I have stated elsewhere… in fact, I have probably stated in multiple elsewheres… that my Worldbuilder Youtube channel is in fact, my third attempt at Youtube. The first two attempts were purely driven by a desire to make money. In both cases I crashed and burned. Hard. The first attempt was… for lack of a better term… horrendous. The second attempt was only slightly better… in the same way that being hit by a speeding bus is slightly better than being hit by a speeding train. In one case, dental records might be used to identify the body… and in the other, they would probably be useless… but either way the mess could be cleaned up with a squeegee.
With that in mind, money was not the motivation for starting the Worldbuilder channel. I am a creative person with a need to create and creative minds love to share… and so the channel was born as an expression for my creative side. And for two years, I have been having a lot of fun with it… which was exactly the point. I had no intention of making money with it, and that was just as well as I seriously doubted that I actually could make money with it.
However, the view looks very different from where I am standing today. Last week I was accepted into the Youtube Partner program and I am within sight of full monetization. I never thought these things would be feasible for me… but one is done and the other is probably just a matter of time and effort. This has led to some serious inner thought.
Before I get to what came out of all that introspection, let me digress for a second and mention the movie Office Space. I know a lot of you have probably watched it. I know a lot of you probably enjoyed it… maybe you even love it. I think a good bit of that is because many of you can absolutely relate to it. I know I certainly can.
And after over 30 years in the corporate world, I have lived out many of those scenarios firsthand… over and over and over. In fact, I still do… Monday through Friday every week. And my dilemma is pretty close to what Peter faced. He was the main character in Office Space. The soulless corporate treadmill can certainly bring in more money… at the cost of my time, energy, health, and sometimes… my very soul and conscience. Or I can go do something else that is more satisfying, meaningful and dare I hope…fun… but at a severe financial cost.
Unlike Peter, I don’t have my whole life ahead of me. I am approaching the home stretch. Though I still have two kids to put through college, I am only about ten years from being able to walk away from the corporate grind forever and still be able to feed myself and enjoy indoor plumbing. But to bring this back to the Worldbuilder channel, I think there is a possibility… a chance… a tiny opening… to bring that day around sooner rather than later. But before I get to that, let me digress again and talk about the nature of retirement… at least through my perspective.
Depending on who you are, you might define retirement as that time at which you can sleep in every day… perhaps all day… do what you want, when you want, however you want, and with whomever you want. Yeah… for most people… including me… that kind of retirement is completely out of the question… unless you are a cat. The truth is that unless you were really, REALLY good at saving and investing your entire life (or you won the lottery), you will still need some kind of hustle or side hustle to supplement your savings, investments, or pension to prevent starving to death a few years into your retirement. Therefore, from my point of view… retirement is when I no longer must work for somebody else to be able to pay for my living expenses. I fully expect to still be working to supplement my income, but I will be working directly for my family and me. I will work on my schedule, with the benefits coming directly to me (no middle men taking their share and passing on what’s left)… and it will be up to me as to how much or how little I need to put into it. Frankly, I won’t need all that much.
So at that point, I could teach classes at the community college, blow glass, be a chainsaw artist, write books or I could even greet folks coming into Walmart or Home Depot. It’s really up to me… and I think I have already found what I want to do. This. I want to be the Worldbuilder in my retirement. I am having a whole lot of fun with this, and I think I could build it up to the point where it could be enough to be my “forever” job for the rest of my life. However, that is not the same (and not enough) to replace my current job and income in the here and now. For my niche, I just don’t think that will ever be feasible.
But if I can build the channel up into a proper business and it is able to achieve the kinds of numbers that I think are possible, maybe I can retire sooner rather than later. That’s important to me. Last year, I buried my best friend of 44 years. He worked the corporate ladder like a world class champion and he had it all… the position, money, lifestyle… you name it. He finally retired and he was dead less than 10 days later. I know they say you can’t take it with you, but it would have been nice if he had some real time to enjoy it while he had it.
So I want to hasten the day where I can spend even more time playing my games and hanging out with all of you. Your comments, and appreciation really mean a great deal to me. I know that I say that, and I know that you understand the words I say… but I don’t think you really understand just how much those words really mean to me. Maybe one day you will… but even before then, I am sure you can imagine how much I would want to put the whole TPS report paradigm behind me… and live my life for my family and me and not some faceless economist in a government or corporate basement someplace.
But what does it mean for the channel specifically? I dunno. I am thinking about it.
At the moment, I am leaning about 75% toward starting channel memberships. It would be something like $2.99 per month and I would enable all the stuff in the release queue to be available to subscribers before the public release. There might be some livestreaming… but I would need to learn how to set that up and run it. I might make my custom mods and datapacks available to subscribers. In fact, I might make Curseforge profiles of my series available as well as save game files to go with them. I am also thinking of letting channel members “sponsor” (name) certain NPCs in my Let’s Play series.
I am still trying to think it through and there might be some more ideas that come of that. If you have any ideas… or even just any thoughts/feedback about this… please feel free to drop a comment on the Community tab for the channel. And thank you again… for helping to get me to the point where this is even feasible. Cheers!