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On December 31st 2013, four nerds sat around a table playing board games while they counted down to the New Year. It was on that night, in between rounds of Ticket To Ride, that the idea came up to start a YouTube channel.

Exactly two years later our channel crossed 100,000 Subscribers.

My current mood:

Lets get the sappy stuff out of the way first:

THANK YOU!

All one hundred thousand of you!

I can’t tell you how amazing a feeling it is to see so many people enjoy something that you create. And to have it be something I love creating. Something that’s nerdy, and fun, and constantly challenges me to learn and adapt new skills.

Thank you all in our amazing community. You are the best.

Alright, now let me fill you guys in on what’s been going on since our 50,000 Blog Post:

First: We went to PAX! Which I wont spend too much time on, because Jas already wrote up an amazing blog post about it that you can read HERE. But I’ll say this: it was an amazing experience being about to network with developers, other YouTubers, and fans. We even made snazzy business cards! That’s the first time I’ve ever had a business card! I can not wait to goto PAX 2016.

Second: We joined Polaris. In September, Polaris reached out to us about joining. I’ll let you know that when we first created Stumpt we only had plans to join two networks: Curse and Polaris. We we’re with Curse for a little over a year, and loved them. I would recommend Curse to anyone. Seruiosly, if you’re a small channel that looking for a network that wont get in your way and wont lock you into anything, Curse is the best. Polaris was always something of a fantasy to us. We didn’t expect to get approached by them, at least not until we were much larger. It’s the network of PewDiePie and Markiplier and Yogscast and GameGrumps! Compared to those guys, we’re small potatoes. But, it happened. We’ve been with Polaris since October 1st. And from the viewers perspective it may look like not a whole lot has changed, but behind the scenes the opportunities its opened up for us to collab with some amazingly talented YouTubers is great. And Price has gotten to appear on the (Sling exclusive) “Multiplayer” show three times now. They’ll be many great things to come out of this in the future, for sure.

Third: Stumpt Branch. In November we launched Stumpt Branch. This is something I had been wanting to do for awhile, and we felt the time was right. I’ll take a moment here to explain our reasons for the creation of the 2nd channel. For a long time I had a concern about our mix of content on the main Stumpt channel, and how it affected the perception of us to the viewer. For example, if someone searched YouTube for Subnautica and found Rik’s play-through of it, then looked at our current video list, they might get confused. There would be Riks Subnautica stuff in the video list, but there would also be lots of multiplayer stuff and probably some singleplayer stuff from Price as well. It would seem like a random mix of different styles of videos. We needed to do a better job at defining ourselves. So we made the call that Stumpt was going to be a channel focused on Multiplayer games. Branch was created as a place for everyone to continue making Single Player content.

Forth: Merchandise. People had been asking for it for a long time, so we finally pulled the trigger on creating a Stumpt Shirt and a picking a vendor to make it for us. http://stum.pt/StumptShirt. There will be more to come!

And lastly: Growth. We have had a LOT of growth. But before I talk about that, I think it’s time for some charts!

Chart 1: I originally posted this chart when we hit 10,000 Subs

Chart 2: I posted this one when we hit 50,000 Subs about 6 months ago

Chart 3: These are our current stats

So, what do I want to say about the recent stats? First: Summer was amazing for us. We had never seen views like that before. Especially midweek numbers that stayed consistently high. Second: This Winter has been a MONSTER! For December alone, we had 3.5 Million views, and 15,000+ new subscribers. 

Thats.

Ridiculous.

So, Stumpt is doing good.

It’s doing so good that I am now able realistically see it being my full time job in the future. Yes, I still work a day job. All of us still have a job outside of Stumpt. And we’ve all been looking forward to the day that we can quit our jobs to do YouTube full time. But I’ll be honest, I was always somewhat hesitant if that was ever going to be a possibility for me. It’s a pretty scary concept… quitting your secure job to make videos for the internet. That sounds crazy. And I actually have a pretty good day job too. I’m no longer hesitant. Stumpt will easily surpass my job soon.

And once we can devote all our daily attention to Stumpt… Get ready.

Anyway, I usually end these things with what’s next.

So what’s next?

– Our 2 year anniversary is coming up in February. Hopefully we should have a fancy video out for that.

– PAX Prime 2016, with another Fan Meetup there!

– At some point this year YouTube will send us that Silver Play button and I’ll wear it on a dope chain around my neck.

– Sky is the limit

I’ve jabbered on enough.

Thank you all again!

Catch you all next time,

-Ash