I'm feeling desperate. Whether I'm "actually" desperate or not, the feeling is growing. From a purely financial perspective, my comfort with levels of debt remains the same, but the practical animal in me wants pretty much anything to suggest that money can or is flowing the other direction. The grant process is still processing, including the credit card to keep the people working. I'm almost certainly going to be Door Dashing for a spell here in a week or two. My resume rewriting is just a headache I've already gotten partially refunded and will probably go for more.
I'm interested in many, many things at once. I don't talk about them all because it gets overwhelming. One area I've almost never mentioned is exploring content creation and ad monetization. I'm genuinely jealous and resent the dopey, wide-eyed, plastic copy-cats who make hundreds or thousands by creating "content." I know there are various ways to game the system. I know there are dozens of "niches" that make themselves known after a few questions. I know that I consider myself a very adept pattern learner.
So I bought a $1,066 course from one of the biggest content creators. I've spent 20 hours doing what, on his provided timeline, it's suggested should take 2 weeks. I'm compiling and sorting data. I'm taking key words and style tips. I'm writing down every remotely interesting thought or niche to explore when my initial efforts prove futile. I've already even gotten into an errant pissing match with another content creator on the private group who talked right past the concerns I raised and was looking for guidance on! I'm in the weeds, guys. I also have 60 days to get refunded.
I picked this guy because he gave me the exact opposite of the impression of all the genuine scams. The ones situated on infinite-scroll pages telling you vague nothingness and promising the world and then providing you a check-out page to buy 1/10th of their program. This isn't that. He has many, many hours of practical, actionable information that I'm seeing the future with fairly clearly. He's not always consistent and articulate as it may pertain to your specific niche, but the playing field is fair.
There is a genuine conflict between the idea of "quality" content, and content that gets views and clicks. One of the main reasons I drifted away from Youtube as a source of my entertainment was what felt like a massive waste of time. If I want to learn something, I don't need your diary for 2-7 minutes at the top of the video. I don't need hundreds of quick cuts and arm-chair philosophy. I don't need guitar Muzak and delightful fonts. What I don't need is precisely what Youtube desires and what keeps the consumer draining their life away on Youtube.
I've been at this less than a day and I can tell you the recipe for success is to mine those trending buzzwords, combine them with insights from your-niche tracking programs. Create a video with 5-10 tips or insights regarding "x," If you're a late 40s or remotely attractive upper-middle-class female, you can say just about anything. Use approximately the same gentle guitar music, reference books everyone has heard of, steal Alan Watts quotes, cut together whatever it is you may be doing or samples of things adjacent to your subject matter.
100s of thousands of views, with some luck, timing, and system-gaming will follow. Then you can get sponsored. Then Youtube will put ads on your video. Then you can become an affiliate hocking other crap. Whether any of this is "good" or "valuable" is not for yourself to judge, just to achieve.
Here we reach how you know I'm feeling desperate. I'm leaning into that cynicism. For as much as I've felt genuinely inspired to maybe make useful-to-me or practical compiled best practices and insights, that all has to come second. First, I need the eye-balls. First I need to be carbon-ish-copy. First I need to flood the already distracted, depressed, and confused landscape with bait before I can entertain the idea of creating a worthwhile brand or example. It's capitalism 101 with ambivalent systems dictating the attention rules.
I think this makes me a bad person. I think I'm a desperate person first, bad one second, but a bad one nonetheless. It makes me envious. I want everything these rich idiots have. I can't win for losing in trying to do "genuine good" in the world in my social work roles. I can't sustain my off-grid or sustainability goals for the land when I'm otherwise occupied, alone, or broke.
I'm going to be more or less locked into this project for the next 2 weeks. I had to stop because my procrastination was manifesting when I hit what appeared to be a contradictory roadblock regarding what the course was telling me and the feedback from the facebook group. I had a 20 hour flow before that hiccup. I didn't feel my muscles tighten. I wasn't sleepy. I kept getting flashes of inspiration on what to do next. It was a good time and quite the ride.
I have 17 more ideas I need to conjure based on these key words and recently trending videos. Once I do that, I'll write scripts, do voice-overs, schedule releases, and then hopefully collect and refine good data for what to zero in on. I might have to release as many as 100 videos in the niche before I find traction or useful patterns play out. I may have to switch and experiment with entirely new niches. Who knows. I just know I've given something to do with all of my angry waiting-around energy, and if it pans out I'm going to be about as angry as I've ever been for 1 extreme moment before I begin my redemption practice.
Every "motivational" or "this is the secret" kind of book, video, or lecture boils down to "do the thing." I'm doing it. I'm going to do it quicker and precisely as I'm told, and I'm going to use my instincts and pattern recognition to try and infiltrate where maybe it hasn't been yet. I'm just another idiot like all of these dumb hopeless cunts beautifully packaging and selling their cynical desires as "content." Surely those who might consume it are wholly indifferent to my opinion of myself in creating it.
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