FALL SEASONAL UPDATE

Hello friends, as many of us are heading back to our various educational settings and gleefully awaiting sweater weather to be upon us, we want to give you a quick look at the state of OSP going into the latter part of the year.

First off, we'd like to apologize for the abundant lack of Summer Stupidity videos this past summer (haven't things have been stupid enough already?) — We launched the series last year because the summer stretch is usually a bit of a downtime for video views, so quick little city reviews and movie reviews were a fun and easy way to bump those numbers up. For various reasons, that wasn't the case, and we instead prioritized smooth and steady work on our mainline content, with the result that we hit the Trending tab about half a dozen times in the past few months. Ultimately, we're very pleased with how our channel has done over the summer, but it's important we apologize for not delivering on Summer Stupidity. We told you that we would do it, and then we didn't, so that's on us, and we're sorry. When we get around to making more videos in that series, we'll incorporate the feedback you gave us on our poll from June, so your input won't go to waste.

Aside from mainline videos, this summer saw us introduce our Enamel Pins from Crowdmade. our Artemis & Apollo pack was a huge hit, and just last night we wrapped up our campaign for Ares & Hermes. We have been absolutely floored by the response to these pins, and Red is ecstatic that so many of you have enjoyed the artwork as much as she has. To give you an insight into our strategy here: We're going to launch a new pack of two pins for each season (we've done two Olympian packs in a row, but as you're aware, there are maaaany different characters to make into pins). These pins are sold as "pre-orders" so once the store page closes, we get to producing as many as were ordered, and then they get shipped out to you all. The first run of pins was a little slow-going because we didn't expect anywhere near as many sales as we got. Here we were making plans for what to do if we didn't sell one hundred packs, and instead we got over 3,000 packs sold. Absolute madness. Hopefully the time to produce and ship will be less in future runs, but know that the process from ordering to in-the-mail will take a few weeks between gathering all the orders, making all of the pins, and then packing and shipping them out. Also, for anybody outside the US, you may note that shipping options were significantly cheaper this last time than they were in July, Crowdmade has changed its fulfillment provider. Finally, Every Year on Black Friday, we'll run an extra sale of that year's pins. So if you missed something like Artemis & Apollo the first go round, you'll always have a second chance in later November. But be advised! In this instance we're selling from a premade stock, so there is a limited quantity (it's a high limit, we planned ahead, but, like, there is a limit).

Looking more broadly, the most wild thing is that our revenues this year from pins, just these pins, contributed more than all of our sponsors in the year 2019. So buying these pins is an inconceivably amazing way to support the channel and get an adorable little trinket in the process, because at this rate, we basically never need to do sponsorships again. We've already been highly selective with the brands we choose to work with, only partnering with brands that are educational, professional-development, or writing-adjacent. So going forward, you'll only see us working with products and services that we really truly love, like World Anvil and Campfire. I don't want to take up too much of this post going on about sponsorships, but the good news from this is that essentially, we won't have to anymore, and that will have a fairly big impact on the viewing experience for our channel. YouTube is a dream job, but it can also be a hard space to operate in, where brand sponsors are the only consistent revenue available. So thank you all so much for supporting us here on Patreon and via our pins, so that we can provide you with a better core experience.

The next thing we want to mention is our mask sales with Volante Design (not sponsored). We were absolutely thrilled when they reached out to us, and the final masks we ended up producing couldn't be more perfect. For all of you who bought one, we sincerely hope that you enjoy them, and that they help you feel both comfortable and safe. But we also want to thank the many of you who donated to our school mask drive. Thanks to your help, we were able to raise a combined >$8,000 ($4,000 from us and ~$4,000 from you, that went towards a total of 836 masks for students in Holyoke High School of the Massachusetts public school system. We chose this school because it is local to the team at Volante Design, so the masks can have a big positive impact for students without having to travel a long distance. Thank you all for helping us to keep students safe!

Aside from channel things, Red's comic Aurora is making its way through the 9th chapter, and getting to the climax of this first arc. Oooo, exciting. If you'd like to join the conversation online, please check out the dedicated Aurora Discord Server!

Now on to the future! The first thing we'd like to share with you is that we're starting a PODCAST! It has been asked for many a time over the months, and thanks to Indigo's encouragement and assistance, it's finally becoming a reality. Our announcement video on the subject goes live today at 11EST, but here are the practical details: 1) It's an unscripted podcast with Red and Blue (and sometimes guests), going live every other Wednesday on all the standard podcasty platforms (apple podcasts, google podcasts, spotify), 2) The show will have essentially two sections, one will be a dive into the last video that Red and I made, talking about behind-the-scenes things, sharing extra stories that didn't make it in, adding any clarifications, corrections, or extra discussion, and generally digging more into the topic at hand. The second portion of the show will be dedicated to fan questions, which we'll gather from you all via the #ask-ospod channel on our discord server. 3) This will cut into some of the time we typically dedicate to livestreams, but given how much of a glitchy mess our livestreams have been as of late, that's probably for the best. We will continue to do livestreams, so don't worry about those going anywhere. In fact, we've got a stream (hopefully) set for tomorrow afternoon, as we'll be playing Journey (yes, again, last year's stream was a high-octane mess that did not suit the pace and tone of the game).

This fall we've got plenty of awesome videos coming your way, including myths about the Minotaur, the Zodiac, and a Halloween Special about the Wild Hunt. We've got trope talks about Grimdark, Loners, Greatest Fears, and Superpowered Evil Sides. Plus we've got histories of Hawaii for Indigenous People's Day, Wales (highly requested), and the long-awaited wrap-up of the Byzantines video series. We've also got a History-Makers on the Islamic Historiographer Ibn-Khaldun, and some Hijinks on some notable ancient-greekbois.

Finally, we want to turn things over to you and get your thoughts on the OSP-Patreon experience. We've learned through empirical data and conversations with many of you that there's a huge diversity to the reasons you choose to support, and to what aspects of Being A Patron you most enjoy. For this poll, I want to ask specifically about the tier-rewards. For the most part, our guiding philosophy has been to give the benefits (patreon exclusive content like this, merch discounts, patron flair on discord) as widely as we can, and then spread out the other benefits like name-in-credits, monthly wallpaper packs, and custom artwork among the higher tiers. We want to make sure our Patreon offers the best possible value for you all, so please vote below and comment with your thoughts on our reward structure.

Thank you all so much for supporting the work we do. Now more than ever, it's critical that students of all ages have access to helpful and engaging content. Online learning is a hard thing to manage and many have been struggling to adapt (on both ends of the screen), so if there's an educator in your life that's currently adjusting to online schooling, please give them our personal thanks for being on the front lines of education.

Cheers all,
-Blue