The Big Squeeze Tube Wringer (Kickstarter)
Want to get that last drop of paint out from the tube?
Tube wringers or squeezers are not new, but this one looks nice and has an ergonomic handle. The campaign ends on 3 Dec 2016. If you want to get it, you can do so at https://kck.st/2eD8QRz
Microsoft releases Surface Studio & Surface Book i7
Yesterday, the Microsoft event unveiled the Surface Studio and Surface Book i7.
Surface Studio is sort of like the iMac except you can draw on it. And you can tilt the screen down to an angle comfortable for you. It looks like Microsoft is targeting designers specifically with this new product, and it's certainly a worthy Cintiq alternative.
It's quite pricey though at USD $2,999. That's like targeting designers with deep pockets. If they had separated the screen from the computer, they could have reduced the price and reach more people. Mac users are always on the lookout for good monitors and unfortunately they won't be able to buy this screen at any price.
The screen is a 28-inch display with 4500 x 3000 resolution with a 192PPI. That's 3:2 ratio. It says there are 13.5 million pixels which is very close to 5K resolution of 14.7 million pixels. There's no confirmation on the exact Adobe RGB gamut supported yet.
The big question is whether the Surface has managed to solve the problem with slow wavy diagonal lines. If it has not, then, I don't suppose it has met that professional standard yet despite how beautiful everything is.
The new Surface Book with i7 is nice too. They have added twice the graphics performance and 30% more battery life. But what I'm interested in is the battery life of the tablet itself. Again, no information on that. It's best to wait for reviews before rushing to order one.
Insights from my 30,000 Youtube subscribers milestone
I've just reached the milestone of 30,000 subscribers on my Youtube channel. It took less than a year to grow my subscriber base from 4,000 in November 2015 to where I am today. I'm just amazed at the growth potential of Youtube.
Here are some smaller milestones for subscriber count that I've been tracking.
I get around 80 new subscribers each day on Youtube now compared to only 30 when I first started tracking my progress. My growth on Twitter and Facebook is so pathetic I don't even want to share them here. What's obvious is different platforms require different growth strategy. With Youtube, my strategy is to put out helpful content with relentless consistency and so far that has been working out well for me.
Where the viewers are from
On average, around 12,000 viewers watch my videos daily. Only 0.6% are referred by my blog -- that's 79 viewers from Parkablogs daily. The rest are viewers from the Youtube platform. In other words, there are a lot of viewers on Youtube searching for art content. That's no surprising though, as this is the 2nd biggest search engine on earth.
Compared to other artists on Youtube
Numbers can actually say a lot about the channel.
Here are statistics artists that I subscribe to, arranged based on the number of subscribers they have.
Name | Subscribers | Videos | Views/video |
Mark Crilley | 2,596,622 | 577 | 107,546 |
Draw with Jazza | 800,569 | 603 | 148,218 |
Baylee Jae | 675,883 | 219 | 82,588 |
Proko | 537,525 | 158 | 28,067 |
thefrugalcrafter | 282,955 | 1,484 | 36,090 |
Alphonso Dunn | 269,326 | 244 | 19,127 |
Cubebrush | 220,836 | 199 | 8,144 |
PearFleur | 210,459 | 89 | 18,913 |
Will Terrell | 195,044 | 131 | 4,633 |
Shoo Rayner | 149,274 | 865 | 11,638 |
kelogsloops | 125,052 | 20 | 26,769 |
Lachri Fine Art | 113,696 | 625 | 12,200 |
Vicky Papaioannou | 112,538 | 434 | 13,257 |
Fran Meneses | 82,684 | 164 | 7,635 |
Mind of Watercolor | 71,197 | 87 | 5,836 |
REIQ | 70,980 | 89 | 3,597 |
Iraville | 94,510 | 48 | 4,727 |
ArtGerm | 53,616 | 62 | 2,514 |
Aaron Rutten | 50,489 | 771 | 11,421 |
James Gurney | 41,170 | 173 | 3,624 |
Me | 30,028 | 483 | 12,286 |
Peter Sheeler | 29,744 | 83 | 6,580 |
Owings Art | 16,115 | 309 | 2,778 |
View count
I may not have as many subscribers as other Youtubers, but my view count is quite high -- almost on par with Lachri Fine Art who has more than 3 times my subscribers. I attribute that to the many art product reviews I've created. I want to make one video review for all the art products that I've reviewed on my blog.
I value view count because ultimately, ads on Youtube payout are based on view count. On a bad day, the payout is around USD $1 per 1,000 views. From there, you can calculate exactly how many views, videos or subscribers you need to make a full-time living. Unless you have a knack for putting out viral content that skews your statistics, growth rate on Youtube is quite predictable and you can do forecasts easily. For example, if I get 2,500 subscribers each month, one year later, I can safely say that I will have 30,000 more subscribers.
If you have a full-time or freelance job, you won't even know if you will have a pay increment next year, or earn as much.
Start early
One reason why some Youtubers have a lot of subscribers is because they started early. A channel that started 10 years ago, provided they produce content regularly, is likely to have many times more subscribers than a new art channel today. If you want to start something, start early. The payoff will only come years later. I wished I had started my channel at the same time I started my blog. So now, I'm actually making up for lost time by putting out as many videos as possible.
There are many different strategies when it comes to choosing the type of content to produce. An art channel can focus on tutorials, artist interviews, speed paintings, art product reviews, advice or whatever you can think of really. This is probably worth an article on its own.
Youtube has incredible reach
My videos reach more people than my blog posts. For example, the article that I wrote regarding Wacom MobileStudio Pro on 14 Oct only received 2,440 views to date. The Youtube video talking about the same thing published 3 days later received 4,229 views. I believe that video was able to get a higher view count because I have a large subscriber base. Each time I publish a video, a notification email is sent out to those subscribed to my channel, making it easy for them to watch. I don't have that feature on my blog and I don't use my newsletters to promote individual posts like this, and even if I do, I only have 1000+ newsletter subscribers compared to 30,000 Youtube subscribers.
Ultimately, content is king
There are some channels with fantastic growth rates even though they don't have a lot of videos, But those channels do have compelling content. Two good examples are the art creation videos from kelogsloops (20 videos with 125,052 subscribers) and Iraville (48 videos with 94,510 subscribers). What this means is, if your content is really great, you can get subscribers easier, although how the subscribers find the content is still something I'm trying to figure out, because it's either a combination of Youtube Suggested Videos or through SEO.
Moving on
Making videos daily is not easy. Some days, I may not have ideas or just don't have motivation. That's why I keep a list of ideas and populate it whenever I have an idea for a video.
I'm just gonna continue what I'm doing now and see where it will bring me next year. My prediction is I will have 60,000 subscribers by October 2017.
Hopefully, I can have 700 videos produced by the end of 2017. That would be incredible.