Q1 2024 Financials & Content Plans

These are my revenue sources and expenses for Q1 2024. Net income before tax increased by 71% over Q1 2023. This basically came down to a lot better Youtube ad revenue, moderately higher Patreon revenue, and a sponsorship (my first sponsorship in 2023 was in Q2). Q2 2024 already has one sponsor payment locked in at a little higher than in Q2 2023, so should be sitting well this quarter too (especially if I can find a second sponsor).

For ad revenue in Q1 2023 it was like $1,200-$1,600 per month. My videos in Q1 2023 did better in views, but ad rates seem to be slightly better this year for content with an American audience (although content with a majority European audience like the Zuzana video do a lot worse in ads. The shorts I did this year (which take minimal time when compared to a normal video, although I still do custom animations for them) also added $1,624.00 to Q1 2024 revenue which gave a bit of a cushion (basically adding the equivalent of a 4th month in revenue to the quarter).

Short-Term Plans

After having some videos that flopped recently and doing some community post polls, I'm going to be a little more intentional with my videos in Q2. Basically I wanted to focus two-thirds on Current Day military and one-third on the Cold War, as those are the most popular time frames and I generally have a hard time attracting an audience for anything earlier. I also want to do more battle map videos like the Ukrainian 95th Brigade Raid and French Op Serval (Mali) videos as I think those are particularly compelling, in addition to more frequent doctrine/unit organization videos videos.

Some potential topics in the near future:

• Dutch Armored Infantry Squad Organization (CV90/Boxer) and Future Developments

• Battle Map: An Incident in Lebanon where French tanks faced down Israeli Tanks

• Mexico's National Guard (gendamerie/militarized police) that replaced the Federales and has had some drama to it

• Australia’s Failed Nuclear-Jungle Unit (Pentropic Division)

But I kind of end up going wherever my interest that given week is so I very well may say stuff the plan and do something pre-Cold War if I'm really into it lol

Longer-Term Plans

In the longer term, later in the year I may bring on someone to add more naval, aerospace, missile-type coverage. Things may change but basically I'd either have them on in addition to myself for things with a linked ground-naval component (like USMC Marine Expeditionary Units) or basically entirely them for stuff I'm not knowledgeable about. They're a lot more of an expert in their field than I am, and they'd be more of a contractor I split revenue with than a one-off collab if things go well.

I'm also still involved with Templin Institute's sci-fi worldbuilding project Dawn of Victory, a new Youtube channel of his where I'm sort of a military ideas guy. It's not taking up a lot of my time right now because they have an artist going through drawing soldiers from all the different countries. As far as I know later in the year there will be a video about their sci-fi version of the US Army Rangers which I've already helped draw up an preliminary organization and doctrinal use for. This is a working concept I made a couple months ago: