We decided to review what was accomplished in the past year, as well as where we’re going with CubeLab Media in the coming weeks, months, and through the next year. It’s important to do this analysis in order to see the progress made and decide if we’re making proper movement for the future. Since 2021 has come to a close, and 2022 is off to the races, let’s take a look.
We’re going to look at this by asking ourselves three questions
- What was successful
- What was a failure
- What do we want to do more of
I think it should be obvious that the answers to these questions are going to be very subjective. We can’t compare ourselves to larger, more established content creators. We can only compare it to what we’ve done in the past, and in particular what we’ve done this year.
Ok, still with me? Good. Let’s put on our lab coats and start researching!
Review What was Successful 🥳
First, let’s look at the good. While 2021 was a mess for everyone, some good did happen here at CLM. We can be proud of our accomplishments, regardless of the size and scope.
The LabCast Youtube Channel
The LabCast posted or scheduled to post, 25 videos in 2021. That’s an amazing amount of videos for a small content creator!
We’ve seen 3,647 views with 24 new subscribers bringing us to 42 subs. Sure, not exactly millions, but since we really just started posting I’d say that’s not too shabby!
Why don’t you run over there and subscribe to help boost those numbers! 😉
Music Releases
We’re always excited when we release any music. It’s part of who we are and we’re super proud of what we’ve done.
GreyHalo released 2 songs.
Thaddius Lord released 5 songs.
Samurai Owl released 29 songs! Wow, that’s a lot of songs in one year!
The CubeLab Home Office
Starting a business of any kind is important, and making sure the ‘home office’ is rockin’ and rollin’ is good.
We’ve published 24 posts on this website. Traffic coming into the site was around 485 visitors, which really isn’t much. But it’s something!
The CubeLab Shop has over 40 products listed!
Review Our Failure 😑
No one really likes to look at failures. It makes us feel bad. However, it’s important to look at where things went wrong. It helps you to focus better in the future. If we’ve realized anything in the past few years it’s that when you erase the past you’re doomed to repeat it. So let’s not run from the bad. Let’s learn from it. Then plan to fix past mistakes in order to grow and do better.
The LabCast Podcast.
Let’s start with the downright ugly. We had a podcast. It was probably the most directionless podcast ever produced. I have no idea how to write a podcast. I tried. It was a one-man show with really nowhere to go. I had some characters come in. I had my kids on the show a handful of times.
I had intended on doing a few through the year. It was a failure. I did nothing with it all year. I can make a bunch of excuses, but it just never happened. It’s hard to podcast, yo! This is what I would call a failure. Abject, total, failure. Will the podcast make a return in 2022? Don’t expect it.
GreyHalo
Ok, so this is a bit of a kick in the pants. We love music a lot. It’s a huge part of CubeLab Media. GreyHalo was a band that was getting some new life breathed into it as new music was released. Sadly, in 2021 it was pushed to the back. With only 2 songs total released, it feels like a failure. Coupled with the dismal plays at around 130 for those two songs on Spotify, it really felt like a blow to the gut. No doubt about it, we want to continue to produce more music. But this will take a little time to heal!
GreyHalo
Shop Sales
Ok, while we pushed a lot of products out there (see above), we have to admit we didn’t do much in the way of sales. Meaning we got no sales. Granted, we’re not a t-shirt company. We have a long way to go for better SEO. We’re also not about to pound anyone into submission with “Buy our stuff!” posts all the time. That seems disingenuous. So, with no sales and little organic traffic, this is a failure.
SEO
And finally, our SEO.
We know the SEO for our website is abysmal. Organic traffic is kind of the bread and butter for search traffic, and we’ve not really dedicated a lot of time in this area. This is hilarious as Tadd knows SEO. Cobblers children syndrome, I suppose. Everyone else has great shoes but the cobblers kids. It needs to be addressed in a big way, but it takes a lot of time. This is an area of failure that needs to be remedied if we want to actually grow.
What Do We Want to do More of? 😎
This is the part that excites us the most. Future casting! We want to see what we did good and bad and see how we can improve and grow. That’s how you know you’re doing well is if you grow. We know we can’t continue the way we are now!
More LabCast Videos
In the latter half of 2021, we made it a point to post one video a week. We didn’t make that challenge known, but we did it in our own minds. Minecraft of Density was posted every Monday. Well, almost every Monday. But every week at the very least.
In 2022 we’re looking at producing at least one other Minecraft series featuring Thaddius Lord, Samurai Owl, Black_Hole50, and GodzillaDojo.
We also hope to do another Rikkard Griffinheart Season 2.
As well as doing some other Minecraft, Terraria, and maybe even No Man’s Sky videos. We’ll see!
It also depends on how many people enjoy what we produce to see if we do more. We’ve also been interested in potentially just live streaming, but we’ve never done that and are not even sure if our potato internet is good enough for that!
Producing Different Music
As mentioned in the “failures” section, we were pretty bummed about GreyHalo only releasing 2 songs. Samurai Owl was rockin’ it, so kudos to you, bruh. However, we want to make more music. More various styles. Collaborate more. And just create more. As I said, music is a big part of who we are. Releasing more music through the year is important to us as creators and musicians.
Building a Community
Ok, one thing we did this year is start building our Ko-Fi community. Which, is small (a couple of followers) but we just started kicking it back up. If you don’t know what Ko-Fi is, it’s basically a more creator-friendly version of Patreon. We talked about why we joined Ko-Fi HERE.
We’re looking at building our community more with a Discord, Ko-Fi exclusives, and any other way we can think of to really interact with our friends out there in the interwebs. Actively interact. Twitter, I feel, really doesn’t do anything. Facebook … meh. Instagram seems great for people who like to post trees and pretty things.
If you’re into Discord let us know and we can start handing out invites!
In Conclusion …
We really want to thank everyone who’s been hanging out and joined us in the last year. We can’t wait to reveal EVEN MORE things we’re doing and really hope to grow our YouTube channel and community in big ways. Please be sure to subscribe to our official YouTube channel, sign up for our newsletter, and check out our Ko-Fi page.
