Battle Order
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BO Q2 2024 Financial Report & Content Plans
🕑 Added 2024-07-09 02:51:01 +0000 UTCHere is a summary of my content plans for the upcoming quarter and my financials for the 1st and 2 quarters of 2024, with some comparison to the equivalent time period last year. The images are of my revenue and expenses.
Content Plans
At the end of Q1 2024 I was basically coming off of a bunch of flops and was re-orienting what I focus on. My plans were basically:
Focus more heavily on the current day military (the French Javelot early-Cold War video was the last video I made before a conscious correction).
Bring someone on to add more naval/aerospace/air defense coverage.
I don't know if the correction has improved anything yet. I haven't had any bangers views wise but I also haven't had any massive flops (less than 100k views) which is probably better lol. I've also been trying to focus on countries other than the US because I was doing a ton of American stuff and I'm kind of fatigued on that. But now there's been a bunch of French videos in a row, and interest in Ukraine-related things seems to be fleeting (at least as far as the Battle Order unit organization format is concerned). So I may try to focus on some non-Euro/US militaries for a little. The next video will likely be on Mexico's armored recon and mechanized infantry units from squad to brigade level. I also have sufficient research done for a video on Colombian cavalry units. I could also look into Vietnam. Nothing super in-depth but there's been some sightings of new squad weapons.
After that I have some contacts for things like Dutch air assault and German tank units I could develop, and France always has something quirky and weird going on.
In general I also want to be less dry as the sahara and am thinking of ways to make my sort of lecture-y format more engaging (besides improving animation which I think can only go so far; more like different pacing, topic selection and personality). The core of what Battle Order is wouldn't change or anything, it'd probably just be more changes to delivery.
The "bring someone on" point is about to materialize. I have a script in hand written by them on Patriot missiles and their units and I paid them an advance last month. I had an ADA officer look over it as well, so that should be good to go to start working on the video next week.
Last quarter I also talked about the Dawn of Victory project Templin has me a part of. That's kind of slow moving because as a worldbuilding project they need to lay the foundation with non-military things and making a star map an such, and also Marc has had some serious health issues as well so that's more slow moving. They also have an artist making uniforms for a bunch of the different countries and that all takes time.
Financial Report: Q2 2024 vs. Q1 2024
My quarterly tax payments has cometh so here is a tabulation of my revenue and expenses for Q2 (and Q1) 2024.
Overall profit (before taxes) for Q2 is about -$1,500 less than Q1. You'll notice the gross revenue in Q2 was more or less the same in Q1 but the expenses were higher. This is because:
I changed my monthly Adobe subscription to annual, which in the first year will save ~$180 (although starting April 2025 it will be the same amount of money spent per year as the monthly).
I had a few once-a-year type charges, like the fees for my website and the annual subscription for the VPN I use to access some foreign sites for sources and some of my banks. Q3 will have a similar situation with my music licensing, and I'm also started working directly with a music artist so that will be a larger expense this quarter.
Videos did better in Q1 2024 but Q2 wasn't catastrophic either. All videos in Q2 except the one from 2 days ago have gotten over 100,000 views which is basically my mental benchmark for "did no one watch?". I also didn't do any shorts in Q2 2024, and I was getting a bit of a boost from some multi-million view shorts posted in Q4 20223 and Q1 2024.
Most of the sponsorships I did in Q2 2024 have not paid out yet. Generally speaking there is a 30-45 day lag built into contracts from when a sponsored video publishes and when an invoice is paid out. I am currently owed $5,350 from a few different sources, so Q3 2024 will be a good quarter for sponsored income.
First-Half 2024 vs. First-Half 2023
Net Income (Before Tax)
First-Half 2024: $26,557.67 (+16.7%)
First-Half 2023: $22,752.30
Gross Revenue (No Expenses)
First-Half 2024: $31,088.02 (+11.5%)
First-Half 2023: $27,886.33
Business Expenses
First-Half 2024: $4,530.35 (-11.6%)
First-Half 2023: $5,134.03
Overall, my net income before tax for the first half (Q1+Q2) of 2024 was 16.7% higher than in 2023. Youtube ad revenue was particularly bad for me in 2023 and I only had one sponsor in Q2 2023 and none in Q1 2023 so revenue was higher in 2024.
My expenses in 2024 have also been lower so far. This is basically entirely because I changed my music licensing service. I was originally paying $99.99 per month on Musicbed and in August 2023 switched to EpidemicSound which was only $132 for a year. A $1,068 savings per year.
However, I also didn't commission anyone for anything in 2023. I'm doing this a lot more in 2024. In Q1+Q2 2024 this broke down into:
$250 for an expert to write a script on Patriot missiles for me (not yet released)
$635.83 for art and voice acting services for the April Fools video. About $329.21 worth of the commissioned visuals weren't actually used in the video because I changed the creative direction of the video after they were delivered.
In Q3 2024 so far I've spent $161 on music licensing to an artist directly. This is more or less testing the waters because this quarter I plan on paying them commissioning them to create a custom song for Battle Order (mainly outros) for about $500. It's unconfirmed but at a later date I could also commission an instrumental or two for background music. These would be one-off charges, I wouldn't have to pay ongoing to continuously license it like I do with my normal background music. Even if it allowed me to cancel my regular music licensing service I probably wouldn't save any money because the one I'm using is pretty cheap, but I think it'd be a lot cooler to have my own music and I like supporting smaller creators.
In Summary
I'm doing fine. Not as fine as 2022 but I haven't really had videos popping off consistently (or at all) like I did in 2022. The ad market, at least to me, feels a little better than in 2023. I've delivered 5 sponsorships so far in 2024 versus the same point in 2023 I had only done 2. These sponsorships are generally 80% the income that they were in 2022 and I am finding myself having to negotiate more, but a single sponsorship is basically equivalent to an entire month of Youtube ad rev.
I also looked back at 2023 videos. Some of those videos in Q1/Q2 2023 got like 400k, 700k, 800k views and ad revenue was buttcheek. Several months worse than any month in 2024, and the 2023 months where there were huge videos were like almost the same as in 2024's average view months. It does seem Youtube's own ads have gotten slightly better as well, although I didn't have any shorts back then either and those are a little boost.
Comments
Archie George
The quality of your videos keeps getting better month over month. I am excited to see how collaborating/buying scripts works out for you. I’m also hoping your revenue will snowball as you pick up more advertising.
Thomas Wetherell
I can understand that. I mean, I’m not a content creator so I wouldn’t know from experience but I can assume there has to be a balance between adapting to stay relevant without ditching what made the channel relevant to begin with. Glad Patreon can cover the important stuff, I don’t see why YouTube would take away monetization, but YouTube is YouTube so idk.
Battle Order
When I look at it from 30,000 feet it's all good tbh. If Youtube ever takes away my monetization I may be in trouble, but Patreon is enough to cover most of my living expenses and I'd be in a more sympathetic position to market Patreon support more if that were to happen to me lol I guess it's more of the classic content creator trap of getting used to certain views even divorced from the revenue. You get used to any amount of views almost immediately and getting more is what seems like success (even if it's not realistic), and any sort of decline feels like the worst.
Thomas Wetherell
Sorry there haven’t been any videos that exploded like in 2022, but glad things are still okay. Keep fighting the good fight, any content from here is good content.
