Letter from the Director, 9th of July

Greetings everyone!

For those who don't know me, I'm Frase, the director of Brick News. It's been a while since I addressed everyone, so I wanted to ensure this was as detailed as possible. If you just want to read about the fun stuff, look no further, I'll knock that out of the way right now with the next two paragraphs.

August's grand prize poll is about to go live - by the time most of you see this, the poll will have gone live in the Clubs tab. The August grand prize will still be a large LEGO set, however not quite as expensive as the previous few. Why? We're spending $350 on the build competition prizes for the top three entrants - who will each get one of the three new Indiana Jones sets. This allows our Brick News subscribers to compete and increase their chances of winning a prize for the month.

The #1 prize for the August build competition will be the Temple of the Golden Idol. Image source: LEGO.com.au.

The grand prize options will range from a few different sets - the Batcave Shadow Box ($600 AUD), Lion Knights' Castle ($600 AUD), Harry Potter Diagon Alley ($700 AUD) or the UCS Mos Eisley Cantina (~$700 AUD). We'll allow some time for our site members to vote before picking the winning set. However, many of you may also be wondering what's coming after August... let's dive into that.

As of today, the 9th of July 2023, we have around 270 subscribers. When I started the company, I wasn't sure if anyone would be interested in a fan-made LEGO news website with monthly competitions. It sounded great in theory for LEGO fans wanting an affordable chance of winning a cool set every month, but I wasn't sure how many people would be willing to sign up. I'm very fortunate, and very humbled, that we already have over 200 subscribers in the eight months that we've been running. Thank you to those of you who signed up, and congratulations to those of you who have won and received prizes through the monthly draws, the build competitions and the Instagram competitions.

Of course, when starting a business, there's a lot of road bumps along the way... there's the expected accounting fees and legal costs, but on top of that there are many other factors that had to be taken into consideration. Shipping, advertising, prizes, website hosting, article writing and other costs all lumped in. Right now, Brick News isn't making money - I'm still having to top up the business with my personal funds to keep it floating. However, with the support over the last eight months, it is gradually getting there.

The Super Star Destroyer is over 124cm long and may be featured as a grand prize at Brick News once we reach 1500 subscribers. Image source: LEGO.com.

We began setting milestones and goals for the business - one of which included the UCS Millennium Falcon at 1000 subscribers, which we have since pushed forward to feature this month. Another milestone is the UCS Super Star Destroyer at 1500 subscribers; due to the insane $2500 AUD price tag on this set, we will not be budging the 1500 subscriber milestone count for this set. This could be years away, or potentially December, depending on how many people sign up over the next few months.

The Problem We're Facing Currently

Over the last several weeks, we've been having some of our ads rejected by one of Meta's review teams (for context, Meta owns Facebook and Instagram). Being two of the primary social media platforms we advertise on, this has hit us hard and stopped us from being able to consistently bring on board new subscribers. Our suspicion is that Meta's automatic review algorithm has flagged photos of certain LEGO sets due to scammers using them in Facebook ads designed to lure users to fake LEGO websites and steal credit card details, and as a result it is flagging our ads and preventing them from being approved.

I have spoken with two Meta support agents over the phone who have escalated a case to try and resolve this issue. In the meantime, we're unable to run any of our UCS Millennium Falcon ads on Facebook or Instagram. So right now, our biggest problem is our ads aren't able to run properly and this prevents us from reaching potential subscribers. We're hoping this will be resolved by the 14th of July, but we'll have to wait and see.

Upcoming Grand Prizes

The biggest prize coming this year will be the rumoured LEGO Star Wars: UCS Republic Venator, supposedly releasing at the beginning of October. Because we are yet to receive official confirmation of the set, we can't advertise it yet or list it on our site as a guaranteed prize - however you can be sure that if it does release we'll include it in multiple draws (as long as it's a good set)! While we do want to mix up the prize pools each month, we can't ignore that the vast majority of our supporters seem to favour LEGO Star Wars sets the most.

We have been considering putting several retired UCS sets in our upcoming competitions, including the UCS Star Destroyer, UCS Death Star (2016 version) and UCS Imperial Shuttle. However, with prices soaring up recently for some of these older sets, we'll need to ensure we have enough subscribers on board to cover the costs.

The Future of Brick News

Despite the cost of running the business, we're slowly building up a community and in another year's time I expect we'll be able to break-even and even improve the prizes. My birthday is on the 22nd of July, so I will be flying down south to spend a week in the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast and enjoy some cooler weather. During that week, emails and live chats will still be responded to but there may be a longer delay. This will not affect prize shipping times.

If you'd like to write for us, you can email info@bricknews.co and pick up a hobby role - although be aware, you'll be banned from entering all future Brick News competitions once you become a writer. To those of you who stuck around, thanks for reading! Keep an eye peeled for an upcoming Instagram competition very soon...