The Pointy Flat Cast: Recent Episodes
Ducky Obrien
I go over what it's like being a very small content creator and the lessons I'm learning as I try my best to succeed. Hopefully it helps someone out there!
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a fruit drop in a tin can.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Perception? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Link: https://duckyobrien.com/2020/05/16/the-importance-of-perceived-value/
Show Notes Short: It's more important what people think of your content rather than the actual quality of your content. This means that marketing your content is more important to growth than actually creating content. Networking with other content creators is the fastest and most reliable path for growth.
Show Notes Long: I don’t know about you but when I go shopping online, at a retailer such as Amazon, the first thing I check to help me make my purchasing decisions are the customer reviews. I’m sure most people probably do the same thing and check for the item with the most positive reviews for any product before making a purchase. This behavior deals with the concept known as perceived value.
Perceived value is the customer’s evaluation of the value and ability of the product or service to meet their needs compared to other similar products or services. And in the present world where online shopping is prevalent, a customer is not able to observe the product in person for themselves. This in turn, lead to the growth of customer reviews having a huge influence on the perceived value of the product, especially for products from companies with weaker brand recognition.
If you don’t believe me, this shift in purchases having a heavy reliance on customer reviews have created the problem of a massive flood of fake reviews from less then scrupulous companies taking advantage of this purchasing behavior. Fake reviews have become such a problem that sites like Fakespot are solely dedicated to determining the reliability of reviews. I won’t get into the details about how this works but generally speaking it analyzes the reviews to see if there are accounts spamming similar products from related companies and analyzing the text of the reviews to see if they are generated from bots. A surprising number of products listed on Amazon right now, that are best sellers, are products with fake reviews. So how does this concept tie in with the world of content creation?
Content is a product. And the people who consume the content are your customers. Perceived value is especially important because without it, there is no reason for someone to check out your content over someone else’s. The world of content creation is very competitive because the barrier to entry is very low. Anyone with a computer or even a smart phone, an internet connection, some software, and an idea can create content for any of the existing platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, etc. Since these platforms are so saturated with content creators, people consuming content rely on perceived value to choose the creators they will want to support.
I want take an aside here to note that some content creation “gurus” have this absurd notion that there is unlimited potential growth for every single content creator. This is a flat out lie. Just as people have limited incomes and they cannot purchase everything they want to, people also have limited time and cannot consume all the content they would like to, whether it be games, movies, music, books, etc. What this boils down to, is the fact that your content needs to have more perceived value over someone else’s for you to experience growth. This begs the question then, how do you increase the perceived value of your content?
The sad reality is that perceived value is not necessarily tied to the actual value of your content. The old adage of “make quality content” has absolutely no correlation to growth. There are so many content creators out there, making content with either no originality and blatantly copying other people’s ideas or trends, poorly produced, lacking any artistic or academic value, and etc. that have a massive following. Whereas incredibly talented creators with well thought out, original, and well produced content are constantly passed over. This is due to the criteria that people have come to use to determine the perceived value of content. The bad news is that it is very similar to the criteria most people use to judge the perceived value of a product sold online, positive reviews.
By positive reviews, I simply mean the number of followers, subscribers, views, likes, comments, favorites, etc. that you have for your content on that specific platform. This is more true than you realize. Many of the larger streamers on Twitch are actually not that great at playing games. They don’t really offer more insight, or a higher level of skill than most other streamers. There is no academic value whatsoever as watching these people will not make you better at playing the games. So then people might argue that they offer more entertainment or are more engaging than other streamers. This is not even true as well. You have no chance to actually connect with a larger streamer due to the massive spam in chat. Let’s take a look at the massive success of Valorant to show how its perceived value grew exponentially due to one simple factor, the number of views on Twitch.
I know I’m going to upset a lot of fans here but Valorant is not a good game. It is very limited in both game play and balance, as well as the amount of content available in its current form. I would argue that it’s not even as fun as many people make it out to be. Now before all of the internet gets their pitchforks and torches, hear me out a little bit. The game play in Valorant is a realistic shooter where it heavily relies on the angle of approach you take to an encounter. By this I mean, the game is heavily reliant on making sure you have the higher chance of survival for any angle that you choose to peek. These types of games bring balance to this style of game play by allowing you multiple paths to a destination, abilities such as flash and smoke grenades to obscure sight lines and increase your chance of survival, and etc.
Games like Valorant already exist. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, as well as Rainbow Six Siege, offer very similar game play but with way more more maps, more characters, more styles of play, and more polish created by years and years of play testing. So why aren’t these games achieving the same level of success and acclaim as Valorant, a game that is realistically in a beta phase. Even as of this writing, Valorant has a concurrent viewership of 149k, CS:GO with 40k, and R6 Siege with 13k. The difference is astounding and it’s certainly not due to the actual quality of these games.
So how did Valorant increase its perceived value so heavily? The answer is a genius, and rather devious (and in my opinion very dishonest), method of marketing. Riot locked access to the game by making people who wanted to play it watch large content creators streaming Valorant, and hope they get a key for the game to drop. It took many viewers a couple days of watching before they managed to get a key and some even took weeks. This lead to very inflated concurrent viewer numbers for the larger content creators streaming Valorant. Many of them had numbers twice their normal averages, and some even up to five times. This in turn, lead to Valorant being the top live category for a long while. The combination of many of the largest content creators playing the game, as well as most people on Twitch watching Valorant, lead to an impressive chain reaction where the perceived value of Valorant sky rocketed.
Notice here how it had nothing to do with the actual quality of the game, and simply with how many people were watching it, and how many of the largest content creators were streaming the game. This is quite the similar situation if you want to grow as a content creator. You can be streaming on Twitch all day, every day and not see growth for many years despite having quality. You can spend years and years making videos on YouTube, music on SoundCloud, photography on Instagram and never see growth. If you don’t believe me, the numbers don’t lie. Only around 1% of Twitch streamers ever make partner. The literal one percent. The key to growth is not based on making content but rather on marketing your content.
This relates to my previous article on networking. For a platform like Twitch, you need to increase the number of people following you and watching you for you to stand out amongst the sea of other streamers. You can use many methods to do this but the most reliable one is to work on networking with other content creators of a similar size and genre as you. You need to spend just as much time streaming, as you do being an active viewer that brings value in other people’s streams. By being active and supportive in other streams, those streamers are more likely to support you as well (by following, hosting, or even raiding). Why would someone support you when you don’t do anything to support them? In turn, this additional increase in traffic will increase your overall visibility and in turn, your perceived value.
The same general concept can be used for YouTube as well. By being active in other channels, they may be more likely to support you as well. By taking advantage of social media platforms, such as Reddit, Discord, Twitter, Instagram, etc. you can start networking with other content creators, as well as your audience, to create a faster growth in followers, subscribers, views, likes, etc. and in turn increase your perceived value, which will in turn increase the possibility of others checking out your content. Notice here how there is no correlation to the quality or subject of your content and simply on perceived value. This is the sad reality of success.
The ethical ramifications of this trend is very distressing. I see a constant plague of bots on both Twitch (to artificially inflate view counts) and on YouTube (to spam other channels to redirect traffic to themselves) because it works. Especially for YouTube, these dishonest folk who use bots gain tens of thousands of subscribers daily even though this is a simple problem to fix. And these are content creators that don’t care about the impact their content has on the future generations. I’ll go over this problem for the next time as it would make this long article even longer.
I for one, want to encourage you to stay true to the course you are taking and to always consider the ethical ramifications of the content you are creating as well as the methods you are using to foster growth. I am a firm believer that focusing on making the best quality content you can make will see growth but it will take considerably longer without focusing on marketing. There’s no reason you can’t do both but oftentimes it leads to situations where you may be tempted to cross some lines for the sake of what looks like a faster path to success. I’ll end by paraphrasing a quote from Chamath Palihapitiya, “The longer it takes to build something, the longer it’ll take for it to be torn down.”
I know being a content creator is depressing most of the time. We’re all in the same boat, and hopefully, the seas become a bit more manageable. Here’s to a brighter tomorrow. Or maybe someone will make a platform that finally rewards quality, honesty, and hard work. I challenge you Chamath!
Thank you so much for dropping by and listening, I really do appreciate it. I hope you guys are staying safe and sane in these trying times, and as always, catch you guys next time.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Here's my Twitter: https://twitter.com/stirthebulgogi
My blog: https://duckyobrien.com/
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, and use whatever means necessary to get even one more person to check your channel out. Whether they stay or not is up to the quality of your content obviously, but there’s also the notion of perceived value, which we will go over next time. When you become active in another person’s Twitch channel, they will be more likely to follow you back or even host you and raid you. Will every streamer do this? No, but the ones that do are the ones that will make the difference. This is very similar to the world of sales. Not every sales pitch will be successful. In fact, most will end in failure and rejection, but the ones that do come through, make up most of the revenue.
The same concept can be applied anywhere. For YouTube, be more active and comment in other people’s channels. Be more visible, provide more value. The difficult part is finding the methods that work. There’s no shortcuts here folks. You have to get out there and try everything. You’ll make mistakes, you’ll face rejection, but you will succeed. And with every success, you are one step closer to reaching critical mass where you can create a self sustainable business model so you can keep on creating to your heart's content.
The takeaway here is that you can’t wait for success, you have to go out and get it. Don’t get stuck in the rut of just churning out content, spend as much time on the things that actually get you growth. There is an audience out there for you, you just have to go out and find them.
Thank you so much for dropping by and listening, I really do appreciate it. I hope you guys are staying safe and sane in these trying times, and as always, catch you guys next time.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Here's my Twitter: https://twitter.com/stirthebulgogi
My blog: https://duckyobrien.com/
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a cookie in a tin.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Fire? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Link: https://duckyobrien.com/2020/03/27/this-week-in-content-creation-how-to-avoid-burning-out/
Show Video Link: https://youtu.be/AYNhkuCcYkM
Show Notes Short: To avoid burning out, fight negative thoughts by comparing yourself with yourself only. Stop comparing yourself against other people! Also keep in mind growth and improvement come with time. Secondly, keep doing what you're doing but always be willing to try out new things, to always keep you learning and changing. Finally, don't be always chasing that view and sub count and focus instead on making content that would make you happy.
Show Notes Long: These past two weeks have been rough, as I am sure almost everyone else out there is having a rough time as well. Despite current circumstances, I’ve been churning out content nonstop, spending around seventeen straight hours a day. Some days, I even managed to work thirty hours at a time. And I’ve taken no breaks, no vacations, just the grind and the grind on my mind twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
But I’m slowly starting to burn out. Sometimes negative thoughts haunt me at the back of my mind, making me doubt why I’m putting in all this work. Maybe this is all for naught, maybe my time is better spent elsewhere. Maybe it’s time to get a more stable job. Why bother, I won’t make a difference anyways. I get no views, I see no growth, maybe I’m just a failure.
Sometimes the repetition of what I’m doing gets to me. Making the same videos on the same topics and games. Spending so much time editing podcasts and videos everyday for an audience that doesn’t seem to care or notice the amount of effort put in. The sameness of it all, day after day, leaves me wanting something new.
And then there’s always the fear of trying something new because that means you lose your primary audience group. The fear of losing relevancy, the fear of losing those view counts. Every small content creator knows that if you change the game or topic or tone of your content, you lose a large number of views, primarily because people want to see the same type of content from you. Even most of the largest content creators are subject to this.
Maybe you guys can relate to what I’m going through, maybe you can’t. Either way, I’ll record my thoughts and experiences here in how I’m doing my best to overcome these obstacles in my journey as a content creator, in the hopes that it may be of some use to someone out there.
First of all, in dealing negative thoughts, there’s really no easy way out. It’ll always be a fight. They will always come back to haunt you throughout your life. The key here, is to be able to live with them without it affecting your outlook on life. Start by focusing on the facts. Stop comparing yourself to other people and start comparing yourself, to well, yourself. Here’s what I mean by this. The data does not lie. It can be incorrectly interpreted and that will be a topic for another day. As long as you see growth, no matter how small, that is always a positive thing. That means you are doing better! You are getting better at making whatever content it is you set your sights on, whether it be music, videos, art, etc. Look at what you made, see if you improved from where you started. Use the facts, look at the data available, compare yourself to yourself.
Be honest. Be patient. Growth and improvement does not happen immediately, it always takes time. There are no shortcuts. Always try to improve on one small skill at a time. You have an abundance of high quality resources on almost every topic available on the internet nowadays and most of it is available for free! Always be learning, always be improving, failing is part of the process. Don’t ignore the things you are doing well in either! Everyone has something they alone can do, some unique quality that can’t be replicated exactly.
The reality is that no one is great at doing something when they first start out. Sure, there may be a handful of people in the entire world that are natural geniuses, but 99.99% of the world is in the same boat as you. It takes time, it takes practice, it takes effort to learn and refine skills, and it takes blood, sweat, and tears to create something beautiful. If the negative thoughts come, let them and face them head on. See if they are true. Use the data, not your emotions. Sometimes they are. It’s true, I’m not the best at making content. I’m very limited in the skillset I have now. My podcasts aren’t the best, my videos aren’t either, and so are my articles on my blog. But that’s ok. I can improve. With each piece of content I make, I can see myself improving a little bit at a time.
And with time, you gain something important, perseverance. The ability to withstand and survive, and even thrive despite the circumstances surrounding you, despite whatever obstacles may come your way. The negative thoughts don’t go away, but you’ll be able to live with them.
As for dealing with repetition, the answer is quite simple. Do something new! Let’s not jump the shark here though. You don’t want to drop everything you’re doing. You are growing because of the content you are creating now. Don’t take what you’re doing now for granted. Repetition is good to a certain extent because it helps create a pattern, a rhythm for your workflow. Repetition helps you get better and slowly improve over time. This doesn’t mean that you avoid doing new things completely. For example, if I see a game I want to play personally, I’ll cover it, such as The Cycle. I usually stream Astroneer but I wanted to play something new and The Cycle had grabbed my attention so I played that. I even competed in a solo tournament. Needless to say I got completely destroyed, but that’s a story for another time. For making content, I’m in the process of turning most of my podcasts into video podcasts as well. It’s very time consuming, it’s difficult, and I’m camera shy but doing something new, especially something I’m afraid to do, is very empowering. It’s also an incredibly valuable teaching tool because usually you fail miserably at the start but you can learn from those failures.
I’m extending my skillset. I’m finding new solutions to problems I didn’t even know existed. For me, I create most of my content by myself. Filming myself talking on script is very hard. So how did I manage to find a solution? I set my old Lenovo laptop on an empty vacuum box behind my camera on a tripod. This is quite dangerous as the laptop can fall over any moment, but as the youngins say, “yolo”. I use the laptop as a teleprompter and I managed to find a very old Logitech handheld presenter that I can use to scroll the prompt manually. I need to focus the camera on my face as well so I prop a box up on my chair around where my face is and I focus on that. In addition to all of this my audio is recorded on my condenser microphone separately as the camera’s audio quality is not up to par, so I have to sync that up later. Is this pleasant to do every single time I want to record? No, not really. Did I make a ton of mistakes? You bet. Everything from having the camera run out of battery half way and losing all my footage to having my lights in the wrong place. But did I learn? I sure did. I’m nowhere near where I want to be but every day I get a little bit closer.
What about the fear of losing relevancy and view counts for doing something new? This is something I struggle a lot with myself if I’m being honest. I learned to stop caring about that number and focused more on the type of content creator I want to be. The truth is, if you always chase the view count, if you always make content with fear as the primary motivator, you will burn out. You can never please everyone. The people who want to see the same thing over and over again, will eventually get bored and want something new. The people who want something new, will get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again. You lose either way.
The best way, is to look at what you are creating, and what you want to create and work towards that. The goal here, is not a higher view count, but a more genuinely unique creation that will satisfy you. By creating something that’s definitively you, refined by countless hours of practice, learning, and improving, you now have a valuable product that no one else can replicate, try as they might. Then you will be able to find your true audience, the people who will appreciate and enjoy your work. This also relies on increasing your exposure and visibility of content on platforms, but that is also a topic of discussion for another day.
I no longer have my view count up when I stream on Twitch. I no longer make the view count and subscriber count the focus of my videos on YouTube. I want to get better at creating content and I want to find my creative voice as I work on all of my projects. I’m always trying something new, I’m always trying to learn and improve. In addition to Twitch, I now have two YouTube channels, one covering gaming content and one covering my video podcasts. I have four podcasts total now, covering movies, TV shows, video games, and content creation tips. I also have two blogs. I’m looking to branch into webtoons next. Are these projects going well currently? For the most part no, but they are showing slow and steady growth. Most importantly however, I’m always learning and improving, and becoming better at creating content. It really is about the journey and not the destination, as with most creative endeavors.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Here's my Twitter: https://twitter.com/stirthebulgogi
My blog: https://duckyobrien.com/
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a dog in a blanket.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Metapod? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Link: https://duckyobrien.com/2020/03/11/how-to-evolve-as-a-creator/
Show Video Link: https://youtu.be/1G83rN0nYmM
Show Notes Short: Trying out new things is necessary for growth as a creator and to increase your audience as well. You can head in two basic directions: 1. The direction the audience wants your content to go. 2. The direction you want your content to go.
Show Notes Long: Recently I’ve been thinking about one thing, how to evolve as a creator and improve the content I’m creating, or even make new types of content. I don’t want to keep making the same videos over and over again, record the same podcasts, and write the same articles. Not only will it burn me out and not satisfy any of my creative urges, it will be harder to foster growth, both for myself as a creator and for my audience, as well.
So that begs the question, how does one change? What direction should we go in? How do we grow in terms of creative effort? I don’t have solid answers to these questions that will satisfy everyone but I can share my thoughts that have been percolating in the ole noggin so far.
I basically have two main destinations that I set for myself when trying to come up with new ideas:
- Head in a direction that satisfies the audience’s desires
- Head in a direction that satisfies my own personal creative desires
Now I’ll explain in detail my thought processes for meeting the two criteria above but it should be noted here that you should focus on these two things separately or one at a time. They may take your content in conflicting directions so it’s best not to mesh them together into one unachievable goal.
For example, let’s take a look at streaming on Twitch. The strongest, most unique identifying feature that sets the content on Twitch apart from everything else is the real time user interaction. Other platforms are very limited in this regard and rely on asynchronous interactions between the creator and the consumer. Making static content devoid of reacting to user interactions will likely not stand out very much on a live streaming platform such as Twitch, Mixer, Facebook Gaming, etc. The key here, in terms of satisfying the audience’s desires, is to shift the focus more onto the user interactions themselves.
It’s important to note here my goal is to shift the focus to the user interactions, and not the users, as most would probably feel uncomfortable with too much attention on themselves. One method I came up with, was to make use of the new viewer point system available on Twitch. Viewers are given points to your channel as they keep watching and interacting, and those points can be used to redeem preset rewards or custom ones created by you. The preset rewards can range from unlocking an emote to your channel, to highlighting one of their messages. The custom rewards are only limited by your imagination and creativity. It is also important to note here, that you are not bound by the limitations put in place by Twitch and you can use your own custom bot to implement feature sets that best suit your type of content and audience.
By creating unique rewards that shift the focus to the user’s interaction, and make it the highlight of the stream, you not only encourage it, you reward it. Some of the custom rewards I made include giving out mediocre advice, feigning to pay attention, and showing a Star Wars meme (I love prequel memes). Now these rewards are best suited to myself and my own creative desires, meeting both criteria one and two. They are also suited to the audience I have. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The viewers enjoy having more ways to interact with the stream and have their interactions made the focus, not the backdrop.
This can be applied even further to evolve your content. I don’t have a solid concrete idea yet, but I do want to do things like highlight follows and subs in some way to show appreciation with some creativity. I also have some rough ideas on how to implement this further into my streams and change the nature of how I’m playing games. Some ideas that I’ll implement in the far future will include shifting the focus from playing games, to making something more akin to a television show but with that key ingredient, immediate reaction to user interactions and changing the content based on those interactions in real time. One possible implementation, and I often think about this idea, is to create a cooking show but with some added chaos by letting the viewers add or subtract ingredients and cooking utensils, and etc. There is no platform that comes even close to this massive potential in creating new types of content that live streaming has.
Another example is related to last week’s episode. I changed the format of this article, which has an audio podcast companion, into a video podcast for my second YouTube channel. Now it only got eight views, which is not a lot, but it did get a lot more engagements on Twitter. I just started and my second channel has a very low subscriber count so it’ll take a while but this will definitely grow faster than just uploading audio only podcasts to YouTube. The people on YouTube want to see video, having audio only content will be much harder to succeed with. I went from creating an audio podcast on content creation, to writing blogs about it, to now creating videos. This is taking my content in a direction the audience wants in terms of packaging it, but I still let my creative desires direct the actual content of the video and the editing choices. Not to mention, now my content has exposure on three different platforms and three different ways to consume it.
I will end this thought experiment here. Hopefully it helps to inspire you guys in thinking about new ways to evolve your content. It doesn’t have to be something big, it just needs to be a tiny step forward. And one final key step in this process, when you have an idea or some inspiration strikes, write that idea down and do it right away. It’s ok if it’s messy, it’s ok if you make mistakes, but it’s necessary for growth and evolution. Doing nothing different is a surefire recipe for burning out sooner or later. You may even choose to not implement your new idea and revert back to what you were doing before. Somethings change isn’t necessary, but the willingness to change and the flexibility that comes with it, is necessary for survival in this relatively new field of content creation.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Here's my Twitter: https://twitter.com/stirthebulgogi
My blog: https://duckyobrien.com/
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a carrot buried in dirt.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. How to win? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Link: https://duckyobrien.com/2020/02/29/know-the-game-youre-playing/
Show Video Link: https://youtu.be/4UQUE0pce08
Show Notes Short:
Know the game you are playing! You can't force the way you want to play a game onto the game itself. You need to understand the rules, the mechanics involved, and most importantly, the win conditions. Then you can start working towards achieving a win state.
Show Notes Long:
So recently I’ve been playing a lot of The Cycle and there’s just one small problem. The people I’m playing with don’t know how to play the game correctly! It’s infuriating to watch as my teammates engage in pointless combat only to waste a lot of time and effort. That time could have been spent farming objectives and now our squad is falling behind.
This is because those people are playing the wrong game. The Cycle’s win condition is based on farming objectives efficiently. Engaging in combat with the first squad you see will slow down your overall rate at which you are acquiring points. This is similar to the world of content creation.
In order to succeed, you need to know the game you are playing. You need to know the rules of the system and in doing so, you can determine the win conditions available and focus solely on working towards those conditions. I see a lot of smaller content creators with the same complaint, and it’s a complaint I make myself as well from time to time. And that complaint is that the platforms are rigged to make you fail. There certainly is some truth in this complaint, and I’m certainly not excusing the obvious flaws in these platforms that heavily favor the largest content creators and corporations.
However, I think it’s rather unfair and illogical to claim that success is unattainable on these platforms. It only requires one to realize the rules on which each platform operates and identify the necessary win conditions for success.
For example, for smaller content creators who are struggling on YouTube, I often see the same type of behavior and content put forth. They oftentimes release unedited Let’s Play series and are confounded when those videos don’t succeed, oftentimes blaming the algorithm for their lack of exposure. This is far from the painful truth, as one would only need to look at many smaller channels producing unique and visually stunning content that are succeeding to this day. The truth is, Let’s Play series are one of the hardest types of content to succeed with on YouTube for one simple reason, there is absolutely no incentive and perceived value for the average viewer to watch a fellow average person play the game.
There has to be some added value to the content to attract potential viewers, as well as being visually pleasing to behold. There needs to be either educational value added by providing viewers a look at a higher level of play or a deep understanding of game mechanics, or have an onscreen persona that is unique and adds value through entertainment.
On top of this, a considerable amount of time and effort is needed to edit and produce a video that is visually pleasing to behold. This requires more planning and effort than simply just playing a game.
One channel I consider a pinnacle of production and a combination of both entertainment and education is Game Theory. Compare the amount of effort put into each video from Game Theory and compare it to a smaller content creator’s Let’s Play series. The difference is night and day. Value must be provided to the viewer in order to incentivize them to watch your video over someone else’s.
Once the main body of your content is improved through this lens, then everything else will fall into place, such as choosing the right title and thumbnail, and performing tests such as thumbnail splits and etc. but those will be a topic for another day.
I want to encourage all of those struggling content creators out there, of which I am also one of, to take a step back and really look at what it takes to succeed on whatever platform you are on, be it YouTube, Twitch, Mixer, etc. You can’t project your own idea of how you want the system to work onto the platform itself because that will only lead to inevitable failure and frustration. It’s going to take an incredible amount of time, effort, planning, making mistakes and failing, and learning from those failures to attain any level of success. Simply coasting along and generating mediocre content will not get you anywhere.
As they often say, don’t hate the player, hate the game. I think that statement is not applicable here but it sounded nice so I’m going to use it to end today’s post.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Here's my Twitter: https://twitter.com/stirthebulgogi
My blog: https://duckyobrien.com/
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like an ant on a log.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Linear Growth? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Link: https://duckyobrien.com/2020/02/21/the-key-to-turning-linear-growth-into-exponential-growth/
Show Notes Short:
Linear growth is a great thing. It means that you'll reach your goal, eventually. There are steps you can take, however, to turn that linear growth into exponential growth for certain milestones. Overall growth will always look closer to linear. For milestone growth, take a step back and analyze which pieces of content are getting the most engagement and feedback from users. Put in a lot of time and effort to create one more piece of content of that type on top of your foundation of content.
Show Notes Long:
There’s one topic that’s been weighing heavily on my mind and heart lately, my growth trend curve for YouTube. It’s linear. A little too linear for my taste. My future projections place my channel hitting one thousand subscribers in almost two years. One thousand is a vital number because that is when you can apply for the partnership program on YouTube and start earning ad revenue on your videos.
I don’t have two years to wait before I start generating revenue. So I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on how to change that growth curve from linear to exponential for hitting one thousand subscribers. Now linear growth is a great thing. I’m incredibly grateful to see that on my channel because that means that given enough time, I’ll eventually hit critical mass. And the truth is that there are no short cuts to success. You can, however, expedite growth in terms of reaching certain short term milestones.
Honestly speaking, I can’t afford to keep making content for two years before I start to see any income at all on YouTube. Hitting that one thousand subscriber mark as soon as possible would be a wise thing to do. So after analyzing all the data that I had available to me, I realized the key to exponential growth for the short term. You need a few quality pieces of content with high user engagement.
There’s no trick to figuring this out. You can try following trends, you can try random things. In the end, there’s no real obvious factor in determining what will do well other than trying out new things and looking at the data. I was lucky enough to have stumbled upon two pieces of content that managed to generate huge spikes of traffic to my channel and drive subscriptions and user engagement, my Astroneer base video and my No Man’s Sky exocraft guide video.
Now I have no idea why these two pieces of content are doing so well but they are. The key here is to look at your own analytics for your content and see what is driving the most user engagement and focus on distilling what makes it so marketable. It’ll be different for each person even if they are making the same type of content on the same platform.
Once you spend time figuring out the key elements on why that piece of content did so well, you need to spend a lot of time and effort making one piece of similar high quality content. Just focus on one! Your goal is to increase the production value on this one key piece and then use the traffic from the original body of work to redirect it to your new work in order to increase it’s initial exposure. Since they should be similar in nature, the traffic should grow organically after that. Now you have two pieces of key content that are driving traffic to your brand.
For me, that means making an even bigger and better base and making an even better looking video covering it. It’s worth it to spend months on this video because it will increase traffic considerably to my channel and increase user engagement.
This doesn’t mean abandoning everything you are doing. It just means adding a few things on top of it. If you are experience a linear growth trend, that means you are doing something right. The content you are making right now is the foundation to everything you are doing. You just need to build a few key pieces on top of that foundation of solid growth.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Here's my Twitter: https://twitter.com/stirthebulgogi
My blog: https://duckyobrien.com/
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like left tea in a tea pot.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Trello? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Link: https://duckyobrien.com/2020/02/15/the-importance-of-organizing-your-workflow/
Show Notes Short: You cannot afford to waste time! Starting from the bottom in any endeavor requires a lot of time so organize your workflow. By organizing, you increase efficiency and effectively accomplish more in the same time. Personally, I use Trello but each person thinks and works differently so take the time and pick something that works for you.
Show Notes Long: There is a theory out there that in order to become successful in any endeavor, that it requires at least ten thousand hours of work before you reach your goal. That roughly translates into twenty hours of work per week for ten years. Ten years. An entire decade.
This is not an outrageous statement. If you study other content creators, other artists, musicians, actors that start from the bottom, many of them have the same tried and true tale. They were on the grind everyday for around five to ten years. This is the norm. If you started out in chasing your dreams and making something of yourself today, it's going to take a lot of time. Time is the number one resource you cannot afford to be wasteful with.
One simple thing to save you as much time as possible is to spend each day efficiently. So there are a couple of ways to do this. The first thing to do is to have a general plan for that day. If you know what you want to accomplish for that day, you have a course of action to follow. If you don't have a plan, you'll end up doing a lot of things but accomplishing nothing of worth.
Once you have your plan, you need to sit down and analyze your own workflow. You need to be absolutely honest and record how you do things, in what order, and how much time each step takes. It takes some brutal self awareness and the willingness to admit flaws for the next step to be useful. After analyzing your own workflow, you need be willing to cut out things that don't add value to the process and final outcome. For a personal example, I know uploading all my podcasts to YouTube is not worth the effort. I want to believe it'll succeed someday on that platform but all the analytics show that doing this one action adds no value and accomplishes nothing. I'm wasting my time. I need to cut this step out in my podcast creation process.
Now you can modify a step to increase value. Continuing on with the previous example, for a video to succeed on YouTube, I need to have a short and concise script and some compelling video footage. I can take my podcast, condense it down into a key idea, and produce a decent looking video for it. This takes a bit more time but now I'm making content that will succeed on YouTube and also direct additional traffic to my podcast. It'll be worth doing in the long run. I changed a step with no value to something that added value. The alternative is to just cut it out if I don't have enough time in my workflow. Record data and analyze it, the data will not lie to you.
Another key thing you can do to increase efficiency is to change the order in which you do things. I'll use making coffee as an example. When I make coffee, I have some necessary tasks to accomplish before I can enjoy my bolt of morning energy. I need to boil the water, I need to grind my beans, and I need to setup my brewing device (could be pour over, Moka pot, French press, Aeropress etc.). Before you do anything else, you need to start boiling the water. It's the step that takes the longest but also requires the least amount of user input. As the water is boiling, you can grind your beans, set up your device, and have it ready once the water is nice and hot. If you started all of these steps and then started to boil the water, you would essentially have doubled the amount of time spent making your cup of Joe.
I know spending a few more minutes to make a cup of coffee is not the biggest waste of time but wasting time in a similar fashion here and there in your workflow adds up to hours a day gone. Take the time to sit down, analyze how you work, and be willing to change the order in how you do things. Identify key tasks that are important but require almost no user input and observation. For content creators, the times you render and upload videos are valuable periods where you can work on another task in parallel. You're effectively doubling the amount of work being accomplished during those times.
Finally, after taking the time to identify your own workflow and organize it by cutting out steps that don't add value and changing the order in which you accomplish your tasks, you need a way to visualize your workflow. You need something concrete that shows you what you need to do and in what order. Don't leave it as an abstract idea and hope that things get done. They certainly will but you waste so much time by not visualizing your workflow. Personally speaking, I like writing down my tasks on Post Its. They're small so it forces you to distill what it is you need to do into a short string of words. It also forces you to focus on only a few tasks at a time; it's pretty hard to write a long verbose list on a Post It. And finally, the act of taking an abstract idea, forming it into words, and reinforcing those words through writing helps me remember the tasks I need to do.
The only flaw is that I burn through a lot of Post Its. It is pretty wasteful so I recently switched to Trello. Now I'm not telling everyone to use Trello. In fact, it may make your workflow worse if you use a tool that does not suit you. This is why it's so vital to take the time to sit down and observe how you work. Once you have a working model of your own workflow, you can pick out the necessary tools that will be compatible with it.
Hopefully these steps will help you increase your efficiency and by increasing efficiency, help you reach your own definition of success a little bit quicker. Anything to cut down those five to ten years of grind will be worth doing. Before I leave, I'll leave you guys with one final tip. Focus on one task at a time. Break down the things you need to accomplish for the day into steps and focus on one step at a time. Maybe two at most. We're only human. We have limitations and by respecting those limitations we can accomplish more. The other end of the spectrum would be to be unrealistic, try to take on many tasks at once, and accomplish nothing or accomplish things in a way that adds no value.
Just remember, five to ten years may seem like a long time but everyone faces the same thing. You aren't alone in the struggle.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien Here's my Twitter: https://twitter.com/stirthebulgogi
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like left over candy after valentines.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Outside the box? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Short: Think outside the box! It's a muscle most people don't use. So 1. Do your research. 2. Practice what you see others doing. 3. Sit in, face, and grow from failure. 4. Flex your creative muscle after all that practice.
Show Notes Long: So I was playing Temtem. Yes Temtem. It's a Pokemon clone and it's fantastic. I'm in love with this game and I already know that I'm going to play it for thousands of hours. So as a content creator, my mind goes immediately to how can I make content for this game.
My friend Wooptydo informed me of other content creators doing some very creative and imaginative things such as running an auction house and arranging competitive tournaments. This made me realize how small my thinking was. So how does one learn to think outside the box? How does one identify a need that's not being met?
Research. You need to do your research. The only real way to learn how to think outside the box is to see how others do it. Go deep and research all the ways people are making content for a game you're focusing on. You can do this for anything, music, art, business, etc.
Practice. After your research, you need to put it to practice. Try what others are doing. You need to practice by mimicking what others are doing until you are comfortable enough to come up with your own methods. Creativity is a muscle that needs to be worked out as well. You don't go from having no muscle to being a body builder in a short time. You need to exercise all those muscles!
Failure. You will fail, a lot. Don't be afraid of that uncomfortable feeling of facing uncharted territory and the possibility of failure. Sit in it, face it, realize that you do lack certain things, and then move on and see what you can learn from it, take out one thing you can improve on even a little bit. Forward progress is success. The lack of failure only means you are not evolving.
Results. Once you have put into practice trying out different things, failing, and improving, you'll find that you will be able to flex that muscle and think outside the box much easier on demand. You'll often find that you don't need an incredibly new or brilliant idea. Even something slightly different and unique is what you need and that will help provide value to an audience that isn't having their needs catered to.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien Here's my Twitter: https://twitter.com/stirthebulgogi
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a lobster in a tank.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Branding? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Short: The only real important factor is saturation. If it's saturated, your brand will have to compete with others.
Show Notes Long: The only thing to consider in deciding your branding is saturation. If your name is already overly saturated in the marketplace, it will be hard to discover for people interested in your content. You are competing with other brands. Can you still make it in a saturated market? Yes, of course. You can make it in anything and in any situation but it will be more difficult.
You can simply check market saturation by googling possible branding ideas you had. You can check the search results and get an glimpse into how favorable the branding would be for discoverability.
Once you settle on a brand name, your next move would be to saturate the market. It's easy to do but it takes time and effort. One method of doing this is to create content and all the major platforms and to use descriptions, hash tags, and user names to your advantage. Creating content on multiple platforms may seem daunting but is quite simple once you modify your work flow a little bit. The main concept is to have a main body of content and repackage that for other platforms.
For example, when I make a video for YouTube, I write a script most of the time. I can simply take that script and copy and paste it into my blog. It will need modifying and you will need to do a little bit of work and add in pictures and make it suitable for a person who is used to primarily written content. I also embed the YouTube video at the top of the blog post. I take this along further by posting a very short excerpt of relevant information followed by the blog post link on Twitter and Facebook. As you can see, I had one main body of content that I repackaged to use on multiple platforms. This is slowly creating a web of traffic that will funnel directly back into me. It won't funnel directly back into one piece of content or platform necessarily, but to your brand, the umbrella that your content rests under. Each piece of content created with this in mind adds to your online presence.
With time, effort, and patience, you will have increased your discoverability without relying on any single platform.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien Here's my Twitter: https://twitter.com/stirthebulgogi
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a hair on Homer Simpson's head.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Frands? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Short: Being an active member in other people's channels and supporting others is ironically the fastest way to grow on Twitch. It may seem counter intuitive but it is probably the best proven method to reliable growth.
Show Notes Long: Discoverability on Twitch when you are not live is nonexistent. Discoverability on Twitch when you are live is almost nonexistent. The best way to get discovered is to be as close as possible to being in the top ten viewed channels for large categories. For smaller categories, you have to be as close as possible to the top slot.
I tried everything from always streaming at least nine hours a day to using social media to promote my streams but only one thing really ever worked consistently. That one thing is building community.
To build a community, it requires you to put in a lot of time and effort to be an active and contributing member in other channels. If you go in with the mentality of only supporting the other streamer, they will notice and appreciate it. If they ever find out that you stream as well, they will be more likely to support you by being active in your stream or even raiding or hosting your channel. This means your viewership increased by at least one more person to maybe even a hundred more for that one stream.
Raids and hosting doesn't mean those additional viewers will become fans of your content. They are there to support the person who raided you. Raids in my personal experience doesn't equate to long term growth but it does help greatly because it boosts your viewership numbers for that stream and get you closer to being in the top ten. Once that happens, new viewers will drop by and those are the people that will very likely become new supporters.
Building a community will also get the attention of the developers and they may even support you by promoting your content. This will increase your credibility quite a bit and official recognition means more people will be likely to trust your content as reliable and an accurate representation of the game and the fan base.
Bottom line, no one will help someone who is only interested in themselves, no matter how nice or polite they may seem. You need to give first in order to have someone be willing to give you anything. By building a community and giving other content creators value by being a supportive audience member, by providing the people watching value by making content that caters to their needs, you will gain a loyal and supportive audience.
And once you build a community, you will see your content evolve and get better as a result because it is no longer driven solely by you. Now the community will have a hand in shaping it and the end result will be something unpredictable but beautiful.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like an icicle on a cold day.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Exposure? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Short: Top two tips frequently given: 1. - Know your audience. 2 - Use Social Media. What they don't go into: Use every platform, know what type of content is consumed on that platform, and know what type of content your audience consumes on that platform.
Show Notes Long: Every guide tells you that you need to use Social Media to target your known audience. What each guide doesn't really go into, is how to actually use Social Media, especially when you don't have a presence on each platform. They also don't tell you what to do after you find/target/imagine your audience.
For Social Media, you need to understand what type of content gets engagement on each platform. For example, on Twitter and Instagram, it's harder to get engagements with video content than it is with pictures. Why? People don't want to spend a lot of time consuming content on those platforms. So you might want to consider using either very short videos, or a static image.
You also need to browse through all the content on each platform and see what is actually getting engagements with content creators similar to you. When you are first starting out and you have no Social Media presence, you don't have a large enough audience to use analytics properly. The data set is not large enough to accurately represent your audience. So the next best thing you can do is to look at other content creators who are making similar content and have a slightly larger audience and faster audience growth than you. You don't want to look at people who have the same audience size or much larger because you want a realistic data set that will target growth.
Look at what they're posting on each platform and the hast tags that get the most engagement and that should give you an idea of what to create and post.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a tail on a rat.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Facebook? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Short: - Facebook sucks, be careful of using it.
https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/how-facebook-is-killing-comedy.html
Show Notes Long: Focusing too much on short term gain can end up detrimental to your long term growth as a content creator. Don't tie yourself to one single platform. If conditions change on that platform, you may find your income stream cut off.
Ex. Selling on Amazon is risky if your product can be copied. Amazon will make more and sell it for cheaper and you will not be able to compete
Facebook is a black hole in that it's an ecosystem where you need to pay money for Facebook ads to increase exposure for content that is consumed only on Facebook. It's hard to redirect traffic to an external source and you can't really monetize traffic on Facebook itself.
There are no shortcuts. Don't put the cart before the horse so to speak. You need two things to succeed in the long run, the Discipline of Creation, and the Joy of Creation. To reach this, just follow ABC. Always Be Creating. When you're always creating, you get disciplined into being able to come up with ideas constantly and execute on that idea (may not always be good ideas). And if you can reach a point where you find true joy in creating, then you will never burn out.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a hump on a hunchback.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Ergonomics? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes Short:
- Stay Hydrated
- Adjust Desk Height
- Adjust Monitor Height
- Supportive Chair
- Exercise
- Headphone Volume Low
Show Notes Long: Hydration
Keep a bottle of water on your desk and take a few sips regularly. Any container will do. I used a Simply Orange Juice bottle for the longest time.
Desk Ergo Adjust the height of your desk. If it's too low, it'll force your body to adjust by slumping forwards and hunching your shoulders forward and downwards. Making your desk shorter is harder, you might just want to elevate your chair if this is the case. To raise the height, you can use anything from bricks, to plywood glued together, or buy Desk Risers. You can simulate what the adjusted height would feel like by getting a box or any flat object that is an inch high or so and place it on your desk and see if that stops you from hunching forward.
Monitor Ergo Adjust the monitor height so that it is closer to eye level. If the monitor is too low, it forces your neck to bend forward and your head at a downwards angle. This also forces your back to be curved and your shoulders hunched slightly. I used a box. You can use any box, if it doesn't provide proper support for your monitor, fill the inside with foam or a smaller box. You can also buy a monitor stand. The monitor stand gives the added flexibility of adding more storage space underneath your monitor. Monitor arms are nicer but cost more. Always measure the dimensions of your desk, your monitor stand, and test the stability if your stand before you use it. They key here is to use what's around you!
Chair Ergo Find a chair that supports good posture for you. Don't buy in the streamer hype and get a gaming chair because it looks cool. Do your research. The cheaper chairs have low density foam and they flatten very quickly and provides no support after a few months. Different people have different needs. Personally speaking, mesh style chairs don't provide enough support for me. Go try out different chairs at stores and see what works for you. Also keep in mind the foam type and quality of the chair. You want a thick layer of high density foam for the chair to last if you get a foam chair.
Exercise Make exercise part of your regular schedule. It doesn't have to be hardcore or a long session. Just make sure you're moving around regularly. I go out and play Pokemon Go at set times to help keep me moving and outside. Also any workout app helps as well.
Headphones Keep your headphone volume low! Headphone related hearing loss is real and it'll hit you hard and earlier than the average person because as content creators we're always at our desks with our headphones on for hours at a time.
Ideal vs. Practical Don't wait for ideal solutions. Use what you have around you. Think creatively. It won't look pretty but better and more expensive equipment doesn't make for better content. Pushing things off that can help your health is not worth it as well. As a content creator, I know funds are very limited so pinching every penny helps. The time will come when you will be able to afford and use shiny, fancy new equipment but no one starts out that way!
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Looking back at 2019 in review, I'm incredibly touched and humbled by all the love, support, and encouragement I received from the community at large. Individuals I have never met before are watching my content and willingly giving me their precious time. I don't deserve any of this and I am so grateful. Thank you guys so much and hopefully I'll grow as a content creator in 2020 and be able to start helping others out instead of always being helped by such kind strangers and friends.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender! https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a reindeer on a rooftop.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Expectations? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes: Keep your expectations real!
- Never compare yourself to others, only to yourself. You know your own stats, try to improve based on your own stats, not someone else's.
- Look at all the relevant data and use it as a general guide to help you grow according to your own pace.
- Don't force expectations on yourself that are based on things out of your control. Turn that view count off when you stream, you aren't in control of it and stressing out about it won't make it go up.
- Enjoy the process of making content in and of itself. Growth and ambition are good things but enjoy the process too otherwise you will burn yourself out.
Examples: I've noticed that usually around 1% of your follower base on Twitch will show up at any given time for a stream. If you have 100 followers, it's normal for only one person to show up when you stream! Don't beat yourself up, keep going. Have confidence, not arrogance. Believe in yourself and your content, your own ability to improve over time, and stay humble.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch us on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien chilling like a kidney bean in sugar.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Templates? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes:
1 - Don't waste time on repetitive tasks! Use Templates for anything and everything possible (text, graphics, etc.)
2 - Modular Design for workflow - Break apart your workflow into segments so you can outsource them, or do them out of order when you don't have enough time at the moment.
3 - Externalize Your Design Process - This is necessary so when you start working as a team and/or hiring others, everyone is on the same page. Don't waste their time and don't waste your own by making sure you have avenues of communication and you are communicating what you want done clearly.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch us on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien and Oakface chilling like two ticks on a dog.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Analytics? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes: My process for creating content so far:
1 - Start off with a general idea, vision, or goal
2 - Make a plan based on your idea, i.e. write a script (especially for voice overs). For things that don't require a script, you can storyboard, make a rough outline, budget, etc.
3 - Execute on your plan. Record your voice overs in one recording session. Make a rough sketch, etc.
4 - Use your recording, sketch, etc. as a foundation. Now you know what you need to record, what kind of transitions you will need, etc.
5 - Write your title, thumbnail, descrptions, etc. as accurately as possible while getting the most impressions as you can, and engagements.
6 - Use analytics as a general guide, not a be-all end all.
a - Sharp drop represents people are leaving
b - short dip represents people are skipping over it
c - short spike represents people are coming back to it
d - high impressions but low engagement means you need better thumbnails.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch us on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/oakfacegaming/ https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien and Oakface chilling like two Yeti's on a mountain.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Coppa? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes: Leverage every single platform possible. If you're tied to one platform or one type of content, you can lose it all overnight.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Opening/Closing song - Cascade by Kubbi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4ZjUoEKiLs
If you want to catch us on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/oakfacegaming/ https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
I am thankful for so many things, and so many people. I couldn't possibly go over them all.
Thanks everyone for the love and support, I truly appreciate it!
Hope you guys have a fantastic day.
Sam - "Ducky Obrien"
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien and Oakface chilling like chemicals inside a bombardier beetle's rear end.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life:
- Twitters?
- Something about DMT
Show Notes (Short): USE SOCIAL MEDIA, ESPECIALLY TWITTER!
Show Notes (Long): Work hard and put in effort to create a 'pillar' piece of content. Put in additional effort to repackage them for other platforms. This is more effective than paying for in both the short and long run. Put in effort to understand each social media platform so you can repackage the content in a way that people will either find
- valuable (educational usually)
- entertaining
Personal stats on one video/image combo posted: Youtube - 26 views, 1 like TikTok - 137 views, 5 likes Twitter - 1,222 impressions, 119 engagements, 23 favorites, 4 retweets
Total - 1k impressions, 282 views, 29 likes
The numbers have gone up since. I have no social media presence, and these numbers are phenomenal compared to what I usually get without social media. Twitter produced the most impressions. Twitter is too powerful.
In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
If you want to catch us on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/oakfacegaming/ https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien and Oakface chilling like two stick bugs on a bigger stick.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life:
- What to do when you have no money?
- Something about DMT
Show Notes (Short):
- Use Platforms that connect Content Creators to PR/Publishers/Devs (keymailer, terminals, etc.)
- Take advantage of referral/affiliate programs to reduce cost on services (pinecast, etc.)
- Create opportunities, don't just wait for them. Go out and contact publishers, PR, sponsors yourself.
- Stay Positive, Stay Persistent, Stay Humble. You got this!
Show Notes (Long):
- It's hard making content when you have no money, especially when it comes to covering games. Fortunately there are sites like keymailer.co and terminals.io that hook up content creators with publishers, pr, and developers. Each site has some requirements, mostly that you actually make content on some type of platform, including blogs, and have an audience. You can request keys for games and if you get approved, you need to do your due diligence to make content to cover the games. It's totally worth it for content creators with no budget, check it out!
- Use referral and affiliate programs to your advantage. Advertise for these services to reduce cost as much as possible when starting out. That means using forums, sites, social media. Welcome to the hard life of being a sales man! Pinecast for example has a referral program where every creator has a unique code that gives 40% off for 4 months. Once an user pays for two months, you get credit for whatever amount they paid. This is how I'm managing to cover the cost of podcast hosting for a little while. My code is r-df676f if you would like to use it. Much appreciated!
- Go out and contact companies that you like yourself for opportunities. Remember to think in terms of offering value for whatever you want in exchange. If you want early access to game, you need to show PR/Publishers/Devs that you are worth it by being able to provide impressions and also a high rate of sales through those impressions. If you don't have the numbers, you can show a high engagement with your community, etc. You'll most likely get rejected many times but don't give up and keep grinding! Don't just wait for opportunities, go create them!
- In the words of Captain Taggart, Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
If you want to catch us on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/oakfacegaming/ https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Merch: https://oakface.club/store/pointyhatcast/
Pinecast Referral Code: r-df676f (40% off 4 months)
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien here like Panda refusing the mate.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. Shroud? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes: Shroud leaves Twitch for Mixer! What a confusing move as Shroud was in a good place as a content creator. The move made sense for Ninja as his numbers, while still crazy good, were on a decline. Responses from both content creators show a level of frustration with Twitch's unwillingness to adapt and accept feedback for improvement. Twitch's response to these content creators also show how quickly they are willing to throw content creators away. Mixer is making moves and only time can tell how this will affect content creation as an industry!
Game Theorists on Ninja Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT71iZqRXkU Game Theorists on Ninja Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEYVHHqMU_0
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
If you want to catch me on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien If you want to catch me on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/bagajutsu My Podcast Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT-q0GstBCTpf6yaxqofzKw
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien and Oakface just chilling like two ice cubes in an ice tray.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life: 1. What is bread? 2. Something about DMT
Show Notes:
- Make your content work for you. If you spend a lot of time and effort making content, spend a little additional time to repackage it for other platforms. This creates extra exposure for you and your content and will always encourage growth.
Tips from Gary Vee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPUxoR4Wjmg
- Sticking to one platform/game is playing a losing game. Always explore every platform and get used to it. It will let you become disciplined and experienced in being able to adjust to any environment. As Bruce Lee said, be water friend.
Tips from Alpha Gaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTLXIJiyeBY
- Focus on long term growth by putting in more time and effort figuring out what kind of content creator you want to be and what kind of impact your content has instead of following trends and chasing views.
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
If you want to catch us on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/oakfacegaming/ https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Shoutout to Wooptydo, always giving me tips and advice: https://www.twitch.tv/wooptydo
Episode Notes Hopefully the audio quality is better for this episode! We're still working out the kinks. There are some noticeable crinkles in the audio and that's my fault (audio cables not tied down properly)! That'll be fixed in time for the next episode.
Hi there. Ducky Obrien and Oakface just chilling like two insomniacs during a full moon.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life:
- What is sleep?
- Something about DMT
Show Notes:
- Focus on what the audience wants first
- Make passion projects (with no audience) secondary
- Become part of a community (reddit/twitter,etc.)
- TikTok is a wierd, magical place
- Have a clear goal to accomplish when making content, and have that goal visible and understandable to the viewers
- Have a reason for people to watch and return
- Appreciate and thank the people who support you, you can't do it without them
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
If you want to catch us on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/oakfacegaming/ https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Apologies for the unbalanced audio, it'll be fixed for upcoming episodes!
Hi there. Ducky Obrien and Oakface just chilling like two bees on a honeycomb.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life:
- What is love?
- Something about DMT
Show Notes: Optimize Efforts for Views (Work Hard & Smart) - 00:00 Increase Avenuse of Exposure (TikTok) - 02:37 Make Content that People Find Useful (Oculus Quest) - 05:46 Prevalence of VR in Movies (Mindcontrol Conspiracy?) - 15:30 Movie Flops - 24:49 Last Jedi Sucks - 30:18 Pinnacle of Live Broadcasting Production Value (SushiDragon) - 57:40 Free Energy is Always a Lie - 01:09:57
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show, thanks so much for dropping by! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, send us an email!
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien and Oakface just chilling like two fleas on a dog.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life:
- What is the moon doing in space?
- Something about DMT
Show Notes: Pointy Hat Cast Whiskey - Gentleman's Choice Precorded Content on Twitch Twitch Copying Mixer Twitch Having a Chokehold on Content Creators World of Warships Don't Get Lost in Analytics Internet in Australia Net Neutrality
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, drop a comment below!
If you want to catch us live on twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/oakfacegaming https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Hi there. Ducky Obrien and Oakface just chilling like two beans in a pod.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life:
- What is pineapple doing on pizza?
- Something about DMT
Show Notes: Pineapple on Pizza (The correct answer is ...) Podcasting & Training Your Voice Troubles of Operating a Merch Store Reaching Viewers in North Korea Would You Advertise for Kim Jung Un Randall Park on the Rise! Being Memeified The Life of the Raging German Kid Creepy Clowns are a Lie Need for Proper Journalism (John Oliver, Philip Defranco) Mixer Doing Things
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show!
https://oakface.club/store/pointyhatcast/
Episode Notes Hosts: Ducky Obrien, Oakfacegaming
Hi there. Ducky Obrien and Oakface just chilling like two swagmans under a coolabah tree.
Today we go over the two most important questions in life:
- What is Ninja doing on mixer?
- Something about DMT
Anyways hope y'all enjoy the show! If you want us to cover a topic in the future, drop us an email!
Show notes: Truman Show McHomeless On the Grind Arkham Horror Overlay Dealing with trolls Reading Books! Songs - Lil Nas AI Created Music Checking Our Your Facebook/Google Profile Dealing With Social Media NMS Update Hype
If you want to catch us live on twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/oakfacegaming https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien
Episode Notes Hosts: Ducky Obrien, Oakfacegaming
Topic: How we got started streaming and the difficulties that come with it.
Side Notes: This is our first episode so it'll be a little bit rough. Please bear with us haha.
If you want to catch us live on twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/duckyobrien https://www.twitch.tv/oakfacegaming