As the year 2023 draws to a close, I’m trying to figure out what to do with Badgeroid – the Tabletop Counterhype blog about wargames, hobby, Warhammer and the like.
This year has been an year of experimentation for me in terms of building an online audience for myself. Of all other things, I also have this website which I haven’t touched in almost 2 years now – and so I want to try and figure out what to do with it. Do I want to keep it? scrap it? or have an on going blog for Warhammer and my miniature painting hobby?
As it’s the end of 2023, I decided to list what I have achieved this year, collate a Warhammer retrospective for my hobby so far, what the plans are for Badgeroid in 2024.
Streaming on Twitch
The big thing that I tried this year was to start streaming on Twitch. I figured if I’m painting Warhammer anyway, might as well try to stream it online and see what happens. Would I enjoy it? Would I hate it? Would I make any money?
Turns out I really enjoy streaming, and so this will carry on in the new year!
The main thing on Twitch has been the interactivity that it provides, which Instagram does not. I’m super lucky to have a small community of people who follow my streams almost every week. I think I would’ve dropped out of it fairly quickly if I was streaming to zero people. For that, I will be infinitely thankful for their time. If you want to join our small community of lovely people, why not check out our discord?
In terms of growth, I’m sitting at 24 followers since starting in February 2023. Not a big deal at the moment, given that I only stream once a week and I had a bit of break over summer. I know that to succeed I should really stream more than what I do. But that doesn’t really matter to me so much – I’m having fun doing it and that’s what makes me happy. Yes, it would be great to be able to make a bit of money to re-invest in this little venture of mine but at the same time it’s a hobby and it’s ok.
I have my crappy streaming station that I’m slowing working on improving – got I new mic last week! and I hope to up the production value of the stream over the next year. If you drop me a follow, that would be massively appreciated!
1000 followers on Instagram
This one I’m pretty proud about! I have a love/hate relationship with Instagram – I quite like it, but I feel the pressure at times to have to post something, or I feel bad if posts and reels don’t reach as many people as I’d like. The Algorithm seems pretty sporadic at times and quite hard to interpret!
2023 has seen experimentation on Instagram as well. I have made reels over the last year to see how they would go and tried a bunch of different styles – WIPs, rotating shoots of finished minis, memes, narrative reels, tutorials etc.
Of my experimentation, Warhammer memes reels were the most successful in terms of reach. I had a couple of them getting more than 50k views and quite a bit of followers as a result of it. The other type of reels which were fairly successful were also WIPs and Completed reels of big miniatures. The Mangler Squigs ones have done fairly well for example, although my Treebeard ones have not. :shrug:
Posts don’t really seem to make a big difference or “go viral” for me.. On the other hand, people seem more willing to follow you from posts. By comparing the likes/follow ratio, I noticed that posts may have lower reach but better conversion (if we want to call it that!).
The main take away for Instagram was that consistency was key. I saw the most growth when I was posting 2-3 times a week over few months. Instagram is the platform where I have seen the most success so far (and I’m most familiar as well), and I plan on keep going with it for 2024.
What? Youtube?
When I started Badgeroid I created a Youtube channel mostly to reserve the username – I knew I wouldn’t have time to make long form videos but I wanted to have username just in case. Turns out that Shorts are another way to build your channel and Twitch has integration with Youtube so that it is quite quick to post your past streams directly to your channel.
I have only started with this experiments but so far it seems promising. A couple of short have got 1-2k views and I have garnered 10 subscribers! (mind blown lol). Considering that I only posted Shorts from my streams and that the quality if pretty low, it looks like it may have potential for growing an audience there.
As will Instagram Reels, I find myself really enjoying creating short form videos, I cannot be asked to spend a lot of time editing long videos so Shorts and Reels really suit me!
As I result, I will carry on with Youtube in 2024, so expect more Warhammer Shorts and experiments on that platform.
About the Badgeroid website
This website has been sat dormant for a long while, and when I think about it, it makes me sad! I like having my own space, which is own by no one by me. I don’t have to deal with my social media overlords and their algorithmic whims. This is my Warhammer blog, and no-one can touch it! I think that for this reason alone, I will keep this website around for 2024.
My plan is to post a new article once a week. Hammer the Backlog was a massive inspiration for it, and I want to try and follow what Lee is doing on there. I want to post here once a week, probably on Sunday evenings. There, I said it! no turning back now!
In term of content you can expect here, I will be stepping away from Boardgame content and will focus instead of Warhammer and miniature painting articles. Mostly these will be my musings from the past week. I decided that I will spreading myself too thin and in reality my passion in for Warhammer. I may do an occasional piece on boardgames but don’t expect much.
Other things I want to do regarding the website is to update the theme to use one with faster loading times. Currently OceanWP seems a bit sluggish – I’m not on a super powerful plan with my hosting platform so the theme needs to be lightweight and quick to load.
And your Warhammer Minis?
Turns out I have painting quite a few things! I don’t have a list but I can say that I have 1 (and a half) miniature left to paint from my original army which I described in my How to paint your Warhammer army article back in Sept 2022. This means that I have painted 30 models from that army since then. Not bad if I say so myself! I have also painted other stuff outside of the current army:
- Lord of the Rings Treebeard
- Merry and Pippin
- Bilbo
- Gandalf
- Squigboss with Gnasha Squig
- Ambot
- Others.. Don’t remember!
I didn’t keep track of everything so I cannot say for sure but I think I probably painted 40 minis or so in total over the past year? Not bad!
Moving forward I’ll set myself the challenge to Not Buy Any New Miniatures in 2024. What do I mean by that? Exactly that – do not buy anything. I will think about some rules for this challenge for future blogs, but the main idea is to make a proper dent on my backlog.
I have accumulated a couple of Warhammer big boxes: Trugg’s Troggherd and Braggit’s Bottle-snatchaz. I also split the Star Wars Shutterpoint starter box with a friend, not to mention the Moonstone starter (again 50/50 with another friend) and I also have other projects in mind which are not Gloomspite Gitz focused (Oldhammer Skaven bloodbowl team anyone?).
This will be the biggest challenge yet – I love browsing the Warhammer Community website to see what’s new, I like staying in the loop with what’s going on and what the latest releases are. It’ll be difficult to resist! And with Age of Sigmar 4th Edition looming, I hope I won’t get too hyped and fall for the latest big box set.
Conclusion: a review of the year in Warhammer
2023 been a year of experimentation and I think that 2024 will be similar. I want to keep experimenting with posting pictures, shot videos, streaming, blogging. I am curious to see how I will manage the workload that will be required. Time will tell.
I think the main struggle will come from being consistent. This will require a lot of effort and planning on my side to make it work. I’ll have to be organised and focussed if I want to make this work.
Wish me luck!