Huge filament giveaways for 100k! No more reviews! Job offering!

Want to win some sweet filament? Here’s your chance!

Also, here’s why I’m putting product reviews on ice for now and a look at some of the bullshit that makes a YouTube channel “successful”. And lastly, if you want to work for me, this is your chance!

Well look at that, it’s been 10 days since the first giveaway for 100k subscribers ended and even though I promised there’d be another one right after that, there still isn’t? Ok, I’m going to talk about that later and why that basic task of even making videos has become so frigging hard for me to do. But first, let’s do that next giveaway. I don’t want to waste your time if that’s all you came for.

First of all, the two winners of the Prusa i3 MK2Ss: Matthias Andersen from Germany and David Kiddell from Canada, have fun with your MK2Ss – you’re definitely going to enjoy them!

And for the next round of giveaways: We’re doing filaments! Actually, this is three giveaways in one go.

First off, rigid.ink is chipping in three packs with three spools of filament each – you get to choose which materials, which colors and which size. rigid.ink make some great technical filaments, some of which I’ve tested in Filaween Season 1 and got impressive results with. If you win, choose wisely, they’re pretty addictive!

Then, MatterHackers are providing one Pro Pack with all of their PRO series filament, that is PLA, ABS, Flex, PETG, Ryno, Nylon and and NylonX, and Matterhackers does make fantastic materials, again, you get to choose which size and color, but with this one, there’s only one package, so one winner takes it all.

And last but not least, five of you will win a spool of Infinity Blue from DAS FILAMENT – it’s just humble PLA, but pretty good stuff at it and the only one that comes in the Tom’s 3D Infinity Blue color.

All prizes from rigid.ink, MatterHackers and DAS FILAMENT will come to you shipped free of charge, but as always, customs and import fees are outside of our control so we can’t account for those.

And as a bonus on the MatterHackers giveaway, just for entering, you’ll get a coupon for $5 off your next order, no questions asked.

These are three independent giveaways, one for the three packs with three rigid.ink filaments each, another for one pack of seven spools of MatterHackers PRO filament, and the last one for five packs of DAS FILAMENT Infinity Blue, one spool each, plus stickers. You can enter at these links, which are also in the video description. Best of luck. And if all you care about is the giveaways, you can stop watching now.

Ok, everyone gone? Perfect.

So, I do have a bit of a problem: The more I dive into the entire YouTube universe, the more I get to see just all the crap that’s going on behind the scenes that actually makes channels quote on quote “successful” and the more I see it, the more I disagree with it. So many of the rapidly growing channels are putting on a huge shit show, and it’s working. Like having people spam their Facebook friends with giveaways to gain subscribers or using clickbait tactics for titles and thumbnails or literally having five different videos, each claiming to show you “the best 3D printer”, because I mean, that’s what people will click on, that’s what they want, the largest amount of viewers just wants to be told what to do without having to think too much. Catering to that is so easy and it’s so effective – like, just look at affiliate sales – if you have a review that’s super positive and you get just 1% of your 100k viewers to buy it, you know, an 8% commision on 1000 $400 sales, that does add up to quite a nice chunk of extra income. On a side note, there is a coupon code for the CR-10 on Gearbest in the description of this video and it’s only valid for the first 500 people that use it! So be quick if you want to get one!

You know, there’s quite a bit of temptation of just playing that game and cashing in, and for me, trying to deal with that and sort of competing with that trashier type of content that does that, that drains a lot of my energy, it works me up because it’s just so cheap. And it works. Should I give in and just label every 3D printer “the best”, too? Should I start doing that? That’s what people will watch, right? But that entire topic of reviews, that’s enough stuff for a whole other video. For the time being, I’ve completely stopped accepting new products for review until I figure this out and regain a bit more time to do them properly. Because for me, it’s at least two weeks of work to review a 3D printer the way I believe is fair and neutral compared to spending half a day rambling about the unboxing and the two and a half things you’ve printed on it.

And frankly, the people that really care about this channel do not value reviews that highly anyways – the survey among my Patrons that I’m shipping stickers, T-Shirts and filament out to very clearly shows that the most valuable content I make is not reviews, it’s in-depth guides and projects that actually improve and use the machines you have. And if you look at what videos actually get views, it’s the same thing.

So for now, no more reviews. Except Filaween. Also means I won’t have to put up with wild accusations of being paid by manufacturers. So that’s a good thing.

Still, the channel’s growth overall has been more of chore than I’ve been expecting. I mean, it’s going great, but the problem is, I had no extra time for things like having a life for a while, but recently, it’s just been too much. All the overhead from all the crap that isn’t even explicitly video making has been bogging me down so much, to the point where right now I feel like I’ve completely stalled. Because there’s so little time for actually creating videos that each one feels like this huge project and it’s just… I need to change this. Two options for that… either I reduce my workload – like, I put out less content and just stop replying to emails altogether – and whether I wanted to or not, I’ve already been doing that, sorry if I haven’t replied to your emails in, like, months, but it’s never going to be as relaxed like it was with 25k subscribers where I could literally just pump out a video on a single Sunday and then not have to think about YouTube for the entire rest of the week. I wish, but that’s not coming back. Or, the other option is to expand the time that’s being put into the channel and everything that comes along with it. And that can not be my own time, because I don’t have any more time to give, I need to spend less time on this or I’m going fall apart as a person. So it’s going to be someone else’s time that I will purchase up-front. And that means, yes, I have a job opening. I don’t feel like I’m ready to have an employee, but hey, is anybody really ever ready for taking huge steps like this? Basically, I’m looking for a part-time assistant like three days a week or so, the good thing is, because I’m doing everything myself right now, any skills are appreciated. So that can be – typing out scripts for me real fast, or accounting, or just taking care of basic business relation stuff. Or of course, video skills, whether it’s editing or shooting B-roll etc, I can really use anything at this point. The rest we’ll figure out somehow. There is one condition, though, if you’re interested in working for me, you’ll need to be from my area, because I need someone, like, within shouting distance and physically present. Sorry, but this is not going to work out as a remote job.

So for now, as a first announcement for this glorious job opening, if you’re interested in joining NMTS, send me an email at jobs@toms3d.org, please include where you’re from and what your skills are, I am also going to post this online soon, but since you’re the crowd that’s already watching my videos, you do have a head start because you know what to expect.

And with this job opening, I’m also honoring the original 3k goal on Patreon, which was to hire someone, originally for video editing, but as it turns out, that’s the least of my issues right now. What’s amazing is that we’re creating jobs here, and that feels weird, but somehow incredibly satisfying as well.

And I would to take this opportunity to thank the Patrons that are supporting this channel, specifically

Olivier Nicolas

Neil Youngberg

Adam Hunger

Christoph Schacht

Woody Boyd

Raphael Rema

Günni W

Alexander Allan-Rand

Keith Austin

Sherif Eid

Filip Goc

Bobby CC Wong

Francisco Peebles

Rudolff Vang

Makerparts

William Devine

Matthew Byrd

Alexander Strobl

Jordi Böhme

Stefanie Davis

Robert Mohnacky

Ron Hunt

and everyone else who’s there on Patreon while we take the next steps in this crazy, awesome, wild adventure. Again, for now, no more reviews, but instead more of what I want to be this channel about and more of what you’re indicating you want to see. Let’s see how this entire “employee” thing works out. I honestly have no idea.

So yeah, do check out those giveaways, shoutout to rigid.ink, Matterhackers and DAS FILAMENT for providing the prizes, that is awesome, and yeah, I guess, thanks for watching and sticking through what turned out to be a bit of a rant, but yeah, I’ll see you in the next one. Cheers!

ENTER THE GIVEAWAYS HERE

rigid.ink package toms3d.org/RigidWin
Matterhackers PRO Pack toms3d.org/MatterWin
DAS FILAMENT Infinity Blue toms3d.org/DASWin

BUY THE CR-10 AT GEARBEST
use coupon CR1083 (I misspoke – only valid for the first 50 orders!)

coupon GBTE always gives 12% off btw

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