Good morning. Today is Cyber Monday, and as Epic Gardening’s Kevin Espiritu pointed out on X, there’s one creator who has emerged as the internet’s de facto guide to shopping season: The Deal Guy.
Every year, he appears on YouTube Trending, posts a slew of content for several days straight, updates those videos hourly, then resumes his weekly upload schedule until Amazon Prime Day, when he does it all over again. To The Deal Guy: We see you and thank you for your service.
Inside Joel Haver’s Mission to Make 12 Movies in 12 Months
Filmmaker, musician, and creator Joel Haver switched from posting a short film every week to a full feature every month in 2024 / Joel Haver
Filmmaker and comedian Joel Haver has made weekly live action and animated sketches like Realizing That Your Friend is the Problem and Scooby-Doo but this happens instead for his 2 million Youtube subs for nearly 12 years.
But this year, he took on a new challenge—producing and releasing 12 full-length movies to YouTube in 12 months.
Why? “I wanted to be more than just a comedian and I felt personally pigeon-holed by the algorithm and my weekly uploads to be more funny than I was emotional, and I wanted to be both,” Haver told us.
Haver gave us the details as he enters the final month of the ambitious project.
How he got here → Haver raised around $100,000 from 3,500 Patreon supporters to fund the project.
“I took the slow road of showing the people who care that I’m a multi-faceted artist and those are the people who wound up funding this 12 movies project,” Haver said.
How he’s getting it done → Haver’s living on savings from YouTube earnings and sponsorships, using the Patreon money for production, equipment, and labor.
The Text, one of the project’s most popular movies to date with 200,000 views, was shot in one take over three hours for around $2,300. In contrast, the stop-motion film Hello My Beautiful Creatures took over two months and around $10,000.
“I see this form of filmmaking more akin to bedroom musicians who do it all themselves. In the [Hollywood] system where money is so involved it makes sense to have a piecemeal team to construct a larger monument,” Haver said. “But if I didn’t have my fingers on each step of the process I’d have a hard time saying it was mine.”
Looking ahead: Haver has five more movies to publish before the end of the month, which he plans to accomplish, “crazy as it may seem,” he told us.
“If I didn’t do the weekly uploads, I’d still have 1,000 subscribers and couldn’t do this project,” Haver said. “It was a great metric and I encourage anyone who hopes to hone their craft to commit to it because I think it’s the best way to get seen as a filmmaker online.”
Kai Cenat Wraps Record-Breaking Subathoon
Kai Cenat (center) concludes his month-long livestream with his friends and over 725,000 Twitch subscribers / Kai Cenat
On Saturday, streamer Kai Cenat wrapped up his month-long, record-breaking “Mafiathon 2” subathon, during which he streamed 24/7 on Twitch for all of November.
The stream ended with an on-screen subscriber count of over 725,000 (more than double the previous Twitch record).
Based on the $4.99 cost of a Tier 1 Twitch subscription, the subathon may have generated at least $3.6 million in revenue, of which Twitch will take about a 50% cut.
Cenat put on a show over the last 30 days, including appearances from celebrities including Lil Uzi Vert, SZA, Snoop Dogg, Kevin Hart, Miranda Cosgrove, and Nardwuar. Cenat officiated a wedding, created a VTuber avatar with IronMouse, and announced plans to give 20% of his subathon earnings to charity.
Big picture: Livestream is a growing medium, and many consider Cenat to be leading the way. This quarter, livestreaming viewership reached 8.5 billion hours watched, a 12% year-over-year increase, according to marketing firm Stream Hatchet.
YouTube Fishing Channel Gets New Life
Fishing creator Bill’s hobby channel jumped from about 1,000 subscribers to over 1.5 million thanks to a TikTok compilation by a fan / Fishing with “Oh Dad!”
Video compilations have become increasingly popular, from presidential campaigns to movie fan edits. Now, they’re being utilized to highlight under-the-radar creators.
Enter: Fishing With “Oh Dad!,” a YouTube channel that follows a fishing creator, Bill, and his adventures after recovering from a brain injury. TikTok user KindPenguins recently posted a compilation of Bill’s videos, and…
The compilation quickly gained over 60 million views.
Bill’s subscriber count grew from 1,300 to 200,000 within 24 hours of the compilation going live.
Now, Bill’s YouTube channel has nearly 1.5 million subscribers and over 3 million channel views.
Bill made a video expressing gratitude to KindPenguins. “My thought laying in bed this morning was I would just stop my videos, but it has suddenly changed,” he said.
We’d love to know: What creators do you think deserve more attention? Hit reply and tell us who you’re watching.
👀 Creator Moves
Tech startup creator Samuel Bosch is looking for an experienced thumbnail designer to help with 2–3 videos per month.
QLAY Co. is hiring a video editor and writer for its Spy Ninjas scripted YouTube series.
Zack D. Films is looking for a script coordinator to work on short-form videos.
Looking to bring on new team members? You can post opportunities on our (free) job board here.
🔥 Press Worthy
MrBeast and Cristiano Ronaldo collaborate again, this time on a video testing Ronaldo’s athleticism against other figures like Tom Brady and IShowSpeed.
Ali Abdaal is hosting a free webinar on YouTube growth tomorrow.
Chick-Fil-A’s streaming service is now live.
Australia passes legislation that bans social media for users under 16.
Kylie Kelce's forthcoming podcast “Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce” is charting #2 on Spotify before its first episode.
