Tag: creating content

Sweet Shit Saturday #007 (Singing In The Rain Edition)

It has been a rainy time in Poland thus far, but it’s looking up! Lots of good stuff this week. Watching TV, creating raving fans, passionate living, relationships, creating high quality content, and more …

Minus the singing, plus lots of rain.

It has been rainy (and floody) and cold most of my time in Poland thus far. It’s warming up a bit now.

Hey, I have an idea –> instead of me babbling about the weather like some lame dude trying to pick up some hot chick (or a hot dude, whatever, it’s cool), let’s get right into the …

swt lnks:

Are You Living The Dream or Chasing It? by some dude with a girl’s name that he tells everybody is Karl

“Hey Karol, WTF are you doing linking to your own post here when I already read it on Monday?!”

Wait, wait, let me explain! :) There was a lot of resistance to the tests in this article. It kind of made me sad just how much resistance there was to the no TV watching thing. Originally I made the tests 30 day tests, but I removed the sentence mentioning that before posting. I think maybe that’s where all the resistance comes from. It’s difficult to think about quitting a TV addiction forever. 30 days? No problem. Forever? Youz a crazy mofo dude with the girl’s name!

The point of the article was to get back to basics. To be mindful of how we’re spending time and how we’re wasting time. To be mindful of what is going into our bodies and enjoy the process instead of scarfing something down as quickly as possible. To actively seek knowledge.

I do eat at restaurants, sometimes. I do watch TV. That’s mostly a lie because it’s a rare occurrence, but I can’t state that I absolutely never watch. And I don’t read books every single day. Also rare, but there are days when I don’t actually pick up a book.

You can officially consider the tests 30 day tests. But you will never, ever, not in this lifetime (what other lifetime is there?) convince me that TV is productive or useful. I had an interesting thought about that …

The people who create TV shows spend more time creating TV shows than watching TV shows. Why? Because they’re living their dreams, not chasing them. Thoughts?

How to use Personality to Build a Loyal Audience and Create Raving Fans — with Naomi Dunford by Corbett Barr

I paid for a consultation with Naomi last week. Naomi is not cheap. And I don’t mean that in the sleazy red light district way. Wait … I mean … hmmm … how do I dig myself out of this one? Got it –> You can get some of Naomi’s sweet sweet … info! … frrrreeeeeeee in this interview on ThinkTraffic.

ThatTravelSpark.com by Shannon Albert

Cool new travel tip blog (with video!) that Shannon just launched. She has already added lots of content and is adding more regularly. If you have a family I think this site will be especially useful because Shannon has a husband and 2 kids and has a lot of experience traveling with the whole crew. Shannon and I disagree about cheap ponchos. Does that mean anything to you? It shouldn’t. Probably just check out the site and have a look-see before I go off on more tangents.

Lack of Content is a Lazy Excuse by Pat Flynn

“You should never have nothing to write about.” If you have nothing to write about you’re probably forcing yourself into the “wrong” niche because you’re chasing money or fame or something of that sort. I have about 30,000 words of content in backlog for this blog and it just doesn’t stop pouring out of me. I refuse to post more than 3 times/week though. :)

Passionate Living Guide by Henri Junttila

I interviewed Henri about how he earns money while living anywhere for How To Live Anywhere (coming June 8!). Henri’s an awesome dude who has been known to watch a lot of Los Simpsons lately to practice his Spanish. Damn, I guess TV can be educational. I take back everything I said earlier. (No, I don’t. TV drools, avocado rules!) He just released this sweet guide for $9.95. If you enter coupon code ‘freedom’ you get 25% off for the next week. Booya! (Just doing my thing and hooking you up!) Who the guide is not for: if you’re already living a passionate life, then rock! You’re all good. Who the guide is for: if you’re stuckified this guide can help. You know, you’re just not quite on the path in life you wish you were on. That type of thing. It does not have all the answers. Nothing does, nothing ever will. It’s 92 pages and full of lots of content.

Tim Ferriss Scam! Practical Tactics For Dealing With Haters by Tim Ferriss

Man, I really wish Tim’s site worked in Chrome (also known as Better Than Your Browser Unless Your Browser Is Chrome). But then again, there are a lot of sites that don’t. Step up your games people! This commentary has nothing at all to do with this post by Tim, but I had to get it off my chest. As much flack (flak? flaq? flac? Aflac?) as Tim gets, he has inspired many people, including myself. And the dude deserves all the success and acclaim he has received.

Proof You Can Create High Quality Content With No Money by The Swellers

The link above is to a video called Fire Away by my friends and tour mates The Swellers. You’ll notice that the video looks like something that might be on MTV if MTV still played videos. I won’t tell you how much they spent on the video, but let’s just say you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. :)

The key for them was relationships. Over the years they built up a lot of relationships with people and were able to call in favors. Take away: relationships are how you build a business as well.

Language Hacking Guide by Benny Lewis

Benny rocks it. I linked to this on Monday, and I’m linking to it again. I’ve linked to Benny a bunch of times before and I’m sure I’ll link to him in the future. Dude rules. Yes, I get paid if you buy the Language Hacking Guide. If you don’t want me to get paid just go to www.languagehacking.com and buy it and give Benny all those sweet sweet duckets (cash, skrilla, bills, bread, dough, cabbage, you get the point). It don’t matter (how’s my grammar?). If you’ve tried and failed at learning languages before, follow Benny’s advice already. Or don’t. :)

Special shout out to @norcross (andrewnorcross.com) for fixing my Thesis theme (aff) when I upgraded it and it didn’t look quite right about 20 minutes ago. :)

Questions/comments/wanna bake jelly filled donut cupcakes and tell me your deepest darkest secrets? You know what to do …

The Absolutely, Positively, 100% Guaranteed Way To Hit Home Runs In Everything You Do

Hitting home runs is fun. Here is how to do it the right way …

“Stuff that I do, if I have one or two or five or eleven peaks, as long as I’m productive and make enough stuff, maybe I have more chances at making some really good peaks, whether they’re sketches or jokes or drawings.” – Demetri Martin

I gave you the answer to the title of this article without even writing anything unique. Damn. I guess you can stop reading now. ;)

Demetri’s quote really resonated with me because of how closely it’s associated with blogging and virtually any other form of work or art.

Let’s say you’re writing a blog: most of your articles will receive an average (relative to you) level of visitors and comments. This is your core audience and they’re very important. Then some of your articles will resonate with another, larger, audience and you’ll get an extraordinary amount of traffic. These are the home runs, Demetri’s peaks.

You could take the stance that it’s better to focus only trying to hit home runs, but a lot of it has nothing to do with you. I’m consistently surprised which articles get lots of visitors/comments and which ones don’t.

As artists we have to focus on producing what we believe to be quality content for our core audience.

We’ve prepared. We’ve gone to batting practice. We’ve hit the weight room. We’ve shot the steroids. (Oh wait, not the part.) There is not much left to do.

Whether any piece of content ends up being a home run or not is mostly out of our control after that point.  That said, hitting home runs is fun! Let’s start from the beginning …

How To Never Hit Home Runs

Before we can figure out how to hit home runs let’s talk about how not to hit home runs.

Don’t swing. Ever. Keep telling yourself: “I’ll do it some day. Maybe tomorrow. Next week sounds good. Oh, but next year. Next year will be amazing.” And so it goes. (Life Lesson #11: Some day never comes.)

My friend John used to say, paraphrased, “Just do something. Create something. Anything. Throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. Then figure out what works and do more of that.” There is a lot you can do as far as research and planning that will make the “sticking” more likely, but if you’re at a point where you haven’t swung the bat, the time is now.

When you’ve taken a swing, know this …

Base Hits Are Better Than Home Runs

Ask any baseball coach if he’d rather have 10 base hits or 1 home run, and unless he is an utter fool, he will go for the base hits. A hit is an opportunity. A home run is a rarity.

Take lots of swings, because most of the pieces of content you create will be base hits. Every base hit is a step closer to a home run. (You’ll probably also have a few strikeouts, which are creations that simply don’t resonate at all with your audience. Don’t worry about it. Keep swinging.)

Consistently getting base hits is important because they put you in a position to win. And they help you deal with the strikeouts. Home runs, or massively popular pieces of content, can be complete game changers, but they won’t happen often.

I submit that if we’re going to think about hitting home runs then we should focus on hitting game changing home runs. Otherwise known as Grand Slams.

A Home Run Is Only A Game Changer If …

What happens if you hit a home run with no men on base? Game changer? Not at all.

So here’s the rub: A home run isn’t a game changer unless you’re consistently getting those base hits.

Let’s say you run a small blog and are consistently writing good content. One day you write a really awesome article that explodes your site traffic. If not for all of your consistently good content the visitors from the really popular article probably wouldn’t stick around.

My goal is to consistently hit base hits. I’ve had a few strikeouts and I’ve had some home runs (again, this is relative). But the base hits are what will win this ball game for me.

And I like winning.

How about you? Do you consistently produce so you have more chances at reaching the peaks? Do you hit lots of base hits and some home runs? Let me know what you’re up to below …