Hey friends, it's Jacqueline at Pixie Dust PhD. Today is October 11, 2022,
so this is now the month 32 creator update. There's been a lot of Disney news this month, so
we're going to do sort of a rapid fire situation of just some of the highlights; definitely not
everything. We're also going to basically skip D23. That event awkwardly was placed right after
my last monthly creator update, but it's been a long time now for this one… so I do have a
community tab post going over the highlights if you want to check that out. Feel free to leave
a comment with your thoughts! Then of course we will go over the monthly and lifetime analytics.
So there's some big milestones this month; I'm really excited to do some reflections with you
all and help me brainstorm some new goals. I hope your fall is off to a good start. Let's get to it!
Alright, a little bit of rapid fire Disney news; if we talked about all of these, this video would
probably be over an hour and no one wants that. First, in Disney Vacation Club news the Boulder
Ridge Villa refurbishments are underway. I think the re-theme looks pretty nice. It's
definitely a little bit more themed in my opinion than some of the other more recent re-dos,
so I think it's being generally well received. I've not seen a ton of people complain about it.
But let me know what you think! Also the Belle Vue Lounge at Disney's BoardWalk is being re-themed.
People don't like this one; people find this to be sterile and taking too much of the theming out. I
think it looks nice. I agree it's maybe not as themed, but the prior version, in my opinion, of
Belle Vue Lounge was like very dark and heavy. So I'm happy to see this get a lighter update. For
anyone heading down to the resort soon, Kona Cafe will be reopening on November 1st. That is in the
Polynesian. This is a good option for a table service meal if you weren't able to snag any
advance dining reservations. They usually have availability. So I'm happy to see that opening
back up. In sadder news, at least in my opinion, the dream lights will not be on Cinderella Castle
once again. So another winter season without the sparkly twinkly lights. I'm a big fan of
them. I'm bummed to not see them return, but maybe next year. The 100th anniversary of
Disney World corporation is coming up, and this was basically announced at D23. Although we've
gotten some additional details since then. So Disney 100 the celebration is officially kicking
off in Disneyland on January 27, 2023. There's of course going to be new décor, food and beverage
offerings, merchandise, all that usual stuff. Plus there will be new nighttime shows. And even
though Toontown won't fully be open yet, they are opening Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway over
in Disneyland, again in that January time frame. I don't have any plans to get out to Disneyland
anytime soon. I do have a West Coast wedding to go to next summer, so may tack on a day… honestly,
I don't know. We're still figuring it out. But I'm really excited for all of you Disneyland
folks. I think this is going to be great. In Genie+ news that's just been announced today,
October 11th… the day I'm filming. So I think some details are still coming; the situation may
evolve. Basically prices are changing. No one's surprised. At Disneyland it's going up from $20
per day to $25 per day, and this I believe will be variable pricing. So from what I can tell at the
moment, if you buy Genie+ ahead of time as part of your ticket it will be $25 per day. But if you're
buying it day by day it could be a different price. So much like how tickets are priced
differently depending on the day, Genie+ may be priced differently depending on the day, crowds,
etc. A similar announcement came for Walt Disney World. It has traditionally been $15 per ticket
per day plus tax; tax is included at Disneyland, not at Disney World for some reason… Anyway, so
the announcement I saw for Disney World Genie+ is it'll be $15 or more; they gave $22 as an example,
but it definitely didn't read as a ceiling to me. So again, Genie+ at Walt Disney World moving
to date variable pricing. And the last thing I really wanted to touch on was the After Hours
hard ticket event is coming back to Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. These are pretty expensive,
but you can get quite a lot done if your main goal is just to go on a bunch of rides. In my opinion,
for a non-passholder, I would say an After Hours event can definitely replace a day ticket at the
same park, though you are going to miss out on some daytime offerings for sure. I don't have
super strong opinions about the After Hours events honestly. I do think they're quite expensive,
but so is a single day ticket. And you are typically able to get more done at an After
Hours party than during the day if you're looking just at like ride count; or the very least you're
going to be waiting in much shorter line, so it feels better. But I understand they're late,
that's not going to work for a bunch of parties. Particularly if you have younger children that
need to go to bed. I'm a night owl, so this works perfectly well for me. But again, like do I really
want to pay that price just for a few hours? I don't know. Let me know what you think about
the After Hours parties. Is a ticket to an After Hour party something you typically buy or nah?
Alright, we blew through that pretty fast, but that was kind of the goal. So let's go ahead and
move on to stats and analytics for month 32. So I took these from September 11th through October
10th. In month 32 we posted six videos, excluding shorts. So there was the month 31 creator update,
the DVC 7 month availability looking at March of 2023, pack with me for Disneyland Paris as well
as a trip trailer for Disneyland Paris--this was only a couple minutes long, but because
it's not in vertical format it's not technically a YouTube Short. Then I finally posted the trip cost
breakdown from our Disneyland Resort in California trip. And the Disneyland (Paris) arrival/travel
days vlog was up, so that was highlights of our time in Paris. Top videos this month was
an interesting mix with several Shorts making it in there. So the singular top video was actually
a short just of Miguel from Coco when I was at Disneyland. I really don't have the slightest clue
like what makes a good Short or not, but sometimes they take off other times they get 10 views. Then
the disability access service program video is number two, the advance dining reservation
tips and tricks/live look-in video is number three, another short from Disneyland's four,
the Disney Vacation Club seven month availability look-in for March of 2023 is next. Then we've got
another short, a couple room tours, the PhotoPass video, and last month's monthly creator update.
In terms of videos that were posted in that last monthly period that have done well, it's basically
the shorts, the monthly creator update, and then the DVC seven month availability for March
of 2023 look-in. Everything else is older content. So a lot of the stuff I posted the last
month is not necessarily resonating or generating a lot of views. I'm not necessarily surprised,
especially with some of the Paris content being more vlog-like. The vlogs I post tend to not do
very well compared to the other content. Moving into stats. This month we did get over 7,000
views, which is quite a lot, but much of that is attributed to the one Miguel from Coco Short. And
again, probably thanks to that short we had over 5,700 unique viewers, which excluding the other
month when I had a Short explode--that was the Satu’li Canteen food short that I think got almost
10,000 views or something ridiculous--this is the best month I've had for unique viewers. So hooray!
There were 425 returning viewers to the channel this month, so thank you so much for liking the
video, subscribing to the channel, ringing that bell icon, coming back, sharing with friends… I
really appreciate your support. And overall we got about 535 watch hours this month. So that is kind
of a significant dip down from the past couple of months, but it's still over 500 watch hours in
one month so I'm good with that. We had a little bit under 80,000 impressions this month. Again,
that's quite a dip down from the past two months. It's over 10,000 less from last month alone,
which I'm not stoked about. But surprisingly the impressions from YouTube exploded; it's over five
percent higher from last month, so we're now at almost 48%. Watch time from those not subscribed
was not so great month. We're getting near 80%, meaning only 20% of the people who are watching
my videos are actually subscribing to the channel, which feels like not great. I would like to see
the stat definitely lower closer to the 70% mark, or even lower if possible. But again, converting
subscribers is just always a challenge. And this month we did get 39 new subscribers; so not a
fantastic month, not a bad month. In terms of new subscribers interestingly we were actually on
track to get over 50 new subscribers this month; I had a nice little boost once I hit a milestone…
I think YouTube probably promoted me a little bit more than usual. But I lost 12 subscribers this
month. I don't often look at the pure number of subscribers I'm losing a month, so I don't
actually know if that's average or very bad, but it feels like not great for people to actively
be unsubscribing. But I guess that's how it goes. Stepping away from YouTube, over on Twitter I am
now following about 1,200 accounts and 997 are following me; so hopefully we'll hit a thousand
followers sooner rather than later. And on Instagram I'm following 565 accounts and at 386
are following me. I have been posting some photos from Disneyland Paris over on Instagram more
regularly than I usually post on Instagram, so go ahead and check that out. Moving on to lifetime
analytics. The channel is now at over 125,000 views lifetime, and that is videos and shorts
combined. I did look at these separately, and for videos alone we are just under 100,000 views,
so pretty cool milestone. And all these views has resulted in over 10,400 watch hours; so we broke
the 10,000 mark there. The channel has just under 1.5 million impressions now, with a little over
30% of those coming from YouTube. This again was a full percent gain over last month, which is pretty
exciting. Watch time from those not subscribed is half a percent worse lifetime this month
compared to lifetime last month, but, you know, we're hovering in the low 70s still. And we are
now at 1,029 subscribers. So we did hit 1,000 subscribers this past monthly period! I'm gonna
reflect on this a little bit more later; I do just want to say thank you so much right now though.
Looking at the stats this month compared to last month was kind of a toss-up. We did get more views
but watch hours was down. And impressions was way down; but interestingly, impressions from
YouTube was way up. I did worse in watch time from those not subscribed and got fewer new subscribers
this month than last month, but overall like still pretty okay month. And lifetime I'm pretty excited
to be hitting those milestones: over 125,000 lifetime views, over 10,000 lifetime watch hours,
almost 1.5 million impressions--we'll get there next month for sure, and now over
1,000 subscribers. Before we do some reflections on 1,000 subscribers, let's look forward to next
month real quick. Recently posted was a recap from my partner and myself talking about our favorite
Quick Service places at Walt Disney World for a snack and for a proper meal. Next week I think
we'll do a room tour of our Disneyland Paris off site hotel. So we did stay one night off site
just to make transferring over to the on-site hotel much simpler. The Disney Vacation Club
head-to-head matchup of Old Key West and Saratoga Springs is uploaded, captions are corrected,
so it's pretty much ready to go. It will actually finally get posted I promise--unless there's a
lot of breaking news that I feel like I have to cover instead… I'm pretty sure it's getting posted
though. Then after that I don't have anything like done and ready to go. I'm hoping to find some time
this weekend or next weekend to do another seven month availability video for Disney Vacation Club,
that would be looking at mid to late May. I did have someone request this time frame, and
just generally I think it's a pretty popular time because a lot of schools are out by then. And I'm
actively working on editing the Disneyland Paris first parks day vlog, so hopefully that will get
posted this monthly period too. I'd like to take a little bit of time now to do some reflections
because this has been a long time coming. So first and foremost, thank you so much for watching,
especially people who watch these monthly creator updates like you are really so involved with the
channel, so supportive, I really appreciate your consistent viewership, friendship, all
of the back and forth banter, it's great. This is why I started the channel. And when I do monthly
creator updates I usually talk in like “we” terms, I'm pretty big on the team effort and certainly,
you know, I wouldn't be here without you, but I do want to turn it around for a second and really
just focus on me. I'm so proud of myself because this is extremely outside my comfort zone. I don't
think anyone would have ever guessed I would do this. Even when I tell some of my friends they're
surprised. I had no video editing background skills, audio, like anything like that coming
into this, and I definitely think they've grown. I'm also pretty much a one-person team. So yes,
my partner does sometimes film with me and I very much appreciate that,
but otherwise I do all the background research to write scripts for the informational heavy content,
which sometimes takes like a dozen hours, I do the filming, I do the editing, I add in teeny
tiny bits of animation--I'm still learning, and the thing I'm probably most proud of is I take the
time and care to correct all of my captions, at least in English. I don't know any other languages
so I can't correct the other languages. YouTube's automatically generated captions are really really
bad quite frankly. There's no grammar, there's no punctuation, there used to be no capitalization
and now it's just like random stuff, a lot of the words I say they transcribe completely wrong, and
sometimes it's a little bit like, I don't know, racist… I don't know, but sometimes it will only
do it in Vietnamese for me even though I'm clearly speaking in English, and I don't know lick of
Vietnamese. Having correct captions on my videos makes it more accessible for people who may be
hard of hearing but are able to read English. The automatically generated captions are just really
frustrating I think if you're a user who enjoys using captions or relies on using the captions.
Accessibility is super important to me, and I'm just very proud that this has been part of my
process from day one. And not a single video has been posted without the captions ready to go when
it gets posted. And for what it's worth creators out there: in any given monthly period about
15% to 20% of my viewers are using the English captions. That's a big chunk of the viewership
that obviously appreciates the effort. Alright, the goal of 1,000 subscribers is intimately tied
to the fact that that is when your channel can become monetized, so long as you have
4,000 watch hours in the last year. I now meet both of these criteria. It's still early in my
monetization time, I don't think it's even been a full month yet, but thus far I'm making about one
to two dollars per day. This translates into about twenty dollars for every thousand monetized views.
I'm not anticipating making a lot of money from this ever, but it'll be nice to get a little kick
back here and there. My nascent understanding of this, admittedly I do need to do some more
research, is monetized views are primarily coming from actual video uploads. The Shorts on YouTube
have their own Shorts funding situation, which I believe you have to get 10 million Shorts views
to qualify… I think that's in a three-month period. But anyway, I'm just nowhere near that.
I don't think it's ever gonna happen. So I put the Shorts on the channel just for fun. I think,
you know, I have some content that lends itself to that. Obviously, it helps with the views stats,
hopefully it helps expand my audience, maybe a few of them ever actually subscribe,
but yeah… Shorts for money is like not for me. And part of making money from YouTube obviously
is midroll ads. So these are the ads that pop up in the middle of videos. These videos
have to be eight minutes or longer I believe to qualify for midrolls. As a viewer I have a lot
of gripes about midrolls sometimes. First of all, I really like when they are placed appropriately,
like in a natural pause or break, and not like mid-sentence, mid-action, etc. And I
also hate when you hit a midroll and there's like a minute and a half left in the video,
or a very short amount of time basically. That's super annoying to me. So as I'm uploading fresh
content I am actively correcting midrolls. I am trying to place them in good breaks in the video,
and I'm also deleting any that are just like way way way too far in the video time--too close to
the end. That being said, I do have the entire back catalog of videos that now have midrolls if
they qualify that YouTube automatically placed and probably needs some work. I would like to
tell you with genuine honesty that I will fix all of these. The truth is it's just such a low
priority in terms of keeping my channel going. I do intend to fix midrolls slowly but surely,
but the honest truth is it's probably not going to happen until I have some down time
around the holidays. So if you are watching older content, if midrolls are placed in terrible spots:
I apologize, I'm aware, and I'm working on it. Part of my journey on YouTube has been
consistently uploading to the channel at least once a week, sometimes twice a week, and this is
actual videos--we're excluding Shorts. I've been doing this since I started. There's always been
at least one proper video per week. So it has been a really slow and steady grind; if there are any
creators out there not at the 1,000 subscribers mark yet, it took me over two and a half years
of doing these consistent uploads. I know some people hit that way faster, very happy for them.
I think my journey is probably more reflective of the average. But anyway, the point is I've never
taken a break. Like if we go on vacation or if I know I'm gonna be slammed at work, I work really
hard before that time to have uploads ready to go. But mid to late December viewership always
tanks for me, and I've talked to some other creators they say the same. I think people are
very busy wrapping up their work end of year, and then hanging out with their family and friends.
So I'm considering taking a break in mid to late December; like I'd probably post videos the first
two weeks of December maybe, and then not again until January. But I'm interested in hearing what
you think. Part of it is I don't want to post what I consider very valuable content sort of
at the end of December when no one's going to be watching. I'd kind of rather hold it until January
where maybe people are picking YouTube back up again. But I'm interested in your thoughts on
this, so leave a comment down below about what you think if I took a break in mid to late December.
And finally I achieved the goal that we set for this calendar year of 1,000 subscribers, so now I
need to think of a new goal. I'm really genuinely not sure what it would be, and I would love to
have some of your thoughts in the comments down below. Obviously, we could do another subscriber
based goal. It could be 1,500, subscribers 2,000 subscribers, etc. It's a little boring though,
and honestly the motivation just isn't really there compared to 1,000 subscribers because that
is like the milestone for getting monetized. Other milestones… I mean presumably once you have more
subscribers you're making more money, etc., but I mean that's the milestone, I think once you hit
10,000 subscribers you get a plaque, but like I'm not making that goal. I would really like to get
to a point where my channel sees at least net zero subscribers every day; so like I mentioned earlier
I lost 12 subscribers this past monthly period, that means some days were negative. It was like
minus one subscriber, minus two subscribers. And I would really like to get to a place
where every day was at least no one new but no one leaving--like the delta balanced out. But I just
have no control over that, especially the sort of minute day-to-day actions of subscribers, so I'm
hesitant to actually make that a goal. Similarly it'd be pretty easy to make a monetary based goal,
but that is also pretty variable. Again, I have pretty nascent understanding of this. I haven't
looked into it a ton. But my basic understanding is that advertisers sort of bid on what they want
to advertise on and, and so it depends on how many advertisers are bidding, it depends on how
much they want to put out there in terms of ads, it fluctuates for sure month to month,
it'll fluctuate depending on what kind of content I'm posting, etc. So I don't think I want to make
a strictly subscriber-based goal; I definitely don't want to make a monetary based goal. And
then I'm kind of out of ideas. I do want to keep the more or less task oriented goal of continuing
to maintain the channel, post regularly--with the exception of a small break here or there,
but try to keep posting once a week. Yeah. Otherwise, I'm just not very inspired in terms
of goals, and I would love to hear your feedback. Overall, definitely a big month for Disney news,
a lot of it I think will be disappointing for many people. And a really big month for me and
the channel; we hit the 1,000 subscribers. Thank you again so much! Happy belated Thanksgiving
to the Canadian friends. Happy fall for all of you in the northern hemisphere.
I hope you're staying healthy and well, and we'll see you real soon at Pixie Dust PhD!