Hobby Channel and Hobby Life - 1 Year Old

The YouTube Channel and Hobby Life app has recently surpassed the 1 year mark. They have both seen modest success with about 1,350 subscribers on youtube and about 1,000 users of the app.

Recently I have been releasing the biggest updates to the Hobby Life app yet including a range of new customisations, quality of life features, status tags, lists tab redesign and a lot more to come with the new version of iOS 16.

This year I have been less active on the youtube channel however and I’d like to fix that with way more regular videos and content. Which has lead me to rethink the hobby space and setup more of a studio with filming in mind:

To facilitate giving the hobby channel and hobby life app the attention they require. I’ve decided to do the following:

  • Postpone plan to resurrect the tech channel, it will still be there, I just won’t be planning any new content for it. Instead I may plan one off tech posts on the hobby channel when appropriate.

  • Take the community minecraft server offline. It was a fun experiment but it takes time to maintain and it simply isn’t being used enough to warrant the expense. I will provide an alternate way to access this content before taking it offline, for anyone attached to the worlds within.

Thank you for understanding and continuing to support my ventures.

January Update on "Hobby Life"

Hobby Life has been publicly available for about 7 months now and I’m super happy with the response. Great number of downloads and engagement.

If you want to follow development more directly, check out our discord, it is the fastest way to get support and view a list of features in development.

Currently I’m working on a pretty big feature, the ability to import / export data from within the app. This makes it really easy to move data to a different device or prepare your collection list in a text editor and import it in to the app.

I understand that while being super useful, this is still less intuitive than using an online API or cloudkit. The decision not to use cloud storage was in line with our app policy where we do not store / use any of your data.

I expect this feature to be available in the next few weeks along with some other minor improvements.

Focus and Direction

This website has had a number of names as my business / hobbies have evolved, “Northy Software”, “Apptly Creative” and now just “Northy.TV”.

I’ve never been one to focus too much on branding but I do like cohesion and it is one thing my work hasn’t really had.

While I’m calling the website Northy.TV, it is a intended as a point where all my work can live under the same banner. As such the Apptly Creative youtube channel will soon be renamed to Northy Tech alongside Northy Hobbies.

I think it is important to not mix too many themes, so Northy Hobbies will stick to miniatures and creative projects while Northy Tech will stick to programming discussions / guides, tech industry and maybe even games.

This is just a start and more will be added as each channel and project is established under the projects and channels tabs at the top of the website.

Thanks for the support :)

Northy Miniatures and being Apptly Creative

This website, my courses and the YouTube channel have been rather quiet since 2017, I should probably address that shouldn’t I?

In short, I needed a break, before I broke. While at times Apptly Creative has been successful enough to be done full time (for that I am very thankful) I’ve always maintained a day job as well. Doing both takes a toll, around 2017 I started a major project in my day job and I really wanted to focus all of my energy on it to make sure that it was successful.

That project is now complete and I’m glad to say it went pretty well. I do however really really miss my creative work.

In planning to ease back in to things, there are two major products that I will be launching in the coming days and weeks:

  1. “Northy Miniatures” YouTube Channel - While I still love programming, I’ve also rekindled my love for the arts and in particular model building and painting. I have a lot of plans to start sharing that soon in entertaining and educational videos.

  2. “Hobby Life” App - As i said, i still love programming. Heading back in to the miniature hobby scene I saw a gap in the market for a progress tracker that had a few advanced tracking features with a lot of colour and flavour. If you like the miniature hobby, i think you will love this app!

So how much will it cost you? I’m actually planning to launch both for free and without advertising (as much as possible, YouTube has a few restrictions).

This is something new for me but I’m planning to fund the project through patreon. Once people start getting value out of my videos and apps, if they want more regular content and updates and to provide input in to the product direction, they can support the products via patreon for a very fair monthly fee.

I don’t know if this project will work but I’m pouring my heart and soul in to it and I’ve planned this in a way that the day job won’t hold it back.

If you’ve ever supported my products before, thank you, it means the world to me and it allows me to do things that I love. I hope you love this too.

Patreon Page

YouTube Channel

Hobby Life AppStore Page

Discord

Choose your platform

It is important to us that you have freedom over where you view Apptly Creative view courses. We understand you may be members of other educational services and want to keep down the number of accounts you have to create everywhere.

All Courses

The following platforms contain or will contain all Apptly Creative courses for outright purchase and unlimited access for the lifetime of the course:

Apptly Creative

Udemy

Selected Courses

The following platforms do not contain all courses but have other opportunities as well as outright purchase with unlimited access. This may include subscription access or as part of a bundle.

CartoonSmart

StackSkills

So which should I Choose?

If you want to buy the course or courses outright and have not used Udemy before then I suggest our Apptly Creative platform. It has simple payment options and where possible the cheapest prices.

If you want to see what else is available in your area of interest then I highly recommend having a look at CartoonSmart and StackSkills as they both have a huge catalog of courses and resources.

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for future platforms.