History · Noppenecke EOL · Show Formats · 2400 Subscribers · Cost · Final thoughts

History

The Noppenecke was a project that began around April 2019. Its basic idea was to showcase Cobi brick tanks.

COBI itself is a toy manufacturer that nowadays primarily produces WW1 and WW2 sets using brick systems similar to Lego. This carved out a unique niche, as Lego itself chooses not to produce such military-themed items.

Initially, the targeted market appeared to be children, which is also what most of the marketing aimed for. However, the actual audience primarily consists of older men. For more information, please see the screenshots, which are taken directly from my YouTube Channel, Noppenecke.

At the time, there was virtually nothing on YouTube for this audience, and my channel was one of the first attempting to gain a foothold.

Initially, the production value was very low, as I was only filming with my smartphone and didn't know much about the sets. This gradually transformed; I began investing in better lighting, a dedicated DSLR camera to record in 4K, and later, even a dedicated audio recorder, all in an effort to offer the best possible experience.

This all concluded about a year after the channel started, with all production ceasing around the end of June 2020.

Noppenecke EOL

Or, to put it better, there were three significant factors that caused me to lose all interest.

• Cobi release policy, first off fuck you if you release a Set for €120 just to bring out an updated version half a year later. This happened multiple times also for some good selling sets it made no sense to collect them, in my year collecting Cobi I witnessed four Tiger tank versions and 3 Kingtiger versions with small changes.


• Cobi.pl only releases, at some point around the beginning of 2020 Cobi started to keep releasing Sets in Limited Editions only in their Web shop, the joke is that these versions were not really limited or at least never sold out. One of the biggest markets for Cobi is Germany and the shipping cost for one Set are around €20. Not only is this a huge turnoff but also made local distributors angry because they could not sell these often very anticipated sets to their customers.


• The videos took way too much time.

These are just my reasons. If you do not agree with them, you can kindly shut the fuck up.

Show Formats

Just film it and be done with it.

There were basically three formats over the lifetime of the channel.
The very first videos involved simply showing the model with no further information. It was a really simple format: if a video was 10 minutes long, it took exactly that amount of time to create.

Historic Comparison

Pretty quickly, I asked myself why I was doing this, as I would never watch such videos myself. Consequently, I created my very own format, and I'd like to give myself full credit for being the first to do something like this in the Lego/brick-building world.

I began to pair the model showcase with real-life information and images, sometimes comparing very minor details to its real-world counterpart and explaining what each part represented.

These videos, especially towards the end, took around 40 hours to create, encompassing research, finding images, editing, animations, recording footage, and voice-overs.

COBI NEWS

The last show format, Cobi News, also managed to capture many viewers.

The name says it all: there wasn't an existing format that gathered all the latest news about Cobi and presented it in a single, fast-paced video with complementary images.

Cobi themselves only offered rudimentary livestreams on YouTube, which were mostly in Polish, sometimes two hours long, and contained very little information. They did this at least twice a week, and you can guess how few people watched them.

My format became so influential that Cobi themselves copied it after five months, even starting to call their livestreams 'Cobi News,' which boosted their search results.

2400 Subscribers and 400k Views in just under a year!

To be honest, this was relatively easy. The category was new, and I offered a unique package. But could more have been achieved, considering I managed to hit these numbers in just under a year?

The simple answer is yes. The format was in German only, so that was the first hurdle. Unfortunately, my English has only worsened since I left school (which you can likely discern from how poorly this is written).

The best case study would be Brickmeet. He currently has far more views and subscribers than I do, but I will never respect him for his video format. He appeared some time after me and took some lessons from my thumbnails and video titles (also, like a little bitch, he tried to get people to his channel via my comment section).

His biggest offense is that he does the same as hundreds of other Lego YouTubers: he speed-builds sets to bland, royalty-free music. That's it. The worst offense is that he puts 'review' in his titles. I know this is YouTube and clickbait works, but I've never had any respect for that approach or for him.

One thing I have to give him credit for is his video quality; it's great, and you can clearly see he already had a studio setup. From the start, he saw this as a business opportunity and can produce content in a way I never could with my 40-hour video format.

Being the first is incredibly important. You can get so much search traffic just by being the first to release a video for a specific set. Consequently, all these speed-builders are racing against the clock, hoping to be the first to upload.

However, this is also a precarious position, especially since some Cobi distributors have started recording videos themselves. This means they are the first to have the sets, and everyone further down the line will have to wait at least two to three days just to get the set into their hands.

This is also something that could eventually kill many of these speed-build channels. All it would take is for Cobi to start doing this themselves. The moment that happens, channels like Brickmeet will either need to adapt or they will bite the dust. Nobody watches them for any added value; they only come for the set itself, not for the presenter or any information in the videos.

Cost

Cobi is expensive – not Lego-level expensive, but larger sets can cost around €100, though most are around €30.

Now how much did the Noppenecke cost to run?

Camera + Lights + Voice Recorder + additional equipment = €1200

Well that is not so expensive... just wait I had around 120 - 130 Sets which cost me around €5000

Yes, that's right, I'm not kidding. Some of these older sets get expensive quickly. Also, because newer Cobi sets tend to sell out, and you never know when you'll be able to get one for a video, I bought what I needed and simply put it aside. I ended up with a massive storage of sets for which videos were never made.

And that's not even mentioning the cost of acquiring all the research material and books just to find images...

Final thoughts

It was an interesting time, and thinking back, I might do it again. The biggest tip I can give to anyone wanting to start something similar is: SPEND TIME ON YOUR THUMBNAILS.

After becoming the fastest-growing channel in this niche, I overtook people who had been making videos for two or three years. Do not put your ugly fucking face in thumbnails. Nobody wants to see my ugly face BECAUSE NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU.

They care about the set, not you; you come second. You are not PewDiePie; your face has no value on the thumbnail. Focus on the object. Just look at my thumbnails in comparison to others. People didn't click on my videos because they were inherently better (FUCK, I still hate my autofocus!), but because I showed them what they wanted to see.

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