Keepin' Up With KL ✦ August 2023

Hello everyone! I hope you're all having a great weekend and a good start to your September. I'm officially ready for fall to hit any minute now. Here in Alberta, this is typically the month where the furnace starts kicking in because it can get pretty cold at night and we often have the first snowfall of the year at some point in September. I'm eager to get back to sweater season after a very hot summer.

First, welcome in to all the new patrons that joined during August and in the past two days! Keepin' Up With KL is my monthly newsletter that I write at the start of every single month. This is where I share a ton of information and insight and provide updates for what's to come ahead. I always want to be as open and transparent as possible and many folks here find value in these newsletters and being involved in the behind-the-scenes of the channels. It also provides some different content here to sprinkle in between everything else and I really enjoy writing these and sharing. Thank you so much for being here!

Before I get into the meat of the newsletter, I am making some changes effective tomorrow. I don't think these are super drastic changes for most of you, but I want to talk about it anyway.

❓WHY ❓

This time of year, I get into that "Back to School" mode. I always take time to sit and reflect on how the year is going so far, how am I feeling, and do I need to make any changes to not only get rid of bad habits, but also set myself up for success for the rest of the year and then into the next?

I decided to really sit and analyze things and one of the things that I did was look at my time data. I have been tracking all of my time using an app on my phone for the past year and a half and despite tracking it, I've never properly looked at my data. Until now.

And I came to a few realizations:

• I have been consistently overworking myself because I'm trying to do too much and I think I've known that for a while but I've just been denying it and thinking it's not a problem.
• I don't feel like I have that much of a balance in my life unless I actually book time off, which is not healthy for me long-term.

I love making videos for y'all and as much as I want to bring you ALL THE THINGS, I really need to do this at a pace and capacity that is sustainable for where I'm at right now and doesn't end up breaking me. So until I can consistently afford to outsource help with my videos, I have to make some adjustments to ensure that I can keep bringing you the best me that I can bring in my videos!

⭐ CHANGES ⭐

1. An indefinite pause on kale plays - my gaming channel

• Calling it indefinite, because I'm not giving up on it completely. I just don't have the time for this channel like I thought I would have. Almost all of my 70-80 hour weeks in my time tracking app were weeks that I was working on kale plays content alongside reactions. 
• Unfortunately, TLOU and TLOU II are going to be continued on my own time. Sincere apologies to those of you who had watched my playthrough so far and were enjoying it. The TLOU vids on my channel will be taken off public view and changed to unlisted
• Discord is the space you'll want to be in to keep up with gaming chatter! I'm not sure what games I'm going to get into on my own time, but I need to fall in love with gaming again and it needs to be in a space where I don't have to be "on" for a camera and I don't have to talk for viewers. Just doing it for me.

2. No more set dates for reaction content

• I will continue to share what I'll be reacting to, so that you all know what you can look forward to, but I will no longer have a set Monday/Friday release schedule or specific dates for exclusive reactions here on Patreon.
• In looking at my time data, I've come to realize that I am terrible at predicting how long an edit may take and how copyright may handle it. Some edits end up happening super fast and some edits take forever, even if the movies are the same length. Some edits get no copyright hits at all and for some edits I have literally stayed up all night fighting multiple copyright checks and doing multiple re-edits with minimal sleep, which affects my To-Do list the following day and ends up delaying things. I'm mostly just super tired of feeling guilty when I say that a reaction will come on a certain day and then it doesn't and this has happened too much in the past.

I love what I do. I love my channel, I love this Patreon community. Y'all are the BEST and make my day every day. This is by far the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life and outweighs everything I've done in my life previously.

Please let me know if you have ANY questions and I will answer. Thank you! ❤️

August Numbers

• # of Videos: 44 total (⬆️) - 5 public videos (⬇️) and 39 for Patreon (⬆️)
• Impressions: 4,802,207 (⬆️)
• Total Channel Views: 230,642 (⬆️)
• Views on August's Videos: 37,277 (16.16%) (⬇️)
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): 3.4% (⬆️)
• Watch Time: 51,675.2 hours (⬆️)
• Average % Viewed*: 32.3% (⬇️)
• Unique Viewers: 103,163 (⬆️)
• Net New Subscribers: 934 (⬆️)

The symbols beside each data point indicate if the figures are up or down relative to the previous month. If there is an equal sign, there is no change.

* This data point tells me how much of a video that a viewer watched. Because my videos are usually longer, I like my percentage to be around 30%.

Reactions Posted

• Spider-Man: Far From Home 
• Signs 
• WandaVision - Episodes 1-3 
• WandaVision - Episodes 4-6 
• Dune 

Top Reactions in August

• Avengers: Endgame [Part 2] - 69,432 views
• Avengers: Endgame [Part 1] - 22,429 views
• Spider-Man: Far From Home - 11,107 views

Since I uploaded Endgame on the last day of July most of its views happened last month.

Top Reactions in 2023

• Avengers: Endgame [Part 2] - 84,141 views
• Captain America: Civil War - 64,955 views (⬆️ 3,209)
• Saving Private Ryan - 41,371 views (⬆️ 3,125)

Endgame pushed Spaceballs out of the Top 3!

Top Reactions on the Channel

• Revenge of the Sith - 473,801 views (⬆️ 2,206)
• Avengers: Endgame [Part 2] - 84,141 views
• Iron Man - 71,801 views (⬆️ 1,882)

Lookit that, Endgame has firmly secured a place in a top video on the channel! Are we surprised? 😂 It booted Return of the Jedi out of the Top 3.

Viewer Like/Dislike Ratios

• Most Liked Reaction: a tie with both of my WandaVision videos at 99.3% likes / 0.7% dislikes.
• Most Disliked Reaction: Signs with 98.2% likes / 1.8% dislikes.

- - - 

Since I took time off at the start of August and then had so much focus on Star Wars exclusives here on Patreon, I didn't put out that many videos on the channel. However, this worked out because of the success with my Endgame reaction. It worked out to be one of my better months in the channel's history.

Something to celebrate: The channel hit 20,000 subscribers on the evening of September 1st! 🥳 Thank you, thank you!

I am very excited for everything I'll be watching this month! Robocop went out two days ago and that reactions performance has exceeded my expectations. I'm personally really looking forward to Mallrats, The Matrix, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier the most. 

As per the changes I described above, the original dates I shared for reactions this month probably won't all happen exactly on those days. But everything listed there is what I'll be working on. 😊

I am going to do another YouTube poll at some point this month and I'll share the details of that here too once it's up, so keep an eye out!

Patreon Lounge

I will be using this a lot more to provide little updates to y'all, especially now that I don't have a set release schedule. The Lounge is currently accessible through the Patreon Mobile App. It's like a chat room that we all can talk in. I don't know if they are going to bring this feature to the website - I hope so!

There are two lounges:

• kaiielle's Lounge - open to everyone. I'll use this to bring updates on movie reactions for the channel and other chit-chatty things!
• Exclusive Series Lounge - open to all of the Insiders tiers. I'll use this to bring updates on the exclusive reactions.

Insider Reactions

I am incredibly sorry for the unintentional break that I've taken the past two weeks with these. The reactions will be resuming this week. I'm very eager to start these shows, I just needed a reset and to figure out a plan for myself. Thank you for your patience. ❤️

Patreon Shop

I've made some progress on this that you'll notice if you pop in there. I'm still really annoyed about Patreon's minimum price for a listing, but it hasn't deterred some folks from purchasing, so maybe it's fine. I might still lower the price in the future if the option is given to me.

Bundled Reactions

For obvious reasons, I am unable to make all of my bundled reactions available as part of membership at all tier levels. If a bundle is $15, then my $15 tier and up will have access to it, but the tiers below that won't. That said... If you have paid the price of a bundle (or more) through your membership history here and you would like access to those MP4's, please send me a DM and I will send the link to you. Also, if you would like access to a specific MP4 that is part of a bundle, you can DM me for this too. Example: you want just The Empire Strikes Back, but none of the other Star Wars watchalongs.

Member of the Month

If you missed it, Manic_Expressions was our winner for September and they picked The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Even though this should have been a childhood movie for me, it never was! I know I've watched scenes from the movie over the years, but I have zero recollection of sitting through the whole thing. I am very excited to give this a watch, so thank you Manic!

And Your Regular Patreon Reminders - Mostly for New Folks

• Early Insiders Tier: If you are currently in this tier and you process a cancellation of your membership, your spot does become available to someone else immediately. This means that you might not be able to re-join this tier later.
• Annual Memberships: If you think you're gonna hang around here for a long time and you want to save some money, you can switch from monthly to annual at any time and save 10% on your membership! You can do this in your Membership settings. This also qualifies you immediately for Member of the Month if you've been here less than 6 months.
• Discord Server: I always like to remind you about my server, where you can chat with myself and others in the community a bit better in real-time on a daily basis and it's a great way to connect. I've hosted some movie nights recently (for movies I've seen before) and I have watch parties for the TV show Gotham almost every Saturday morning (my time). We are almost halfway through Season 2 right now. To join, sync your Discord account in your Patreon settings and you'll be automatically put into the server. Since opening the server to the public, we've had some people from YouTube come and join us in the space and it's been great getting to know some folks a bit better!

In my Discord server, watch parties for Mr. Robot will be starting on Saturday, Sept 9. I've been hosting watch parties for Gotham for the past few months, but Netflix removed it at the end of August and it's not on any other streaming service in Canada. So we are moving on. Mr. Robot is one of my favourite shows of all-time and if you'd like to join us, just pop yourself in there and make sure to click Interested on the weekly events. I am really excited to re-watch this and have some folks join us who have never watched it before. Watch parties happen on every Saturday that I don't have any other plans and we watch two episodes each time.

In August, I went to see Barbie and Oppenheimer in theatres back-to-back (on a Friday night and Saturday night). Here's my review for Barbie and my review for Oppenheimer. I'm very glad I took the time to go see them on the big screen.

I'm 60 days into learning Japanese and nearly 200 words learned. 👏 I have just reached a point where if I pull up a Japanese vlog on YouTube, I can recognize a few words! I can't wait until I can actually understand full sentences. Right now I'm focusing a lot on sentence structure, practicing mora (which is a struggle as a native English speaker), and pitch accent. This video made me laugh, but also gave me some huge understanding on how sentences are structured. I've realized that the way Japanese speak when translated directly into English is similar to how Yoda talks. Not exactly 100% accurate, but pretty darn close anyway. If you're on Duolingo, feel free to follow me! Username is still kaiielle over there.

I have a concert I'm attending this month and it's another meet-the-band concert! I can't wait. Aside from that, it's gonna be a chill September. I'm looking forward to the leaves turning orange and yellow and for the cool weather to really hit.

• What was your favourite reaction of mine in August? Either YouTube or Patreon Exclusive.
• Is anyone else playing Starfield right now? I feel like ALL of my friends have dove head first into this game. 😂 Just wondering how many of you are too!
• I'm curious who you watch on YouTube for reaction content in addition to me! Some of you have shared other channels in the comments and also in my Discord server, so I want to throw that question out to you all! I've discovered some new channels this way!

- - - 

I am filled with gratitude every time I write these newsletters and your excitement and kind words always make me smile, so THANK YOU SO MUCH. ❤️