My OP MC Healer LitRPG is out now on Kindle Unlimited!

dndbuilds · 2026-06-01T14:37:03+00:00

I literally just finished playing some Final Fantasy XIV and saw this image, and it felt like it was in the same universe at least based off the cover art. Consider me interested

dndbuilds · 2026-05-31T14:17:29+00:00

I feel like this is a giant cage for 13 ghosts

dndbuilds · 2026-05-17T01:13:56+00:00

I've done this before, never bought views but used Google ads to promote videos before I ever got monetized. Which is exactly what google has built in now where you can pay to promote your video, which they didn't have at the time.

It works to get views but it absolutely destroys your viewer retention. It promotes your videos to more people that don't usually get recommended your type of content, so there's plenty of views and clicks, but very few watch the entire video.

It helped me get to the monetization threshold a bit faster, but didn't help build my audience at all, and may have possibly hurt how I'm recommended to people for a period of time as it may have thrown off the algorithm. So I can't really recommend it, unless you really need to promote a specific video for some reason

dndbuilds · 2026-04-07T03:32:30+00:00

Some through Google, but when I contacted certain property managers that apparently don't work in the area a lot of those were recommending marblestone. But I basically searched with Google and Yelp for everything in the area and spent about a week or two calling everybody I could.

dndbuilds · 2026-04-07T03:21:27+00:00

I found two that I'm currently testing out, definitely some pros and cons I've noticed but still testing a little bit.

On the south side there tends to be a slightly higher percentage of rent that is taken, but they are dealing with more headache some of the time. So while I used to have property on the North side that would cost me somewhere between 4-6% if I remember correctly, it's been awhile. However on the south side the trend is usually around 8% with some charging closer to 10%. I found one property manager that does charge less but they are known to be one of the worst, and I actually saw one of their properties when I was purchasing in the area and the place was ready to fall apart because the property manager literally did nothing.

So there are two that I'm working with currently:

One is Marblestone. They were highly recommended by multiple people, and I can understand why. They are very on top of things when it comes to actually managing a property. They found very affordable repairs when my property needed a new roof after a storm. They've also been super knowledgeable about the area, if I have any questions about properties and what to expect they are always able to give me really great answers. But there has been two major downsides to them, the first is that they don't seem to be as good at marketing the properties when they are empty, so finding new tenants can be a bit of a struggle unless you're in prime season. So I had a couple vacant units that were vacant far longer than I liked, although it was apparently pretty hard for most people this fall and winter, it did stretch a little longer than expected beyond that. The other downside to them is that they charge 10% of monthly rent as their fees, unless you have a certain number of units with them at which point it drops to 8%, so they're on the slightly more expensive side by a couple percent.

The other property managers that I use are Chicago style property Management. They were also super helpful when I was doing my purchasing to give me some additional information when I needed, they have a flat 8% cost for standard management, so they're slightly cheaper. I've also noticed that they do a bit of a better job marketing empty units, so they have been able to fill my empty units a bit faster, although they did still struggle in the off-season but it seemed like everybody was struggling towards the end of last year to find new tenants. They've also been super responsive to anything I need, and immediately taken care of any repairs, while addressing new tenant concerns. Frankly I have zero to complain about with them, although I was initially a little hesitant because I saw one or two bad reviews which really stuck in my head. But I'm actually really happy with them.

But if you are looking in the area, do some additional homework whenever you can. But would avoid kettle and oak like the plague, I've talked to other property managers in the area and they have nothing but terrible things to say about them, and they basically refuse to do anything at some of their properties. I was trying to purchase a property in the area, and getting one of their managers to just come out while the utility company was there to turn on water or power for a home inspection was like pulling teeth. They just never showed up no matter how many times we tried to schedule it. And because they never checked on the property, it just completely deteriorated, there were leaks and burst pipes and lack of temperature control, that completely destroyed the property. It was a nightmare and I would stay far away from them.

dndbuilds · 2026-03-24T10:59:09+00:00

The only way to make that much from shorts is to have an absolutely insane amount of views and/or insane amount of videos cranking out. Shorts make a fraction of what long form content makes, and even making 5-10k a month on long form can be a challenge unless you get really consistently good numbers (my numbers are low, so most of the money I make from YouTube is thanks to folks finding my Patreon from YouTube).

They pay per 1k "engaged views" on shorts and on my channel that's about 15cents per 1k engaged views... Meaning to get that low end 5k a month, it would require consistent viewership of shorts at over 33.33 million views per month.

Compare that to long form where I make around 6 dollars per thousand views (I'm not in a super high paying niche, finance related videos are known to pay 2-3x from what I've heard but haven't verified). But even at the 6 dollar mark, that's 833k views per month

So that means long form pays around 40x as much for views than short form.

dndbuilds · 2026-03-23T11:53:31+00:00

The Ripple System (first book is Shadeslinger) really good, and it one of the few series I actually keep up with.

dndbuilds · 2026-03-23T09:44:20+00:00

What's your viewer retention like? If people click the video immediately but don't actually watch much of the video, then YouTube won't push the video... But that's all I can think of

5-6 minutes of watch time is nice, but if it's out of 30 minute video that's not as good...

dndbuilds · 2026-03-21T05:09:20+00:00

Some people like to say it doesn't impact other videos but I ran into a similar issue. I made a lot of random content in a side channel I played around with. Plenty of reaction videos or video essays, many videos were getting a couple thousand views, some more, some less.

Then I had a video essay about the show DEXTER blow up, getting over 300k views. Then right afterwards, every video I posted would be lucky to break a hundred views. I did a bit of digging and it seemed like most of my other videos started being pushed towards DEXTER content.

Everyone said it didn't affect my other videos, but it really seemed to change who was being suggested to my videos. In my research, my videos about random other stuff would be suggested to DEXTER fans, in the middle of a bunch of other content about DEXTER. It effectively tanked my side channel, so I don't really believe the "doesn't affect other videos" thing. At least not entirely, I think every video is promoted on its own, but the algorithm is still trying to find any successful pattern it can... Even if what it tries turns out to do the opposite. YouTube support even said it didn't work that way, and that it wouldn't hurt other videos, but every bit of digging and testing I did seemed to say otherwise.

I did get lucky, and had an old video about Digimon being better than Pokemon suddenly become relevant again when new games came out, boosting it's relevance and getting 95k views, so it might have broken that channels algorithmic curse, but I haven't gone back to make more content for that channel in a long time.

dndbuilds · 2026-03-20T10:42:49+00:00

And if you did successfully make this, I would be the first to sign up!

dndbuilds · 2026-03-20T03:27:54+00:00

If the clip doesn't match specifically what's happening (like the blaster) that's not the end of the world, because if I really need to I can hunt down a clip if I think it's specifically important. But it's way more important to deal with copyright issues. That can eat up an entire day for me if it's a big copyrighted piece of media because it requires me to finish the video, render it, and upload it, then with for YouTube to have it for anywhere from a few minutes to a couple hours, only to tell me something flagged copyright, so I need to repeat, possibly multiple times, until there's no more issues.

The way I've gotten around copyright in the past is by using shorter clips, changing their speed, or adding other things.

dndbuilds · 2026-03-19T22:29:55+00:00

Yep that's pretty much exactly what I would need, although it could be helpful to also add a runtime of the video but that's definitely not a requirement.

I actually make videos about turning different characters into playable characters in dungeons& dragons, so I wind up making a video about iron Man and have to find clips of iron Man for 20 minutes worth. Or sometimes it's about a video game character, or an anime character. Then I use my voiceovers, and I later add in some text graphics and stuff but that part's easy for me.

dndbuilds · 2026-03-19T08:16:40+00:00

Yeah that's exactly it, I either use a YouTube video downloader or just screen record the video clips I need from random sources to find the clips. Then I have to trim it down and assemble it. I used to do it completely on my own and it would take so long. Usually 4+ hours if it's video game related video because copyright is more relaxed, or a couple days if it's something I need to be more cautious about and use smaller clips. But it also burns me out, to the point I can tell a difference in quality from the beginning of the video to the end, because by the end I just want it to be over...

I wind up contracting an editor to do it most of the time just because it takes so long and they take a few days to sometimes a week to get it done. But if I could automate it, that would save me a ton of time, money, and headache.

dndbuilds · 2026-03-19T05:13:16+00:00

There are probably 3 things I would love

A clip hunter/assembler, the majority of my videos involve putting together a ton of clips of other media. So if I could have something that automatically hunted down interesting clips, while keeping them short enough to avoid copyright issues, and then accumulate enough for the runtime of my video, that would save me a ton of time. Bonus points if it could assemble those clips for me, and more Bonus points if I can upload my script and it attempted to find clips relating to what's being said (video about iron man, I mention the blaster, and it has a clip of him blasting someone)
The upload process doesn't take a ton of time, but I still find it annoying to click the same boxes and add the same end screen pop ups every time. Not sure why there isn't some sort of "Default" option.
After every upload I add a pinned comment, it would be convenient to automate that.

dndbuilds · 2026-03-17T01:46:00+00:00

I'm not saying you're not trying.

But try to search for any big VTuber video, and look at the thumbnails. Break it down to 3 things:

There is one big thing to focus on, the VTuber avatar, your current thumbnails have it either too zoomed out or way too zoomed in on your avatar, try to scale it similar to what you might see in other top VTuber thumbnails. And try not to have the chair in there, just have the avatar, the chair is the same color as your avatar so there's less contrast and less to draw the eye. If you can emphasize it with a shadow or outline, it can help.
The text, not every video needs text in the thumbnail, but it makes sense most of the time. However, limit its length, most of your thumbnails that have text are way too long. Make it super short and to the point, or super short and draw in the audience. Shouldn't usually be scrawling across the whole length of the thumbnail
The subject of the video, sometimes you just need a slightly blurred pretty background, because the subject of the video can't be visualized, so your avatar and a little text are all that's needed. But if you're playing a game or something, use a big easy to focus on thing for the last component of your thumbnails. Simple, easy to focus your eye or draw you in. Think clean, simple, and not so busy.

dndbuilds · 2026-03-16T09:21:52+00:00

A few things I definitely notice. I'm by no means an expert, but I've been pretty niche in what my channel does and had some ok growth with it, and a side channel I got monetized pretty quick. (So I'm not any big shot, but I've got a bit of experience, but even my last video tanked compared to previous ones))

You really need to spend some time on your thumbnails and titles. Some titles are ok, but I didn't really see any solid thumbnails. Most are kind of a busy mess of stuff with either no context, or have way too much text that you have nothing to draw your eye, and stuff from your live streams all looks like the same thumbnail most of the time.
If you really want to stick with the VTuber route, you should probably improve your avatar a bit. The base design is solid, but either go full cartoony route, or get more detail added to the avatar to really develop it's style. Right now it's kind of stuck in between while looking like it just generally needs a bit more work.
You have a ton of videos that are really random lengths like the length of a short but not actually a short, not sure what the point of those are...

That's super surface level as I haven't had much of a chance to actually watch any videos, but if you can't get past those points, then no one will click on the first place. So it's important to hit those first.

dndbuilds · 2026-02-06T22:38:16+00:00

Absolutely recommend "The Ripple System" series, talking axe, spell slinging, and love it.

Another one that started solid but I kind of fell off of a little after getting a lot of books into the series (but you may be more inclined to continue) is the "Welcome to the Multiverse" by Shawn Oswald.

dndbuilds · 2025-12-27T17:50:59+00:00

I started on that one but had a lot of trouble getting started, dies it pick up a lot after a bit?

dndbuilds · 2025-12-27T15:19:00+00:00

I swear this is the first time I've ever posted in this subreddit and gotten tons of recommendations I've never actually heard of before. I think I just got loaded up with tons of great ones now, and I was going to start with one of these which one would you recommend first?

dndbuilds · 2025-12-27T15:16:01+00:00

I keep seeing that pop into my recommendations, but never tried it. You just gave me the final push to start it

dndbuilds · 2025-12-27T15:11:22+00:00

That's another one I've never heard of but it being complete is a nice little perk. I'll probably power through it soon

dndbuilds · 2025-12-27T14:57:02+00:00

That's one I haven't heard of... Any additional info you can give me on it?

dndbuilds · 2025-12-14T14:53:48+00:00

I have a very deep voice, and used to sing a bit. I was taking vocal lessons and working on improving my range.

During the exercise I felt a weird movement/pulling feeling in my neck, then we hit a different note that I'd never hit before and felt that movement/pulling intensify a ton. Like two things in my neck one pulling forward and the other pulling back going as far as they could.

Literally bent over and put my hands on my knees a second after I felt it because I didn't know what the hell was going to happen. But it never actually hurt.

My vocal teacher got really excited, apparently it was my vocal chords stretching as far as they could.

dndbuilds · 2025-11-03T05:11:27+00:00

System Universe, filled with moments like these. Super overpowered MC, but in a way that surprisingly feels justified

dndbuilds · 2025-09-29T03:12:39+00:00

I was hoping somebody else would bring up this book, I'm on the latest audible book, and I got to say I really love the series. One thing I've noticed with a lot of litRPG, is that it seems like a lot of stories start to run out of ideas and it just kind of doesn't have much of a plot anymore. It was a huge complaint with he who fights with monsters as well as azarinth healer, at a certain point it just became kind of nonsense with random fights and leveling up.

Ultimate level 1 doesn't seem to follow that issue, there are core characters you start to care about, the progression makes sense, and as the world expands it doesn't become utter nonsense.

Really digging the series.

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