Creative Output

Last week, I wrote about how I used 'effort' to make an animated vitamin ad more engaging. While that post focused on artists, the same principle applies to business advertising in general. Check out this post from Logan's Candies. It has an astonishing 51M views! Not bad for a family-owned candy shop based out of Ontario, California. And this isn't an outlier - they have dozens of videos with 10M+ views. What I think they've done tremendously well is hone in on the 'effort' of their process....

This week I have a quick, actionable tip that's increased visitors to my site by ~100/day. If you've ever checked out a YouTube description, you might be familiar with the 'wall of text' approach. This is dozens of links to related videos, affiliate products, digital offerings, and profiles on other social media platforms. I was guilty of this. My video descriptions used to have 10+ links (left side). Now, they have just two: one for learning from me and one for contacting me (right side)....

Lots of new folks on the mailing list! My goal every week is to provide a bit of insight into being an artist with a career on the Internet. I'll keep things simple today for all of the new readers with a catch up of what I've been doing and what comes next: 🎯 I correctly predicted that my latest video would be a hit ✏️ That was based on my approach to creating shareable videos 🎥 I just filmed a full breakdown of how I made the chair animation to test my theory about how artists can win on...

Ever wonder how creative ideas evolve into something that pays dividends years later? Here's the story behind my most successful holiday videos: 50 Ways to Open a Gift (9M views) and 50 Ways to Wrap a Gift (2.9M views). I made them in 2018, and even after 6 years, they still make a few thousand dollars every holiday season as they spike in viewership throughout December. They're very evergreen in the sense that a lot of views return to them every Christmas. (Admittedly, I find it really...

I typically stick to reflecting on past videos, but today I'm going to make a bold prediction that what I'm currently working on will be a hit. I'm locking in this prediction as a way to put my money where my mouth is before the video is even made. I previously wrote about a simple formula for shareability (the dinner table test): did you see that video where [blank] does [blank]? This is one of those awesome ideas that neatly fits into that formula. Family and friends have been asking what...