2024 Junk Wax Hero Year In Review

My Collection:

A truly bonkers year for my collection. 10-year-old Mike, back in 1989, would be so confused with adult Mike’s strategy. As a kid I only ripped wax, and never bought singles. Now I almost exclusively buy singles.

Check out some of my 2024 pickups:

Talk about a collection I can envy!

Side goal: learn how to take better photos.

YouTube:

A banner year, by all accounts.

After getting 775k views in 2023 and closing the year with a total count of 1 million views in my channel’s history, I had 997k views in 2024 alone. That’s a 29% increase over 2023.

In November I set a personal record with 106k views, and then crushed that with 127k in December.

Two videos accounted for the bulk of those two months’ views. This one has by far my most views ever, with 73k:

Shoutout to Cllct’s Will Stern and the article he wrote about that topic.

And then in December I posted this video, which is now #3 in my history:

I’d be lying if I said this YouTube success didn’t surprise me. I actually focused less on video in 2024 due to less available time for it. Almost no interviews or collaborations.

My ACE100 series has been popular among those who watch it, but it doesn’t get many views. That’s okay because I really enjoy it.

I also added almost 4k net new subscribers and ended the year above 11k. Every new subscriber is appreciated.

Plus I made so many new friends, and that’s the best outcome of all.

Newsletter:

I started this newsletter in 2024! January 24th was the first one, in fact.

It started with a simple concept: I still had a lot of things I wanted to share that I didn’t get out on YouTube. Plus I have a lot of time in the evenings where I can type stuff up. And I type extremely fast!

And then it kept expanding. People really responded to it, and had ideas for things to go in the newsletter. And now I have a list of future newsletter items, and another list of future videos.

I ended the year with almost 1,300 subscribers here. And my “open rate” is 65%, which is really high.

Look for more fun ideas here in 2025.

SI Collects:

Just being asked to write for SI dot com was a highlight of my year. I read every SI from cover to cover from the age of probably 15 to 30. And SI For Kids before that.

To be able to write really cool articles for them is insane.

Some highlights:

2025 Goals?

For my YouTube channel, this is easy: do fun videos. I have some Attic Find Fridays lined up, and I’ll probably do another 50 or so Clearing the Bases episodes. I’ll finish my ACE100 series. And then? Whatever feels right.

One thing I’d really like to do is take a semi-summer break, where I only do a video or two per week from June through August. I need to stain the rest of my house (I did the back in the fall), and I have other house projects I need to focus on.

I didn’t set any view or subscriber goals for 2024, and that felt really good. I’ll do the same for 2025.

I want to do more in my newsletter, though. It’s so much easier for me to type up a newsletter. And I’m really enjoying growing it.

The interesting thing about newsletters is there’s no way of knowing what the max subscription base might be. With YouTube, I know I’ll probably be capped at around 20k subscribers, because there are a lot of channels out there to assess myself against.

With newsletters? There’s nothing like that. As far as I know, there isn’t another newsletter like mine. (Sooz has a great one but she doesn’t post much.)

Is the cap higher than 20k? Lower?

Look for some new newsletter series in 2025.

On a personal level, I want to lose 30 pounds. Should I bring back the weekly tracker? And, of course, I’ll continue my goal to watch a horror movie every week.

Thanks for coming along for the ride!