It’s been a busy year filming Lego videos. Plenty of new ideas were tried, new Lego builds constructed and new revenue sources established. Let’s review 2023 both creatively and financially. The previous 2022 October review can be read here.
Revenue
The total revenue in 2023 was 140 thousand USD. That is a 30% decrease from 2022. Not the best result possible, but I’m ok with it.
Breakdown by revenue source in 2023. YouTube makes 90% of the pie.
- 127000 USD – YouTube
- 3000 USD – Facebook (BeyondTheBrick)
- 4800 USD – BuildaMOC
- 2900 USD – BiliBili (Influcity)
- 3000 USD – TikTok (BeyondTheBrick)
Expenses
Total expenses in 2023 were 4900 USD. This is only 4% of the revenue, which is a similar low level as in previous years. 1800 USD was spent on Lego parts and 3100 USD on other stuff like background sheets, electronics, lighting equipment and company operational expenses.
Work time
Total work time was roughly 2000 hours. That is 40 hours per week, which is a normal full time job in Finland.
The bulk of the time was spent on filming and editing videos. The rest goes to developing new video ideas, ordering parts, answering emails, bookkeeping, and writing articles for this blog.
My hourly rate was 70 USD/hour.
YouTube stats
In 2023 my YouTube channel received 189M views and added 320k subscribers. The subscriber count is now 3.25 million.
YouTube views and RPM have been both declining for the past 2 years. The cause is probably increased competition from channels like Brick Technology and Dr Engine and also viewers just getting bored with the content.
More key stats and how they have changed during the years.
| Year | Views | Likes-% | CTR | Avg view duration | RPM | CPM | Playback-based CPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 12M | 96.3% | 7.9% | 2:28 (45%) | 0.78 | 2.98 | 3.25 |
| 2019 | 47M | 96.4% | 6.2% | 2:43 (40%) | 0.99 | 3.52 | 4.10 |
| 2020 | 168M | 97.2% | 5.9% | 2:39 (39%) | 1.00 | 2.81 | 3.28 |
| 2021 | 285M | 96.5% | 5.2% | 2:26 (39%) | 1.01 | 2.50 | 3.21 |
| 2022 | 232M | 97.3% | 7.1% | 2:08 (37%) | 0.79 | 2.39 | 3.03 |
| 2023 | 190M | 97.8% | 6.7% | 2:03 (35%) | 0.67 | 2.86 | 3.76 |
Most of the views come from the United States.
New videos
12 new videos were released in 2023.
The most watched was Building 10 MOVABLE Lego Bridges with 11 million views and 3:24 average view duration.
Most watched videos
The top 5 watched videos in 2023 were mostly from earlier years. Making Lego Car CROSS Gaps was filmed in 2021 but it still gets more views than any other video.
Most sold Lego kits
The most popular kit was 20 Mechanical Principles Machine with 181 units sold in the year 2023. The only other kit, 5 Engine Models, was released at the end of 2023 and it sold only 13 units.
Key moments financially
TikTok income, finally. Beyond The Brick asked to post a few of my videos on TikTok and give me a share of the Creativity Program Beta income. I’m glad they did. My videos have so far generated 50 million views and the RPM is 0.12 (from which I get a share). This is especially nice because of the vast amount of stolen videos on TikTok. Finally, I got something back.
One new Lego kit: 5 Engine Models. It is based on an old video. The primary reason for turning it into a kit was 150 comments asking where you can buy these engine parts. Also, the builds are 100% Lego which makes them easy to convert into a sellable kit. Unfortunately, the kit has sold less than I expected – only 13 units so far. The reason is probable a lack of promotion, because the video doesn’t get much views anymore.
Affiliate links with BuWizz. This is the first time I’ve tried affiliate marketing. The links were added to the description field of two videos that contain BuWizz products. Unfortunately, the results have been poor. Only 3 referrals that amounted to 53 EUR commission. You should note that the video description was the only way I marketed the links. Nothing was mentioned in the video content or the comments. But, regardless, only 3 referrals from 7 million views is still a very low transfer rate.
Rebrickable profile was created for BrickExperimentChannel. The purpose is to share the part list and building instructions for my MOCs. I hope it also gets someone to buy my kits on BuildaMOC, but so far I haven’t seen any indication of that (might even do the opposite). As a side note, I’m very satisfied with how well the Rebrickable site is built. Very easy to use, contains clear instructions, and has no bugs or slowness you find on many other sites.
One negative thing I want to mention is the cooperation with InfluCity. Everything went well for the first 6 months, but then they suddenly stopped releasing my videos on BiliBili, stopped answering emails for 3 months and even Q2 payment was overdue. Eventually, they did respond and I got the money, but that left a sour taste in the cooperation. If I had to start again, I would try to create and run the BiliBili account myself without a 3rd party company. Let that be a suggestion to any of you thinking about expanding to BiliBili.
Key moments in video content
A major image quality problem was found and solved. Below is an example from my bridges video. See the jagged edges? Turns out Adobe Premiere 14 imports the Sony AVCHD files with the wrong interlacing setting. Field order is set to Upper Field First when it should be No Fields (progressive scan). You have to manually change it after import. This problem is visible in almost everything I’ve released for the past 3 years, until last summer. Thanks to Nico71 for so helpfully pointing this out.
Experiments with various background/surface materials. The bridge video was filmed on a blue Yoga mat. The doors video was on a black imitation leather sheet. The mega tank video used a beige polyester fabric and the axle test video a dark gray IKEA plasterboard. And many more. If I have time, I’ll write a blog post about the experiences.
Experiments with audio design. For the first time ever I made a full video (the tank battle video) without recording any audio. All sounds were created in post production. It is surprisingly easy. You save a lot of time in filming because you don’t need to set up microphones for every shot (and you can listen to music and podcasts while shooting, which is nice). I downloaded tank engine noises, squeaking track sounds, cannon shots and ambient soundscapes from www.freesound.org and YouTube. Then I just modified the samples with Pitch Shifter, Parametric Equalizer, Reverb/Dereverb effects or simply changing the play speed. A lot of trial and error was needed, but the result is good in my opinion.
Proper color correction/grading, based on a 2-step process. This was another new thing I learned for the tank battle video. First I corrected all different shots to a neutral look, so that white balance, exposure and saturation matched in all shots. This phase becomes easier if you focus on a minifig head, a red brick and other objects that re-appear in consecutive shots. Lumetri scopes in Premiere (image below) also help a lot. The second phase is the color grading for stylistic choices. For the tank video, I recreated something resembling the bleach bypass filter popularized by Saving Private Ryan. This 2-step process made the workflow faster and also improved the video quality in my opinion.
Lighting improvements. For the 200 wheel Lego vehicle video I changed the light bulbs in my apartment. The previous 100 wheel video had grainy footage, so this needed to be improved. I bought six 2500 lumen household LED bulbs, the brightest I could find in a local store. Those were installed in the regular ceiling lights I have in three rooms. Besides those, I had two light stands, so the total was 25 thousand lumen, which felt almost like outdoor daylight. 🙂 It significantly improved the image quality of the video. I’ll definitely use this solution in the future whenever moving cars and such are filmed around the apartment.
Music related videos. In early 2023 I did 3 videos about Lego musical instruments. One of them, the Dragonforce cover, was received very well and got the highest upvote percentage (99.6%) I’ve ever seen. People really liked that and the other music videos as well. But, unfortunately, they didn’t get much views, so I have not continued making more of them.
Future?
I’ll just continue creating more videos one at a time.
One new possibility I’ve been investigating is YouTube shorts, but it seems the RPM is quite low and the view counts are uncertain. We’ll see.
Brick Experiment Channel 