City Beautiful Annual Report

Happy New Year! I posted my first video on December 31, 2016, so New Years is also City Beautiful’s anniversary. Double the reason to make a year-end wrap-up post. I’ll recap some of the big events of the year, give you some statistics, and discuss the coming year. I’m also planning some changes to this Patreon, but I’ll put that in a separate post. 

Here are some key City Beautiful milestones:

1. February 2018: Patreon page started. I had viewers asking me if I had a Patreon, so I decided to take the leap. 
2. March 2018: Produced first video abroad. I filmed “Urban Gondolas: Transit By Cable” and “Commute by Escalator?” in Medellin, Colombia. The gondola video was also my first sponsored video. 
3. June 2018: Attended Educon and Vidcon. I took a trip to Los Angeles to attend Educon, a one-day conference for educational YouTubers, and Vidcon, the biggest YouTuber convention on the planet. Educon was particularly useful and I met many of my favorite creators. I learned a lot from the attendees and make great connections.
4. July 2018: Joined Standard. Standard is a company that helps me find sponsors for videos and also features a vibrant community of thoughtful YouTubers. The sponsorships helped me go from one video per month to one video every three weeks. 
5. July 2018: Sim City goes big. I posted “An Urban Planner Plays Sim City” at the end of July and it broke one million views a few weeks later. I never expected the video to do well at all. In fact, I posted another video a week later because I didn’t want a flop to sit there on my channel as the most recent video. That video brought in 20,000 new subscribers by itself.
6. September 2018: New York trip. I partnered with Siemens on two videos this year, and for the second they flew me to New York City. While there I produced one video for them, “How New York improved its electric grid,” and did two more as well. My video about Grand Central Station is my best performing gaming video of 2018.
7. September 2018: First live stream. I want to do more of these; that one was really fun.
8. October 2018: New look. I debuted a fancy new channel logo and channel art.
9. December 2018: Minecraft. I decided to do another gaming video, this time Minecraft. It’s currently my second most viewed video of the year. 

All told I produced 20 videos in 2018. I think that’s a good number to shoot for again in 2019. On a personal note, my wife is expecting a baby (our third) in June, so productivity might slow for the few months after that. I’ll still publish at least one per month.

Statistics

Here’s a look at the channel’s views in 2018. The grand total is just over 5.1 million views, which really blows me away. The highs were higher and the lows were lower in the second half of the year. I don’t know why, but the algorithm did not like my channel as much on the weeks when I didn’t post a video. 

Here’s a look at subscriber growth. Same basic story here. I know that subscriber counts are the way many people judge how “big” a channel is, but I’m not particularly focused on that. I want people to watch my videos and learn about city planning, so I’m much more interested in views than subscribers. 

Goals for 2019

I find it hard to make goals for 2019 because I already surpassed my wildest dreams in 2018, and that’s not hyperbole. When I started this channel I didn’t know if 1,000 people would subscribe. I thought that 10,000 subscribers would be the ultimate goal. So I’m not sure what to do with a channel this popular except keep doing what I’ve been doing: making videos about cities and city planning. There are a few areas I hope to improve, however:

1. Topic choice. I’m still trying to find the right balance between topics I know people will be interested in and do well with the YouTube algorithm, and videos that I think need to be made about basic city planning concepts. Of course the goal is to find a way to make the basics really interesting, and it’s something I want to do better next year.
2. Writing. Videos do well first and foremost because of the script. I hope to continue to improve at this and be a better teacher.
3. Production quality. Producing a YouTube video requires many skills, from sound editing to cinematography. I’m an amateur learning as I go, and I hope to continue to improve and make higher-quality videos in 2019. I plan on making some equipment purchases this year, including a new microphone and camera. My current microphone, for example, is a $60 beginner’s mic. It does the job, but I think it’s time to upgrade to something more podcast quality.
4. Patreon. I want to improve the rewards for tiers, do a better job of promoting this page, and communicate more with you. Right now we’re at 90 patrons (which is amazing and insane) but I hope we can continue to grow this community. Stay tuned for another post on this topic very soon.

That’s all for now. Thank you so much for all of your support in 2018, and I hope I can earn it again in 2019. I’ve posted at least one video per month for 25 months and I can’t imagine stopping. So full steam ahead!