Hey there folks, I have wanted to do some behind the scenes type videos for a while, so let’s take a look at where all of these videos are made. This video is brought to you by our Patrons over on Patreon and our Youtube channel members, but more on that later.
My work from home space is in a small studio in our back yard. The walk out here is a lot prettier in the summer when everything is growing, but this is what it looks like at the end of November. I have a couple of spider Farmer tents out on the porch, these are strictly for testing lights at the moment and will not have grows going in them. On the left is their 5’x5’ grow tent, and on the right is the 2’x4’ tent, which leaves just enough room for the door.
Once you are inside the space, you can see the set of bins on the left of the door that has all of my small computer parts in it. Under that are my hoodies draped over my tripod, which I am obviously not using at the moment. Panning around you can see a short 4’x4’ grow tent which is just for testing at the moment, and then my desk. I have a 4k TV as my main monitor, with three 1080p displays off to the side.
When I need to record audio, my microphone pulls out from the side of the desk, along with my headphones. I have my stereo, printer and various tools off to the right side of the screens, and you can see the GoPro Hero 9 that some of the recent footage has been taken with. Looking up on the ceiling, you can see two of the sound deadening panels that I built using rockwool insulation and a couple of 1×4’s that are working out really well. The 2’x2’ tent that is in here now was originally for testing, but has a grow going in it at the moment for the second channel.
I have a water bubbling system going on the desk next to the tent, and you can see some of the movie posters I have around the space. There are four more of the sound deadening panels on the back wall, which are behind me when I am working on videos. Between the two panels on the ceiling and the four on this wall, they do a really great job of cleaning up my audio.
You can also see the table I do a lot of the unboxing videos on, and then on the floor you can see the grid I have made out of blue tape that I use to test all of the light levels that you see in our light reviews. It isn’t a very big space, and I have made as much use of it as I can for sure.
Now, I mentioned at the beginning that this video is brought to you by our Patrons on Patreon and our Youtube Channel members, and I wanted to talk a bit about that and about the grow series that are coming up. You may or may not know this, but a lot of creators make money on the platform by having ads run on their channels that Youtube places there. You may even see one on this video. However, for cannabis creators any video that shows the plant itself, which is the vast majority of our videos, you cannot run ads. That means that to make this sustainable, I am going to have to get creative.
The sponsors on our videos that provide much of the gear that we use are one pillar of the channel that makes this possible. We get to use gear that we love, and the companies get shown to our audience, which is great for both of us. However, there are a lot of costs that come with running a channel that are not gear related, and then there is just the raw amount of time that this takes.
Gear wise, there are the cameras that I use to make videos like this. We use a Sony ZV-1 for a lot of the footage, and I recently got a good deal on the GoPro 9 that I mentioned earlier. Gearing up for the upcoming indoor grows, we increased the number of cameras that we have exponentially. Each plant this year is going to have two cameras on it, along with a battery backup, the cages and mounts to hold it all along with the cables required to hook it up. That adds up to about $350 in costs for each plant that we will have going this winter. There are website costs, music costs, and so many other things. Past any gear costs, I also spend twenty hours or so a week working on these videos, mostly between the hours of 8pm and 2am. A person’s time has a cost associated with it, and I have often called Youtube the worst paying part time job ever.
Now, I am not saying any of this to look for pity, or for anyone to feel bad for me. I do it all willingly. However, I am trying to make it sustainable. To that end, you are going to be hearing more about Patreon and Youtube memberships in the upcoming videos. You are going to see more plugs talking about the sponsors of the videos, and I am hoping that this video will help you to understand why that is. Any time someone signs up to be a Patron or Member, that is money that mostly goes right to us. When you use an Amazon affiliates link, a very small portion of that goes to us. When you use our links and codes to the gear sponsors for this channel, we will occasionally get a small portion of that as well. All of it adds up and helps to make this more sustainable.
I spend every single penny that I get from ads run on this channel right back into it. I actually am still spending more on the channel that it has ever made, and that is because I want to see it grow. However, if you want to help the channel to grow, to see it succeed, and possibly to let me do this full time to bring you even more content, consider supporting us in one of the ways that I have mentioned. Patrons and Members get early access to all of our videos, usually a few days to a week ahead of time. You have ways to directly contact me, and I recently started up a discord server for those folks. I even have a couple of more fun tiers up on Patreon right now, and you can sponsor one of the tents themselves for upcoming grows, which could be a lot of fun.
For the most part, you are all super understanding about all of this. I provide all of this content, free for everyone to watch. If this is going to be sustainable, I am going to have to start pushing these alternate revenue streams though, and that is going to rub some people the wrong way. I get it, I really do and if it is enough to push you away from the content, I will be sorry to see you go. However, I am hoping that you understand why this is happening, and even if you cannot support us in any way other than watching the video, liking, commenting and maybe sharing it, I get that too. I am just happy that you folks even want to watch our videos.
We are up over 60k subscribers now, and that is amazing. I am looking forward to growing this channel with all of you to up over 100k subscribers sometime next year, and even further after that. Thank you all for being awesome, and I am excited to see how this all goes moving forward.