Update Post & How you made the 1 mil goal possible

Good morning guys (at least for us)! 😊✨

Yesterday we released a new video where we rebound a copy of the Lord of the Rings, if you haven't seen it yet you can see it here: 📖 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYCasboShWU

If you have any questions for the Behind the Forge episode for this, please post them here! 👇

What follows is a quick little channel status, and our plans moving forward.

First of all we want to extend our greatest gratitude toward all of you who have supported us, either for long or short. We notice and remember the names that has been with us for literally years here on Patreon, it's quite amazing and humbling, and we know who you are, so thank you 🙏

First a bit about enconomy. The growth here on Patreon has given us a much more stable and less stressful day-to-day experience. Economically there's a big difference between having a million subscribers and posting bi-weekly at best, or having a million subscribers  and posting multiple times a week, and as you know, we can only post at most two times a month due to the extensive projects we put upon ourselves. Our current YouTube-income streams are nearly divided equally between in-video ads, sponsor messages (Squarespace, World Anvil, Fantom Wallet, etc..), and your support. Out of those 3, your contributions here is the one that seems most stable, it's unlikely that we loose all of you at the same time, which is comforting to think about, and allows us to do projects that necessarily doesn't make that much economical sense (for instance buying a smelter just to make silver ornaments on a book), but makes it possible for us to go the extra mile on those kinds of projects.


Now a bit about time. We have SO many ideas and things we want to do. Sometimes it's frustrating to think about, and I'm sure everyone feels this regarding something, because the day just doesn't have enough hours. Here's our current time priority list:

1. Project videos. This goes above and beyond everything else.

2. Getting at least 1 day off between projects. This has been very important for us lately, as when we didn't use to do this everything felt like one large continous project that never ended. I don't think that was healthy, but now that we prioritize this, it's a lot better.

3.  Producing content for our other social media. Re-redits for facebook, taking Instagram pictures, stories, etc.

4. Behind the Forge video for Patreon and members.

5. Everything else. Side projects, merch development, art prints, livestreams, etc.

On top of this it's all the bureaucracy of accounting, negotiating with brands, purchasing stuff for our new videos, and sometimes #1 takes more time than expected. For instance, this project took 3 weeks, and we never got time to film the Behind the Forge for the previous video amidst everything. We're sorry for that  (we'll make amends by filming 2-in-1 the next time)! The reason we are writing about this is that if we fail to deliver Patreon content on time, it's only because we are focused on one of the earlier points and one of them is requiring more time than anticipated. We haven't forgotten it 😊

Then finally a bit more about the road ahead. We have big plans for the future, and in many ways we want to do larger projects. Sometimes it would even make sense for us to hire some help to help us grind the really tedious parts of a project. That would let us focus on the creative aspects and the important design elements, while someone else for instance could help us do things like sanding stuff, or burnishing leather edges, or whatever else. Our current problem is that of space. Our workshop is as you know, located in Hansi's fathers house, the basement has been a great workshop for us, but it's so tiny we can hardly move our film lights around. Our gear and tools are stacked on the floor and has to be shuffled around. It's hard to be 2 people down there working at something together, and hiring help there just wouldn't work. So we have been looking for some kind of premises to rent that would fit our needs, but so far we have had no luck. They are all either too large (too expensive), can't handle the noise of our tools, or there is too much noise around. Funny how we need to be able to produce noise, but need to have a more or less silent workplace for the video recording. Another option would to just buy a huge house and transform parts of it into our workshop area, but that is probably for even further into the future. It's a riddle we haven't solved yet, so for now we'll be tooting on in the basement, doing what we do best together, until a solution presents itself.

Just a final remark on Quest Log. Quest Log was such a great thing to produce, and we're really proud of the bookbinding course. Ideally Quest Log would be a multi part series with different skillsets addressed in each. However it goes back to the time point, and we haven't been able to fit it in anywhere. It takes a lot of time to produce, and with only us 2, we simply can't find any time to record and plan it. So for now we believe Quest Log is dead, but who knows, maybe we can resurrect it at some point. Instead we hope we can produce some short books on the same topic in the not-so-far future.

This was a long post, but we both wanted to give you guys some more insight in what goes on in our lives and what this YouTube-lifestyle entails! 😊

Have an awesome weekend guys! Stay safe 💜

Martina & Hansi