3 Years later…
I’ve decided to write one of these posts every year to keep you guys up to date about this website and my YouTube channel. I was originally gonna post this in August when the site turned 3 years old, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to write anything that wasn’t a complaint. But now that things have settled down, here we go.
~Looking back on 2019~
This year a lot of things happened. I hit Ten Thousand Subscribers on YouTube and Two Million hits on this website. As a sole content creator working in a niche corner of the internet, those numbers are actually really high. This year, I also became someone that you may know in God Eater 3.
But I couldn’t acknowledge and appreciate these achievements because 2019 was also the worst year I’ve ever had.
I won’t complain about everything that happened this year because you don’t hit up BK Brent’s Game Guides to come see me whine. I’ll just say that I was kind of in a cycle of non-stop fuck ups from the end of last year until about October where just about everything was going wrong. It had me feeling hollow, apathetic and pissed off all the time.
In spite of that, I still pressed forward and dedicated myself to God Eater 3. I wasn’t in any kind of state where I could put together any good or coherent guides for this website, so I just kinda half-assed some posts here and there, and then tried to polish my GE3 skills, improving 1% at a time on YouTube.
The whole time I was doing that, IRL events had me crippled by depression and I was looking at everything through a dark cloud of negativity. I ended up thinking about how much of a liability and a detriment this website was to me. Simply because it both serves as a full time job as well as a full time investment.
I pay $300 USD on hosting a year for this website and then on top of that, I still have to dedicate myself to making content and doing maintenance for it. I don’t even live in the USA so that hosting fee gets multiplied by the exchange rate. It sort of felt like this website was just a parasite ruthlessly sucking up all of my time and money.
That’s why I wanted to close this website.
Actually, I was going to close it without saying a word to anyone about anything. It was that kind of year.
Then as time went on, I started to think about things rationally again. Before I made any quick decisions I thought some more. Thought about changing hosting, adding more advertising, being more upfront about the situation and about asking for donations.
I thought that this website shouldn’t end here. Especially for such a weak reason as being frustrated that it wants a lot from me. I’ve come too far to just give up now.
I mean, fundamentally, I love writing guides and helping people. It was specifically the necessary yellow tape around it that I hated. The need for funding and the constant need for effort or else it seems like the funding was wasted.
In the end, I decided I should keep this website going.
There are a lot of reasons to close the website and a lot of reasons to keep it alive. But the most important thing fueling that decision was that if I gave up here, I would betray my past self that worked himself to the bone to get this website to where it is now. The only real way I can honor his sacrifice is by continuing the dream and elevating it even further.
All edginess aside, its like I always say: “Never Give Up“.
~So What Now?~
I have some short term plans like making the website more lightweight, reducing the amount of advertising you see and making the mobile version look better. I do have some long term plans as well, such as making guides for two new games I am interested in.
I also want to eventually power up the God Eater 3 section of this website even more. But I’ll get to these in an ‘Upcoming Projects’ post soon.
For now, I just need to not think so hard about this website and just accept it as a standard part of my life. If I plan on growing it even more and keeping it running for the years to come, that’s how I need to approach it. I think that if I can do that and continue at my own pace, I can make something players can continue to rely on for certain niche games in the future.
The other thing is that I’m going to put a progress bar somewhere on the site that shows how much donations I have received, and how much more I would need before I reach the goal of $300 USD per year.
So if someone appreciates my work and gazes upon that progress bar, maybe they can feel like they can make a difference.
Currently, I am paying for the website out of my own pocket with a supplement from whatever my YouTube ad earnings can bring in. That was the plan when I decided to invest in this website, but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t let people help me if they want to. Especially when I’m struggling and could use any kind of help to keep this site alive.
That’s why I’m gonna go ahead and post this here:
You would have no idea how much any donation amount would go towards the running of this site or my YouTube. It would mean I’d have more money for proper recording equipment and a certain peace of mind when thinking of hosting costs that I have never felt in the 3 years I’ve been running this website.
If you’ve ever been helped by this website or even if you just want to see it continue to exist, maybe you should consider turning off your adblock or donating. I hate when internet personalities ask for your money so I try very hard to not do the same, but its undeniable that having users donate would help me tremendously.
Even during off-peak times of the year when the guides on this site are old, this site still gets about 1000 to 2000 hits a day. I’m sure many of the users just take it for granted and as something that will always be there, but if a real life crisis happens to me or something, this website will be the first expense I cut.
That will be the most logical decision if something like that happens.
…
But hey, the purpose of this post wasn’t to give you a roundabout story of whining and talk about how I could earnestly use your help. The purpose of this post was to give you an insight into what I’m going through and how it affects the future of this website.
The future of bkbrent.com isn’t really something that’s guaranteed, given that I’m doing everything here myself as some kind of super hobby. That’s why I’m just gonna take it one year at a time at my own pace and continue to see how it goes.
In any case, I hope 2020 is a normal year void of any negative bullshit and so that I can just focus on playing games, writing guides and having fun.
Thank you for reading.