Back to the Grind
Let’s talk scheduling changes and growth
I’ve spent this week slowly returning to my normal, hectic life after two weeks completely disconnected from work, a healthy diet, and an alarm clock. My two boys return to school today (my youngest starts kindergarten—when the hell did THAT happen?!). I think I’m caught back up at work (famous last words). This means one item on my return-from-vacation list remains.
My Extra Life campaign.
While I’ve seen incredible success over the years, my goal remains growth year over year, which I fell short of for the first time in 2022. While I wouldn’t call last year a disappointment by any means, my competitive nature sought a rebound this year.
My primary focus is stream growth, a step I basically skipped. Most successful Extra Lifers build a solid streaming following or have a local event within their community. Growth then comes from reaching outside that comfort zone and even people outside their local community. To put it another way, I did this backwards.
The following that I created on the internet came largely blogging and shitposting about college football on Twitter. I learned how to market our site and our eventual podcast to that crowd. I saw some moderate success to that crowd with Extra Life (some are annual donors and stream watchers!), but it didn’t land as well once the actual football hot takes were removed from the equation.
That’s all a long way of saying (remember: blogger background) that I’m still figuring out how to market/grow my stream and grow this unique community that y’all are a part of. With Elon Musk shoving Twitter (or X or whatever he decides it is today) off a cliff, it’s time for new tactics.
New Streaming Schedule
Starting next week, I will stream twice a week. Streams will still start at 9 PM CDT, but will now include Tuesday as well as Thursday. I will also look to keep streams to two hours instead of three. Hopefully, I’ll be able to conclude streams before I lose y’all to sleep so I can actually raid other streamers as that’s a very handy networking tool in the Twitch tool belt.
Also, once a month, I’ll have a Crowd Control stream. This month, I’m aiming for Friday, August 18. This stream will also serve as my $75K raised celebration stream. Details to come, but I’m putting the date out there so I don’t kick the can any further down the road.
This new schedule also allows for something else…
The Notre Dame NCAA ‘14 Sims Return
Remember that whole idea I had about locking the Sims behind donation incentives? Yeah, bad idea. Not doing it. Killing potential growth and fun.
We’ll have about an hour of whatever craziness The Sim pops out and an hour of gaming to follow. Stream will be the Tuesday of any Notre Dame game week.
The only thing that I’m sticking to in my initial Sim announcement is no Tennessee State because I won’t be able to find a roster and doing the generic FCS teams in NCAA ‘14 will simply be a boring romp and I’d rather stream Tears of the Kingdom.
Offline Content Schedule
My non-streaming schedule will work as follows:
Monday - Substack Newsletter & Thursday Stream VoD (Hour 1)
Tuesday - Thursday Stream VoD (Hour 2)
Wednesday - Highlights from most recent monthly Crowd Control Stream
Thursday - Tuesday Stream VoD (Hour 1 aka ND Sim)
Friday - Tuesday Stream VoD (Hour 2)
First of the Month - Extra Voices Podcast
Eventually, I would love to extend this to having a non-streaming “let’s play” series on Wednesdays; however, I don’t want to get too far over my skis. I have a feeling this schedule is more than enough and I’m still working my video editing speed/skills.
New Discord Coming Soon
I’m sunsetting the Extra Life spaces in the HLS Discord and creating a new Gamin’ 4 Aven Discord server.
The main purpose of the server is really a notification feed. With Twitter getting X’d, Bluesky having a limited audience, and Facebook/Instagram/Threads being unpredictable on when you actually see posts, I need a something reliable and timely to let you know when I go live or post.
As the community grows, I’m hoping it will also be a space to share ideas and brainstorm new ways to torture me for donations.
Server information will be in Monday’s news letter as I finalize the testing that has been on-going for weeks!
Spread the Word!
Heck, do it right now by pressing this button!
I’ll have handy, social media friendly schedule graphics in the Monday newsletter starting next week. Please post, re-post, email, or carrier pigeon it around and let people know about what I do.
I have a lot of really great ideas in the hopper, but they will only be effective with a larger crowd (and I’m talking like a double-digit concurrent viewers or close, nothing absurd). The best, absolutely free thing that you can do is let people know what I’m doing and when I’m doing it.
Whether YouTube, Twitch, podcasts, or even the written word is their thing, I’ll have something for them!
I’m recharged and ready to end this year strong. Let’s smash every fundraising milestone that I’ve set to date!
