Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a banana in a bunch. Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Scorpion? 2. Something about DMT Show Notes Link: https://duckyobrien.com/2020/04/24/this-week-in-content-creation-dont-wait-for-success/ Show Video Link: https://youtu.be/KKvQ28r9OKA Show Sources: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/twitch-statistics/ Show Notes Short: This week we go over how to not just sit around and wait for success. You need to go out and actively chase down avenues that promote growth. You can make all the content you want and not grow at all. It's vital to spend just as much effort on increasing exposure and discoverability of your content. It doesn't happen overnight, you need to put in some elbow grease to make it happen. Show Notes Long: For today’s episode, I wanted to go over something that happened to me that made me think quite a bit about how I’m approaching content creation. I’m always a firm believer of working hard and working smart but that’s not always a recipe for success. Let’s take streaming for example. The vast majority of people can stream regularly for many hours every day and still not find an increase in viewership many years later. The same goes for YouTube as well. You can be uploading videos regularly and still not find an increase in subscribers. There are people who manage to find success just by working hard but they are far fewer in number than the people who do not. Here are some facts to show you the reality of the situation. In February of 2020, there were 3.8 million unique broadcasters on Twitch. As of March 2020, there were 41,100 Partners. 1.08% of the broadcaster base made partner. The literal 1%. If anything, that number should be a little bit lower because there will have been an increase to the number of unique broadcasters by March. To make partner, one of the toughest requirements to meet is to have 75 average concurrent viewers. So even if you did barely manage to make partner, there’s no guarantee for growth or a reliable income at those numbers. The reality is, it is very hard to find success as a content creator. It can seem a bit daunting when faced with how hard it is to actually find success. So the question remains, what can I do to increase my chances of finding success? Enter this week’s epiphany moment. I’ll start by telling you what happened to me earlier this week that got my brain working, where I saw a glimpse of light and had brief moment of clarity. As most people would probably not know, I am the host of four podcasts and I post regularly on the podcast subreddit on the weekly submission thread to see if I can get any more exposure. What happened instead, was a user contacted me to see if I was interested in doing a review swap. I told him, honestly, that I was more interested in getting reviews from actual listeners and that I would want to earn every positive review I received. We then went on to have a pleasant conversation, I checked out his podcast, and left it a positive review. I checked his show out later and it jumped from 2 positive reviews to 28 on the first week of releasing the show. I don’t even have one review! And there it was, the road to success opening up in front of me. This man had figured it out. The key to success for podcasting wasn’t in creating good content (although this definitely does help). The key to success was in increasing exposure for your show and getting enough views and reviews to make it to new and noteworthy on Apple Podcasts. This will net you even more views because of the increased exposure and discoverability due to being on the list. I had devoted all my time to making my podcasts, spending at least 3 hours editing every episode, and thinking of new shows to create. I used to even spend 3 hours or so making each episode’s album art. All of this, to no avail. I could spend years doing this and end up with the same result. Where as this guy, he spent a lot of his time (after making the show), in reaching out to others directly, making use of Reddit to target a specific audience group that would probably be open to leaving a review, and making sure his podcast was discoverable. He achieved a higher level of success in that one week, than I did in entire months. The key here, was that you have to go after success. You can’t just sit around and wait there for it to come to you. That happens very infrequently. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying it’s highly unlikely. You can keep grinding, keep making content, and keep doing your thing but nothing may ever change. You have to go out there and chase after success. That means for whatever it is you are doing, you need to spend just as much time and effort on being discoverable and getting exposure. On Twitch, you need to spend just as much time streaming, as you do building a community. You need to go watch and network with other streamers, join discords, ...
