Newsletter, January 2019

Hi my dear patron,

After the very brief New Year's vacation, which you hopefully didn't even notice as we tried to stick to our schedule, we're back for another year of interesting videos. We hope. We've been on YT for over 30 months now, wow.

Here's some statistics on how our channel has been doing. Because we like statistics. Can't you tell from our videos? :)
In 2018, compared to 2017,
we got 35% less new net subscribers
we got 7% more video comments
we made 55% more videos
we worked 20% more on our videos
and our average video took 49 workhours to be made.

But maybe you're more interested in what video we've got in store.

This coming Friday we'll release "Could US invade UK if it wanted to?"  - an analysis of a hypothetical US attack on the UK. With all the issues such an transatlantic venture would have.

Then in very early February we're scheduled to release "Do laser weapons have a bright future?". An analysis of what combat usage of lasers requires and what sort of roles could we see in the coming decade or two.

For mid to late February we're doing another historical battle video.  This time its the bloodiest US battle of the WW2. Battle of the Bulge.

Oh, and about those revamped Patreon reward tiers…

Here's what happened. Number of people voting on our poll on our website has dropped quite a bit. Which made it easier to skew the results of the polls by artificial means. Moving the poll to Patreon seems like a smart thing to do. Not only will it give a real reward to Patrons but it should also, despite the relatively low number of people voting, make it unlikely anyone will artificially influence the results.

At the same time, we haven't been too happy with some of the current rewards. The Q and A reward is not really popular, hardly anyone participates. So we thought we'd just shake things up and start anew. Sort of.

Here's the current draft of the new reward that we intend to use. (details may still change)

1st reward tier - Newsletter
2nd reward tier - A poll where Patrons will get to choose a video from
several picks that we make, and that video will get made. Essentially,
this is a replacement for the website poll.
3rd reward tier - Early Access to videos and patrons getting credited
in our videos.
Possible 4th reward tier, just one per month - shout out to one
particular patron for their help, as part of the video.

If all goes well, we hope to start the new reward system as early as February.

Until then, Salutations!

Commissar Binkov