The State of Things #5 | How I'm planning on getting my content seen
The State of Things #5 | December 2023
Via Gujarat Image on Unsplash.
Welcome to the 5th Edition of The State of Things. This is a series I write regularly to keep myself accountable on my path towards financial freedom… or so I thought.
I started writing this series after I lost my job when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on March 10 2023. See the The company I worked for collapsed - Here's how I'm coping (beehiiv.com). The crash and loss of employment was so sudden and so very out of my control that it was a real wake up call to being employed in the 21st century.
How Things Are Changing
Even though this series’ original goal was to track the amount of money I made on my journey toward financial independence (AKA being free from the “system”), I’ve found this mindset to not only be limiting but debilitating. So, in this edition - things are going to be changing. I’m shifting my goals and mindset away from making money (an output goal, which is out of my control) and towards input goals like creating work that I’m proud of that (hopefully) brings value to the world.
I don’t get me wrong; I want to make money and be financially independent, but art is not the quickest or easiest way to do it. It is such an oversaturated market that it often has me questioning why I continue to create and share my work when there are so many people out there who do the exact same thing as me.
Making money from art is different from making money from another type of business (ex. selling products, drop shipping, making an app). I, intentionally and unintentionally, put a lot of emotion in to making my art, and I don’t want to be creating work with the goal for it to marketable or to sell well. I’m not interested in making froggy keychains or selling anime prints (and I mean no offense to those who do - I just realize now that it is not my path and it has never been). I’m determined to be remembered after my death and to leave some sort of legacy behind.
What’s Been on My Mind
So, here’s whats changing at The State of Things. I’m going to be focusing on input goals, rather than output goals. Input goals are in my control. Output goals are not.
The bottom line is this: I will make good art and I will share it. I’m not going to stress about numbers. I will have patience and I will have faith - that if I do things right, results will come.
Concept 1: Getting My Work Seen [Online]
Via Austin Kleon Show Your Work. “For artists, the great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed.” - Honore de Balzac.
Via Austin Kleon Show Your Work. “For artists, the great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed.” - Honore de Balzac.
A few notes I’ve taken when researching systematized content creation…
Patience - Have patience when sharing what you make. It takes a long time to see results.
Faith - Have faith in your work. If you do the right things and show up consistently, then eventually the results will come.
Consistency - The main strategy for consistency is to set input goals - goals that are within your control. For example, it isn’t within control whether you get 10,000 subscribers or hit 1,000,000 views on a video but it is in your control how often you put out a video, its quality, the title, thumbnail, and description; and whether you share it on other platforms.
Control - What is in your control: can i show up every week and share something authentically that would add value to my target audience? And make the process vaguely enjoyable for myself while I’m at it…
Concept 2: My Blog & Organic Growth
In my 🥳 My 1 Year Blogging Anniversary blog post, I talked about wanted to get more traction (AKA “organic growth” from Google search traffic) for my blog. The only people who read my blog are my friends. In a lot of the books I read about bloggers, they talk about “organic growth” AKA search traffic to their blog - and how over the period of a few years they were able to grow their mailing list from 100 subscribers to 10,000. Me, on the other hand, has been blogging for over a year now and I still haven’t cleared more than 9 subscribers (90% are my friends who I asked personally to subscribe lol). I don’t think my blog content is totally awful… so what am I doing wrong?
When I entered my blog’s name into Google, not a single article popped up - not even my homepage. That’s when I found out that Google doesn’t automatically index your website, even if you share links to it on social media again and again. 😭 Noob move, I know. But if I didn’t know, then maybe you didn’t either.
I’ve since submitted my blog website to Google Search Console for indexing so it’ll show up in search traffic. Here’s a tutorial on how to get Google to start seeing your website and putting it in the search results: Setting-up Google Analytics (UA + GA4) – beehiiv.
Crossing my fingers we’ll start seeing more growth soon.
Concept 3: Video Content
Its 2023. Video content is the meta.
Personally, I’m not a fan of making video content. Whenever I’ve tried to make video content of the art peice I’m making in the past, it feels like it takes twice as long for me to finish the piece. Having to remember to take out my phone and record myself painting (or pretending to) really breaks my flow.
However, the big goobers who’ve walked the walked (AKA have a lot of followers and are able to make a living from their work) say I need to make it to stay relevant… so I will give it a shot.
One of my New Years resolutions for 2024 is to make 3-4 high quality videos throughout the year.
Concept 4: My New Years Resolutions
My 2024 New Years Resolutions.
I’m not going to be breaking down my New Years Resolutions in this post - but here they are for future reference. At the end of the year I’ll be coming back to this image to see what I’ve achieved.
Since the last The State-of-Things
August 2023 → December 2023 (16 weeks)
Goal: Input
💥 3 comic chapters | Webtoon
🖼️ 0 artworks / paintings | Instagram
🪶 15 blog posts | Arquebun Weekly
🎥 0 long form videos | YouTube
📀 4 short form videos | TikTok