Hello Reader,

It’s become a tradition for me to have a year-in-review newsletter as we head into a new calendar year, and wouldn’t you know, it’s 2024 already!

So, first off, Happy New Year!

If this is the first time you join me for a year in review, in these, I check if I met my goals for the previous year, share how my channel and other things have done and also set goals and plans for the upcoming year.

Looking back on 2023

I set the theme of change for 2023 as I knew I’d be making a big move (~1,200km from Montreal to Halifax), and I was also hoping to re-examine and find new approaches to a few things from a content perspective.

From a personal standpoint, the move happened and went really well! We’ve all settled into our new home nicely, and as a bonus, I think my new office/recording area looks pretty nice 😁.

It was a big change and a positive one!

From a content/business perspective, I’d set 3 primary goals, only one of which I’d call a success.

• Re-examining my approach to courses ❌ ​
  Last year I mentioned that, while I’m very happy with my courses, I’m not happy with how I create them, as it takes me way too long to finish them. This is still an ongoing problem… but more on that in the next section.
• Re-examining my personal website ❌ ​
  I had no specific plans here besides my site needing a major refresh… and nothing much has changed there, as I never touched it in the past year.
• Try new things on YouTube ✅ ​
  I mostly stuck with the same style of video, but I did experiment with upping the pace in some of them as a bit of an experiement. I feel like it worked well for videos like the one where I was looking at 5 responsive layouts, and maybe less so with building out a layout.
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  I also went all out with the video where I created an inverted border-radius, which involved a lot more work than a normal video of mine (about 10x longer to create). I was super happy with the final result of that one, and the reception was positive as well, but it was so much more work!
  ​
  Most recently, I also did The Code Behind a Hyperplexed video that was fun to make, with a different approach, and where I also tried to match his editing style as best I could. Once again, it was a lot more work, but it was fun to put together.

How everything else went

YouTube

The channel dropped in views a little bit, year-over-year, compared to last year.

• 2022 total views: 25,705,417
• 2023 total views: 22,974,712
• Year-over-year change: -11%

It’s never fun to see things take a bit of a downturn, obviously, but I know other channels that faired a lot worse in 2023, and after a very middling period from May through October, things have taken a positive turn of late, and the upturn has me pretty happy with the current state of the channel.

Interestingly, something I hadn’t noticed when I did last year's year-in-review is that while the channel did well in 2022, out of the top ten most-watched videos that year, eight of them were published in 2021!

A few of those 2021 videos continue to do well still, but of my top 10 videos in 2023, four of them came out this year—and two of this only this past November!—so I’m not particularly worried about the small drop-off.

Where things look worse are subscribers, where I have a pretty substantial drop.

• Subscribers gained in 2022: 303,988
• Subscribers gained in 2023: 220,233
• Year-over-year-change: -28%

The main reason for this, as far as I can tell (beyond the drop in overall views), is that I didn’t have any videos that hit a new audience like I did in 2022 (even though the main drivers for new subs in 2022 were once again videos from 2021).

This year my videos seemed to do quite well with my existing audience, but nothing took off with a new audience.

Subscriber count is very much a vanity stat on YouTube, so I don’t really mind one way or the other, but it would be kind of fun to hit 1 million subs in 2024 😁.

The newsletter

The newsletter followed the same pattern as YouTube, which makes sense, considering new viewers on YouTube are what are going to lead to more subscribers on this newsletter.

• New subscribers in 2022: 26,847
• New subscribers in 2023: 18,602
• Year-over-year change: -31%

I’m also not particularly surprised by the slowdown here, as, apart from a few small efforts, I haven’t been putting much emphasis on pushing people toward it as I have done in the past.

Combine that with fewer new people following me on YouTube, and this should come as no surprise.

I’m also not at all concerned about it either.

It’s still growing, after all, and with a total of about 95,000 subscribers and with a steady open rate over the past three years, it’s a very healthy list.

The podcast

I can’t compare this to last year because I only started it a few months ago, but I think it’s gotten off to a good start!

I have 20 episodes under my belt now, with 20,000 downloads of the podcast version, and over 30k views of the YouTube version.

It’s nowhere near the size of my main channel or even this newsletter (which the podcast is an audio version of), but for a relatively new venture that I’m putting limited resources into, I’m very happy with those numbers!

That said, I am pausing the podcast, probably for Q1 of 2024.

It will be back at one point, in a slightly different form, but more on that in the next section.

Goals for 2024

I have two primary goals for 2024, a little more vague than I've had in the past:

• Finish what I’ve started
• Make more stuff 😅

We’ll come back to these in just a second, because for the last few years, I’ve also set a “theme” for my year.

Theme for 2024

2022 was my year of stability, and 2023 was my year of change.

2024 will be my year of growth, though not in the traditional sense.

The first hint that it’s not in the traditional sense is that I’ll be pausing the podcast for the time being, but what I mean by a year of growth is that I have plans to grow my team.

If we circle back to one of my failed goals, which was to re-examine my approach to making courses, I mentioned this was a fail because they’re still taking me way too long to create.

One of the reasons is I can only do so much.

Looking back over the last few years, many of my failed goals center on things where I either underestimated how much work something was, or over-estimated how much I could get done.

Growing my team will help me achieve my goals

With my first goal being to finish what I’ve started, I mostly mean finish my course Beyond CSS, and I have a few other loose ends as well.

As I just mentioned above, I often have been underestimating how long courses will take me, and having people be able to do other tasks for me will mean I can focus more on the course and get it finished.

And that will also mean that, once that course is done, as long as things continue to run smoothly, I can make more stuff!

Pausing the podcast will also help with my goals

Pausing the podcast might seem like the opposite as a year of growth, but I’m looking to prioritize certain things and the podcast is the easiest thing to put aside.

Despite that, it was a really hard decision to make.

One of the reasons that, I think, my YouTube channel is where it’s at now is simply the consistency I’ve had with it over the last seven and a half years, so pausing anything I’m working on feels…. well, kind of wrong.

But in this case, I think it’s one of those things I have to do.

When I started the podcast, the goal of it was to offer this newsletter in a new format to reach more people without having to put very much effort in.

That’s why, when I started it, I just plugged my newsletter into a text-to-voice AI tool.

I found it was taking more time than I’d have liked, so I started recording it myself as it wasn’t really that much more work, and sounded better.

I also had my wife helping me with the podcast, so it was relatively hands-off for me, but they’ve had to take a break for a little, and doing it myself is taking up too much time, so it’s going on the shelf.

I also want to re-examine the podcast’s format a little, and taking a short break from it will give me a chance to do that.

The new team

Back to the idea of growing my team, I currently work with an editor and someone who helps me stay organized with my inbox.

Hiring an editor was a game-changer, and I wished I’d done it earlier, but that’s the easy one… the next step is to bring in help with actual content, which is a bit more scary since that is sort of my bread-and-butter 😅.

That said, I’m already in talks with a few people!

If all goes to plan, I’ll have help with my YouTube and course content in the very near future, and once things are a bit more official, I’ll make sure to share who I’m working with, especially as they’ll mostly have a more of a behind-the-scenes role and I'll want to make sure they get the credit they deserve.

There are a few different things I’m thinking about for the courses themselves, but the first steps will be more collaborative efforts with other creators.

Also, I occasionally get emails from subscribers who are looking for work.

As I mentioned, I’m already in talks with a few people for the roles that I’m looking for, so for the time being, no need to email me letting me know you can help, as I have everything covered for the time being 🙂.

🏁

A huge thank you for being a part of 2023 with me.

It’s been a few years that I’ve been doing all of this full-time now, and it still amazes me that this is my actual job now!

That wouldn’t be possible without your support, so thank you so much!

Here is to a fantastic 2024!
Kevin

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