Gadgetory

this is gonna be one of those videos where it's just my face guys so you are welcome Oh soup gasps so there are a lot of things that have happened or are happening with the channel right now good and not so good so I figured making an announcement video would be the quickest and easiest way to keep you all informed on what's going on starting with the big exciting news first which many of you have already heard but yesterday morning I woke up and checked my phone to find that the channel had quietly surpassed 500,000 subscribers yay it's still crazy to me that in late 2014 I quit my nine-to-five job to pursue youtube full-time with 40,000 of you alongside me and two years later here we stand today at half a million by the way that's an eleven hundred and fifty percent increase if we look at the benchmarks to help me visualize what half a million people looks like here's a picture of the melbourne cricket ground stadium in melbourne australia according to wikipedia it holds a max capacity just over one hundred thousand attendees meaning it would take five of these structures to fit all of you who are subscribed to this YouTube channel it's an overwhelming depiction of just how far this community has come since its humble beginnings and I know I'll never be able to thank you guys enough for all your support over the years the only way I can think to show my sincerest gratitude is to continue making informative and entertaining content for the channel and I suppose giving away a $1,500 gaming pc works too back in October at twitchcon I said that if none of the contributions donated during my extra life charity stream were retracted after 30 days I would give away that system I built on that stream to one lucky subscriber well it's been over a month since that event occurred and the contribution amount to the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles has not budged a single cent so keeping faithful to my promise it's time to find this high-end PC a new admin I should mention that due to a treacherous elixir by the name of fireball I did break the USB 3 header on the MSI motherboard so I've since then swapped it with a new EVGA Z 170 stinger don't drink and build kids just don't do it the rig is still outfitted with a skylake core i5 66 k and an MSI gaming X GTX 1080 making this my biggest giveaway ever and each and every one of you deserve a chance of calling your own as such this will be a worldwide international giveaway which you can enter using the link in the description below once you're there make sure you enter all your information correctly and subscribe to this YouTube channel that's it also bear in mind that if you live in a country where giveaways are prohibited by local law then you probably can't enter sorry about that on November 25th the infamous Black Friday I will be announcing the winner on my twitter page at bit would Kyle and I'll be contacting the winner shortly after if I don't receive a response from him or her after three days the prize will be forfeited and a new winner will be drawn so that's pretty much it for that cheers to 500k best of luck to all of you and I will be very sad if the winner uses this rig only for Minecraft now switching gears to a slightly less uplifting announcement I have some crappy news that I'm gonna need your guys's help with so cutting right to the chase about a week ago amazon dropped me from their affiliate program for allegedly not being in compliance with their operating agreement this was based on my older videos where I was asking folks to bookmark my affiliate link in order to support the channel I've since then ceased this months ago after other big youtubers work and for the same reason but apparently that wasn't enough and my account was suspended without any warning taking a big chunk out of my monthly income actually for the first time amazon brought in more revenue last month than adsense which is absolutely insane now i'm currently in talks with amazon but the hopes of getting my account back are very slim so i'm praying for a miracle and i'll keep you guys posted on the final outcome either way fortunately my other revenue streams like adsense and merchandise sales are still bringing in enough money for all the important stuff paying the bills putting food on the table etc it's pretty awesome that i can still make youtube videos full-time and still handle all of that adulting so while the amazon cut hasn't affected my personal life much every cent i earned through their affiliate program was funneled back into the channel this includes things like buying parts i need for pc of the month buying products that i can't get review samples of from vendors directly enhancements for my equipment maintenance and so much more the amazon affiliate program played a huge role in bringing a lot of good content to the channel now if i play my cards right I could probably carry on making videos without anyone noticing that I've taken a financial hit but I don't see the point in hiding it really and if anything it's a huge weight off my shoulders to lay it all out on the table and let you guys know what's going on so that we can all move forward at the same pace so in order to mitigate the effect of this blow as temporary as it might be and to maintain the quality of the channel I've set up a secondary or a new patreon account I used to have an old one I completely got rid of it and now I've brought it back which is linked in the description below and I would like you guys to check that out and consider supporting with a monthly contribution if my videos have ever impacted you or influenced you in any way now when you go to the link you won't find any insane milestone goals or reward incentives there because the last thing I want to do is write a bunch of checks that I can't cash and the point of this patreon isn't to take the channel to new groundbreaking heights it's just to get it back to where it was once that happens though then of course I'll be open to adding some more ambitious goals but for now just contribute the amount that reflects the level of support you'd like to offer and I've always felt that asking friends and family for money should be kind of like using the bfg and do summon it sparingly and only in dire times when you need it the most and in my four years of youtubing or whatever you want to call it this is the first time that I've really felt the need to call upon you guys for backup so a million thanks in advance or technically half a million thanks to those of you who are ready to support especially when i've just taken some heavy damage and finally closing out with some good vibes over the past weekend Paul and I hosted a local fan meet up to hang out with some of you guys and sell off a bunch of hardware for facepalming lilo prices we're bad at haggling additionally we're planning to host some ebay auctions for all of you non-locals so i'll link all those in the description once they're ready might want to give it a day or two though to be honest I probably won't have that much to sell since I got rid of most of my stuff at the meetup however I've also linked Paul's video down there in the description so you can check out what he's selling as well the reason we're doing all of this stems from what we plan to do with the earnings if all goes smoothly a third of the money will be used to kick off a charity stream hosted by I that will take place sometime in December another third of the prize money or the selling money i should say will go towards an international cash prize giveaway for one of you guys and a third will be pocketed by me and paul for beer consumption i would assume we'll both be releasing more details about the charity stream and giveaway in the following weeks so be sure to keep your ear to the ground and perhaps follow us on twitter for additional updates i think that's it is that it let me let me check my notes I think we got it all so that's gonna do it for now guys thank you so much for watching through this I do appreciate it and again thank you for 500,000 subscribers have a great week guys I will see you all in the next video