Hi, everyone! Welcome to the second monthly Kimbahly YouTube Newsletter. This one, if you’d believe it, actually has very little to do with YouTube, but it is pretty important. There’s a lot of changes going on around here, and I’m happy to share them with you. Hey, actually, before we get into the swing of things, isn’t it worth celebrating that we even got a second newsletter? That means this blog has officially been running for one month, and while it may seem silly to celebrate such a small amount of time—an amount of time that hopefully ends up as nothing but a footnote in the total runtime of this blog—not every blog makes it even this far. This blog was pretty damn close to not making it, too; more on that later.
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| From Otachan #1. This image is being considered for the Otachan video's thumbnail. Tell me what you think! |
First, though, let’s address what’s on the tin: Otachan. If you're unaware of this project, I recommend you read the first issue of KYN to get caught up to speed. I’m happy to report that the video is going very well! There have been a few hiccups here and there over the past month—namely, just not having a lot of time to write every day (rectified easily by just going ridiculously hard whenever I do get the time to write, though that isn’t necessarily sustainable)—but, overall, I’m on a very good pace. I’m aiming for a release sometime in June or July, though I wouldn’t be too shocked if it ended up being pushed back to August, either—that’s an absolute worst-case scenario, though, and, as it stands, it’s pretty unlikely. There’s not much to report on with regards to the video’s contents, especially since I laid the whole thing out last time—I suppose I’ll just say that I’m really enjoying where the project is going so far, and I hope that, whenever you see it (which is hopefully sooner rather than later), you enjoy it, too. Outside of Otachan, most of my creative man-power has been moved onto planning other videos. I’m still not exactly sure what next time will be—and I’m not overly concerned with it, given that this time hasn’t even happened yet—but I’ll figure it out definitively near the end of this video’s development lifetime. I’ve got some fun ones planned—some of which include interviews and talks with real "industry" people (look, mama! I'm a real journalist now!)—and I hope you’ll enjoy them when their time comes. Expect some more details on these future projects in July's newsletter.
Well, that’s the good news; if all you care about is my YouTube channel, you can click off now. However, if you care about my blog or (gulp) my personal life, stick around as we get into the bad news. Without getting too personal here, May was an incredibly shitty month for me. My house was infested with, like, three different species of constantly evolving bugs, which consumed extensive amounts of my free time for a good week or two. Spring is a bitch, huh? On top of that, there were tons of personal and work-related complications that halted my progress on not only my channel, but this very blog; in my introduction post, I said that the blog would formally start on the first of May with the debut issue of KYN. TVT followed shortly thereafter, and then everything fell apart. I was able to get an issue of SQZ and an additional issue of TVT out before the end of the month, so it wasn't a total bust, but it definitely wasn't pretty, and, going into June, I'd like to avoid such a fate. It wasn't like I was running out of ideas or anything substantial like that—I'm booked easily to last the entire month, if not longer—but extenuating circumstances, along with the unexpectedly high workload for maintaining this blog with quality writing, have been kicking my ass a little. If this continues into June, I may, unfortunately, have to lighten the load a little bit, primarily by making posts more infrequent (my current thinking is TVT weekly, SQZ bi-weekly, and KYN and ILU both monthly), though I hope it doesn't come to that. It wouldn't be the end of the world, though—I aim to provide the best written work that I possibly can, and for that, I need more leverage than I'm currently offering to myself. Maintaining this blog at its current level is hard, and maintaining it in its ideal form with my current schedule is, as it stands, damn near impossible. I set that schedule entirely blindly; I hadn't written anything for the blog yet, nor did I understand exactly how long each piece would be, nor how much of my time it would take, nor how much stress it would cause me—so, forgive me if that schedule is forced to change by the reality of things. We'll see how it goes, but it is what it is. This would be a positive change.
That's only a hypothetical change to the blog that relies entirely on the circumstances of this month, though; let's get into the changes that are being enacted right now. First of all, and perhaps most excitingly, I'd like to introduce to you my new column: Kimbahly Quickies, or KQS. This is an unscheduled column that will serve as the blog's very own "wildcard". Topics can range anywhere from musings on media that I can't quite fit anywhere else to random interests, thoughts and opinions of mine regarding any manner of subjects. Given that premise, it's a bit hard to exactly sell you on this one in the same way I can all the others—just let it take you where it wants to, and I'm sure you'll understand what it's all about after an issue or two. Expect the first issue this week; it's about a certain anime-related form of internet archaeology, and I'm very excited to be writing about it. See you there! (Also, since this one's unscheduled, you can't really know when one comes out unless you're following me on Bluesky, which is where I host my post announcements. Keep that in mind.)
Secondly, and perhaps more abstractly, is monetization. I am currently running this blog purely at loss—even if it's at loss of my time. I work hard on this blog, and money would be a nice incentive to keep going. This can manifest in multiple ways. First are placing outside advertisements on the blog's webpages, which would be fairly easy to implement. However, I'd like to commit myself to avoiding ads for the sake of maintaining your viewing pleasure, your focus, and your webpage performance. The site currently presents you with a simple HTML page, which nearly anyone can comfortably run—loading HTML pages is nigh instantaneous on modern consumer-grade technology—but ads also invite a lot of junk into the house that may slow things down and make the pages unpleasant to browse. Secondarily, ads basically pay me on the basis of how many people are exposed to them. This means that placing ads on the blog introduces a financial incentive to maximize view counts while minimizing effort; I'd be richer by clickbaiting my audience, and that's something I want to avoid. Money has a really putrid way of ruining things, so, for all of those reasons (and more), I'd like to avoid placing ads on the site.
Then, I'm left with few options—the best of them are outside sites that allow subscriptions and donations for my efforts, namely Ko-Fi or Patreon. I haven't set either of these up yet, nor am I planning to right this moment—but it's something that I'm planning on doing at some point in the future. I'm happy to write for free—I do it for fun—but it strains so much of my time and energy that some financial compensation would be appreciated. These subscriptions would be entirely optional (I, above all else, want to avoid hiding my content behind a paywall), pay-what-you-want (with a minimum of $1 USD/mo) and wouldn't unlock any special perks or benefits inaccessible to everybody. I know that's how some creators who use these sites operate—with different tier options that unlock more perks the more you spend a month—but this isn't about the money, so I have no reason to incentivize you to pay me more with a Discord server or early access to finished projects or whatever else people do. These sites, for my purposes, will serve as a way of directly supporting the continued services I provide—and how much money you pay, if you even choose to pay any, shall be dependent entirely upon your judgment of the quality of my work. This incentivizes me not to become a saleswoman, but to work harder on what you're paying me for. I believe that this is how my monetization plan should be, and I hope I've done well in arguing my position on the matter. These are standards I hold only myself to—shit's rough for everybody right now, and I'm certainly not judging anyone for deviating from my comparatively strict and punishing standards for monetizing my own work. As I said, these options are not currently available, though they may be in the near future—I don't outright expect anyone to donate, but the payment options will be flexible to both what you're able to give and what you think I deserve, and one-time donations will also be accepted. Sorry for the weird money talk, everybody, but it was necessary. Onward!
Excitingly, I'm looking into branching out and writing articles commissioned by various online publications—primarily ones focused on anime. A flashback to "(look, mama! I'm a real journalist now!)" appears translucently beside my face, fading out as I stare wistfully into the sunset, shedding a single, glistening tear. I'm telling this story a little backwards, actually—I originally wanted to start by working as a freelancer for these sites, then building a repository for the works I couldn't get published / anything majorly inconsequential or silly over on this blog. However, I deemed it best to work on this blog for a month or two before getting into this whole journalism thing proper; it'd buy me time to refine my skills, get preliminary experience with the exact medium, and, whenever a site asks for some samples of your writing, it'd be very nice to be able to refer a publication's staff toward my entire blog after providing them with some examples. Read up, motherfuckers. So, that's what I did—I built this blog from the ground up, putting my full effort into making it the best it could be, and now, I'm looking toward working with other publications to spread my horrible mind virus to their unsuspecting readers. I doubt I can simulcast those works over here (though that's entirely dependent on the individual publishers—some are nicies about that), so that's probably some of the last you'll be hearing about this over here—I'll be sure to repost their marketing of my work where applicable so you known I've done it. Speaking of, the benefits of branching out are three-fold: 1. I get paid for it, 2. I get connections for it (leading to better work in the future, as more options for interviews and such become available to me), and 3. I get exposure for it, which, with some finesse, can turn into some more 'influence' for me. There's an inadvertent financial incentive to that, obviously, but what I'm more interested in is the increase in impact exposure allows for me. This blog is all about sharing my ideas with the world, but those ideas are practically wasted breath if nobody sees them. I mean, doing it for myself—for the satisfaction of having done something—while beautiful, can only take me so far. Hopefully, this move can allow me to share my vision with that many more people. You never know who could be reading, nor how your ideas could help them.
Well, to summarize, the Otachan video is going well, most of my creative energy has moved onto future projects, the blog is back (and, if it isn't, changes to the schedule will be made), KQS has been born and will soon utter her first words, capitalism has driven me to do horrible things, and Kim's goin' global. I hope you have a good day, I'm looking forward to the rest of June, and see you next month!
-Kim