STH YouTube HALF MILLION Subscribers Crazy Times

I cannot believe it. 500,000 subscribers! About 13 months ago we changed the STH YouTube format, and the response has been great. I still remember the day sitting with some folks at Peet’s Coffee in California in the summer of 2019 opining on how big a theoretical STH YouTube channel could be. That day, 250K subscribers was deemed as the limit as nobody was brash enough to offer a larger number. Five years later, we have doubled that reaching a HALF MILLION YouTube subscribers.

STH YouTube HALF MILLION Subscribers Crazy Times

As an update on how we got here, the summer of 2019, after doing the Jellyfish Fryer video I saw what tech YouTube production looked like, and though maybe we should do some video at STH. We got a little studio and in 2020 started making videos, until the pandemic hit and we lost access to the first studio for months.

During the pandemic, the front of my house became the studio, and coincidentally became my favorite STH period from a product photography standpoint. Being quarantined at home gives one a lot more free time to tweak product photos.

Austin was back to a more dedicated environment with a static set and ~1200 sq ft for STH photography and video.

Now things are (much) bigger. At some point we will do a studio tour, but this whole warehouse is now full dedicated to making STH happen.

What folks may or may not have noticed is that our capacity has increased over the last few months. In January, we had a disruption (e.g. a really bad flu) that took out the entire studio team for 9-10 days. In the past, that would have meant we missed posting on STH for a day or several days. Now, we had just enough buffer to make it through. We are spinning up our third and fourth outlets. The third being the STH Labs channel and the fourth being a project that will be in the Q1 Letter.

Many reading this post may not care that we have a YouTube channel, but you should. Launching a successful YouTube channel has meant STH gets more opportunities and can build more infrastructure to do bigger projects. We have a GIANT one coming later this month that we have been working on since August/ September of last year. Usually there is a lag between when we get new capabilities, and when those projects get through the production pipeline. Perhaps the biggest thing is that having a huge website and a respectable size YouTube channel means we can do more.

As a fun one, while this may not have been anywhere near our most popular video, by far my favorite one to do this quarter so far has been the 49ers Levi’s Stadium tour.

Part of the reason was it was a cool opportunity. The other part of it was just how it just barely happened on a number of potential stopping points along the way. We have something else that is being worked on for later this year, but the number of approvals it is taking is making the 49ers video seem like a cakewalk to get done.

Final Words

We are going to go into more behind-the-scenes in our Q1 Letter from the Editor. It is amazing to see how the YouTube channel has grown. We are still not where I want to be for our 2025 video production, but we are taking little steps every day. To me, the big thing having a good size YouTube channel along with a huge website has done is helped us stay relevant. In June, STH will turn 15 and it is not easy to continue momentum after all of that time.

Thanks again for all of our readers and YouTube viewers who have supported STH for all of these years. Just know, STH is never on coast mode, we are always pushing to do better.