MrBiffo
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BLOG: DIGI VS THE VATICAN
🕑 Added 2024-09-11 14:35:59 +0000 UTCHello gang.
Happy… ah, Wednesday. Apologies for the silence thus far this week. After the past fortnight or so focused on our chocolate video, I had to knuckle down and get some day job stuff done. I'm very behind on replying to messages, so if you're waiting on one from me... sorry.
We have begun work on the next video. It’s delving back into conspiracies – though this isn’t some fantasy conspiracy theory, but something that actually happened… and involves the City of London, the Mafia, the Freemasons, the Vatican and the CIA. So… it’s a biggun (hell-oh!)… but we’ll be tackling it in our usual tongue-in-cheek way.
It spun out of people suggesting we do the City of London, but then I found another story while looking into it. I’m trying to stay focused, as there are so many tangential rabbit holes I could wander down.
Digi is doing okay. August was very quiet. Aldermaston hasn’t done as well as we’d hoped – dropping it in the middle of the summer holidays was a mistake, and it deserved much better. By comparison, the York one has done slightly better than we expected.
Both are up in terms of views from where we were before we adopted this new format, and we’re still putting on subscribers. We could be putting them on faster though! Anyway. We’ll get there.
The past month or so has very much been a bit of an experiment for us, trying different approaches (though you may not have noticed) and doing a LOT of research. The last two videos were the first we’d done after signing up for VidIQ, and I took the course that they offer.
We tried out some of the advice, and while it has been useful to a point… a lot of it we’re choosing to ignore. It doesn’t feel like it has significantly helped our views.
Regardless, we’re more focused than we’ve ever been on giving our videos the best chance they have – while also balancing that with keeping you furnished with the sort of nonsense you’ve enjoyed in the past. We want to keep Sanja and I – and our stupid bantering – front and centre, and I don’t feel we always got the balance right in the last couple of videos.
I feel I’ve focused kind of too much on scripted facts, which hasn’t left us time to do what we enjoy doing best, which is just wandering around commenting on things. Also, it’s EXHAUSTING having to remember all that stuff and say it on camera, so we’re approaching the new video a little bit differently.
So much of what VidIQ recommends doesn’t really value free-thinking or creativity. One of their tips is literally to copy… copy successful video formats, copy thumbnails, copy titles… I get it – you’re trying to get your stuff out there – but that kind of thing is anathema to me. The new video we’re working on doesn’t break our format, but I’m going to be trying some new things, because I need to try new stuff to keep me interested.
OTHER BITS
In other news… I feel like I’m coming out the end of a very dark few months. We’ve sort of hit a new normal over the situation with my mum, and we’ve accepted where we’re at for now.
With her in the nursing home – though she isn’t ever really going to get better from here – it is giving us more time to do stuff than we’ve had over the past couple of years. I know I’ve gone on about it in blog posts, but I don’t think I’ve really conveyed just how difficult things have been for the whole family.
Taking care of her in the two years after my dad died, we were seeing just how much of a buffer he had been, and that she was – perhaps – already displaying signs of the dementia that has now pretty much consumed her. We couldn’t work out why there were loads of us caring for her, and it still wasn’t enough.
Anyway. I’m feeling more optimistic about the future than I’ve done in a long time, and we’re just about ready to get on and finish Digi Level 2.
Those of you missing our characters and Found Footage will be VERY pleased. I’ve said before that the last couple of eps are kind of a greatest hits of every incarnation of Digi to date, and we’re going all out. We want it to be a glorious reward for those of you who have stuck by us though a difficult time.
That’s it for now. Some of you I’ll see for Biffo’s Brain tonight! More soon.
Paul
Comments
Paul Rose (Mr Biffo)
Yeah, it's for people who want to follow the success of others. All bow down at the altar of Mr Beast!
Paul Rose (Mr Biffo)
We'll do stuff occasionally that's like the old stuff, and we'll put it here, but the reason we stopped doing things like that is we weren't really finding it satisfying anymore. We only have so many hours a day to make stuff, and we'd rather focus on that which we find fulfilling. Totally understand that this might disappoint people, and that it might lose us some viewers/Patrons. We've had to accept that. I mean, also... I'm getting older, to be completely frank with you, and doing that sort of content started to feel a bit undignified. It's a young person's game, and there are plenty of young people doing it better than we could. I'd rather fold what we used to do into the new format - so, like the past two vids, you will still see stuff like characters and Corner Shop Corner from time to time. We'll always have humour as part of what we do, whatever it is.
Rich Anderson
VidIQ is a strange one to be sure. Very useful for seeing what was successful but less so for making ‘mould breaking’ content in the first place. I’ve left it all turned on (I did the cheapest trial a year ago) and it still wants my attention. The keyword dumps and such do seem to help with long term clicks but the general stuff isn’t as helpful
Gary Murray
Would you consider putting videos like you used to do (corner shop corner ect) on digilevel2 or will u make them exclusive to patreon? Just to be clear I like all the content u make, it's just I have seen people asking about older style content. 👍
