweigh the dislikes, and if that happened, I was doing good. Speaking of, 2023 has also been a year in which 2 of my personal goals came true. Its no secret that probably the 2 biggest infulences on my work were the absolutely peerless Fighting in the age loneliness, and from a creator perspective, I've always been hugely inspired by fellow Youtuber and Dubliner, Super Eyepatch Wolf, whos own Fake Martial arts video i took, liberal amounts of inspiration from *looks around nervously for HBomberguy*

2023 saw both one of the creators behind FITAOL and current founder/host of Chapo Trap House podcast, Felix Beiderman, reach out to me to show support, and likewise, Eyepatch Wolf, who actually featured me, yes ME, in one of his "Favourite things" series of videos: My Favorite Things 2023

It might sound like complete ass kissing, but its the honest truth, that one of my aspirations when starting this shit, was that maybe one day, I'd make something good enough to be featured in one of his videos, as i had personally gotten so many fantastic music/video/gaming recommendations from those videos over the years! Hell, we even went out on a Coffee date! 

You love to see it.

October saw the coveted milestone of 100K subscribers, which, again, is still just insane to me. Tho I still don't really consider myself a "big" youtuber, in the grand scheme of YThings, 100k isn't worth a wank. But its still awesome to hit it.

Anyways, now that the end of year video is finished, time for a post mortem.

So this was the first video sinc ei started where i thought I'd try and actually make a proper thumbnail, as i generally jsut slap  a few pictures on a black background with some text and call it a day. Honestly, by the time the video is done, the idea of spending more time on a thumbnail is excruciating. So i said fuck it, and got a proper artistic thumbnail done up, which I was super happy with, but apparently my viewers were not. 

Wether it was a design flaw in that it wasn't eye catching enough, or just that people didn't recognize it as being one of my videos, views for the EOY video absolutely fucking tanked. It stalled at 50K views after the first week and was more or less dead in the water. As a comparison, last years EOY video got 95K in its first week, before being age restricted and then buried by the algorithm. So 50K in a week is pretty poor. Once I changed the thumbnail back to the old style, views shot up, almsot doubling in a couple of days. Still not as much as I'd have liked for a video that was 6 weeks in the oven, but what can you do. YT is a fickle bitch.

But I guess what's more important is that I was happy with it, and the reception to it from you guys was pretty positive! I've gotten a lot more negative comments than usual on this once it went up on YT, but I was honestly expecting as much from people who don't like seeing Strickland get made fun of. But fuck that, I reserve the right to take the piss out of anyone I feel like, and if I worried too much what people thought about my videos, Id have stopped after the first attempt!

 So what's next?!

What's next is I'm going to pretend that Pride never died and watch some fucking JMMA madness this new years eve with the RIZIN NYE card. If its anything as mental as last years card was, then were in for a good time. Come January, I'll mostly be taking the month off. I really burned myself the fuck out in Nov/December im afraid, I worked on the EOY video, the TUF supercut, and the Rashguard promotion all at the same time. Not to mention working a 9-5 on top of all that. And while the Supercut may seem like it should've been an easy job of just sticking 3 videos together, in the end the decision to re-record all the audio, arranging all the artwork, and making other little tweaks and changes meant it was as much work as any other video. And even tho the rashguard video was only a couple minutes long, it required planning, recording, editing, and actually getting the damn rashguard design finished and on the xmartial site. Not to mention getting the Songs from the Christmas Cave album out there too, and fucking shoutout to the homie who did most of the heavy lifting on that one, you know who you are. Weve had a decent few sales, and while its not exactly going to feed any starving kids, its a few quid thatll go to charity and ill chip in a bonus myself to boost it up a bit. Come early Jan were going to total up the sales and pay it out to the charity and will post it up on here/YT when we do it. Just in case you thought I had jetted off to live in the Maldives on my ill-gotten Punani profits. 

As for videos, I have a couple of ideas, nothing concrete. But i'll be kicking off research early January, with an aim to start creating in late Jan. I'll also hopefully be doing my first Gaming feature, as another creator whose videos I really enjoy,  Charlatan Wonder has asked me to take part in a video hes doing later in the year about Disco Elysium. So obviously I jumped at the chance to do that, as DE is still one of the single best games I've ever played. 

Anyway, that's about all for now bleed gang, I hope you all have a fantastic New Years and I'll see you in 2024.

As always, THANK YOU for the support. I couldn't do this without you guys. 2024 was the first time since I started that the revenue from Patreon, combined with the YT ad revenue, meant that I wasn't flat fucking broke all the time. I mean, i still couldn't live off the revenue, but combined with my 9-5 salary, it means for the first time in god knows how long, I've not had to shit myself too much at the prospect of my next electricity bill, and i even splurged on a new graphics card for my PC, and a few games in the Christmas steam sale! (Slay the Princess, Needy Streamer Overload, Turbo Overkill, and  Little Goody Two Shoes, if youre wondering!). So again, thank you guys.

Anyway, that really is it for me for a little while, enjoy your new years, and JUST FUCKING BLEED 🩸