1) Changes to my YouTube Channel
If you like YouTube as much as I do, you’ve probably heard about COPPA thousand times already and then saw how it had a huge impact on AFOL YouTubers. The mysterious BrickBuilder revealed his voice for the first time and then tried to move to Patreon which doesn’t seem to work for his channel. JangBricks announced just a few days ago that he’s taking a break and will focus on working on new content that will be “not for kids”. But there are others like Just2good who seem to continue like nothing really happened. As for my channel, I just decided to mark the whole channel as “made for kids” for now. That means a lot of things:
- My add revenue went from growing steadily to almost nonexistent. I was expecting that so it’s not the main problem for me.
- What’s much worse is that I lost all the functions like comments, notifications, community tab and more
- According to my analytics people still discover and watch my videos every day, but they can’t communicate with me and I can’t reach them either which was the whole point of posting anything to YouTube
I spent a ton of time last year working on the channel so I don’t plan to give up on it just yet. I figured out that the best strategy for me now would be to wait a few weeks till the dust from the explosion will settle and then maybe switch back to “not for kids” or find another way around it. YouTube changes constantly last few years so I think that not all hope is lost. We’ll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, you can still enjoy all of the 115 free instructions on my channel and use them to build something awesome!
2) PDF Instructions and Parts Lists now available!
This was a huge thing for me to figure out last year. Although my instructions are free on YouTube, many people kept constantly asking me if I also sell PDF instructions or parts lists. I couldn’t understand those requests at first but then I realized that for many people this has a lot of advantages over the video form. And it even has some advantages for me:
- I am no longer limited with my parts collection so I can finish each MOC exactly the way I want it without any compromises
- I can even do color variants or revisit older designs and constantly improve them which was just not possible before
- some people found the video instructions hard to follow and I can totally understand that
- I did a produce a lot of errors while filming and also in the parts lists on Rebrickable because I usually had only one week do design, film, edit and publish a MOC and there was no way to check the parts automatically or correct the mistakes later
- I’m much more open to building on commission now and I’m trying to implement some public voting mechanism to allow you to vote for what you want me to build next
I actually started building with LEGO because I wanted to escape sitting in front of a computer and to do something real with my own hands. But as I can see now there’s no escaping the computer part if you really want to design great things. So I started learning LDD, then Stud.io and last but not least Mecabricks. At first, I hated building digitally but eventually, I got a hang of it and now it’s quite enjoyable for me. But I still start and finish with the real bricks if I can. The best part for you is, that I’m now able to generate easy-to-use PDF instructions and parts lists. And what’s even better is that I’m able to build even the things, that I couldn’t do before and do them faster and in more variants.
In fact, I’ve already spent a lot of time going through my older designs and refining them to the best possible build with all the parts I have now at my disposal. This is now my main focus at least for a few next months. I will make all the PDF instructions and parts list available to download at this site and I will add at least one or two each following week. Some of them will be heavily updated, some will be only slightly improved. I will, of course, add many completely new builds too. You may ask why I didn’t put them as Premium MOCs on Rebrickable as many others do. The reason is that Rebrickable officially does not allow any third party IPs to be sold there. In reality, many people do that, but I don´t want to risk working hard on something only to end in a similar situation like on YouTube. So I decided to use my own site instead. In fact, a few of the instructions are already available and you can check them right here
Further Cooperation with MOCHub
MOCHub was really just starting last year and as every new service, it had some ups and downs. It managed to grow very fast but that was also the main problem. The main issue were some huge delays with shipping and AFOLs used to the instant nature of eBay and Amazon couldn’t understand it. This was also partly my fault because I used some really rare parts in my designs and that slowed down the orders too. But the main idea behind MOCHub is really good and the WLWYB.com team which is running it too. My user number is 99 so I can say I was there right from the start of the platform. I was trying to give them as much feedback as I could and I even visited their office in Budapest.
Just a few weeks ago, MOCHub contacted me with an offer to further increase our cooperation and to tell me some great news about the platform. I’m looking forward to sharing it with you soon. Right now as I’m working on the new PDF instructions and parts lists I will also add each of the completed MOCs to MOCHub every week. The best news is that MOChub will now have a few of them in stock before publishing so there should be guaranteed 48 hours shipping! You will also now get the PDF instructions with each new moc too. It all looks very promising and I hope that MOCHub will become as good as it deserves to be!
You can take a look at my MOCHub profile right here. I just added the updated Nissan Skyline GR-R R34 with PDF instructions and ready to go around the world!
LEGO Ideas Projects and Contests
Last year I also participated in a few contests. I won the second trophy in Brickawesome LEGO Autoshow in Canada and my entry for LEGO Ideas 6-wide Vintage Car Contest was shared at the official Ideas account even though it did not make it to the fan vote. I also tried to do my first Ideas project – the Lamborghini Countach LP400. It gathered over 700 votes till now and I learned a lot of new things which I want to apply to my next project. This time it’ll be a famous car from one of my favorite tv shows. I’m already working on it for a few weeks and I plan to post it in a month or two.
I want to thank you all again and I hope you’ll stick with me on my journey to build awesome vehicles!
