Neal, although I don't envision a world dominated by Robot Overlords (others, of course, do), it's pretty clear that technology is turning us into a society of numbed-out meat puppets. To paraphrase a bumper sticker I saw recently: Given the choice between artificial intelligence and common sense, I choose the latter.
And I really like your thought (among many: "AI ... relies on making more of what’s worked in the past at the expense of anything original." Indeed...
There are so many interesting observations in this comment that I read it three times.
I thought about what you had to say, and I think you made astute, valid and interesting points that I wouldn't disagree with.
That said, I think you missed an option.
I've had to give this a massive amount of thought, because I'm at an obvious crossroads. I've been earning some portion of my living on the internet since 1998, and I've been earning my full-time living as a content creator on the internet since 2009.
And I can see that "dying a desert death at the hands of the algorithm" is an all-too-real possibility. I started studying "the algorithms" in 1998 with eBay's, and Google's around 2005. In the past, I was pretty adept at figuring them out and rising to the top. But it is much, much harder now than it was in the past.
But, there was life before the internet -- and I remember it well.
In those days, it was challenging for visual artists, musicians, and writers to earn a living, but it wasn't totally impossible.
How did they do it?
There isn't a single correct answer to this, so there are lots of interesting possibilities to ponder. But I believe the multi-faceted array of possible answers to this question present the keys to moving forward.
The future isn't the past, so there will, of course, be major differences between then and now.
It's interesting to me that many of my favorite content creators gained prominence before the rise of the internet.
These people all create dramatically different content. But otherwise, they have much in common.
So I've been studying them and what they do in hopes of working out what I need to do next, because I have no intention of dying at the hands of the algorithm.
This is what I'm planning to write about in my second Substack (I have 2 of them), but that isn't happening as fast as I'd like it to, because I have to prioritize copywriting tasks for my husband's tech startup.
Well, I'm thinking you'd probably have more readers if you didn't keep deleting your Substacks...just saying. It takes time and consistency to gain traction with any platform, and I'm sure this one is no different. So, if this is what you want to be doing, I hope you'll keep at it!
What are your goals?
I'm glad to know that you've observed positive changes here since you started. I'm new to this platform, but not new to email marketing. I'm working on migrating a list of thousands of subscribers from my old platform to this one. It'll be a lot of work, and I'll likely lose a lot of them in the transition, so I didn't make the decision lightly.
In my experience, people will pay for content that fills a need.
I get suggestions from my readers fairly often, and they aren't shy about letting me know about what they want and what they'd be willing to pay to have me offer them. So, if I can actually manage to get my Substack off the ground, I plan to deliver those things. I think it's really ideal to do it that way (hopefully no begging required.)
Neal, although I don't envision a world dominated by Robot Overlords (others, of course, do), it's pretty clear that technology is turning us into a society of numbed-out meat puppets. To paraphrase a bumper sticker I saw recently: Given the choice between artificial intelligence and common sense, I choose the latter.
And I really like your thought (among many: "AI ... relies on making more of what’s worked in the past at the expense of anything original." Indeed...
There are so many interesting observations in this comment that I read it three times.
I thought about what you had to say, and I think you made astute, valid and interesting points that I wouldn't disagree with.
That said, I think you missed an option.
I've had to give this a massive amount of thought, because I'm at an obvious crossroads. I've been earning some portion of my living on the internet since 1998, and I've been earning my full-time living as a content creator on the internet since 2009.
And I can see that "dying a desert death at the hands of the algorithm" is an all-too-real possibility. I started studying "the algorithms" in 1998 with eBay's, and Google's around 2005. In the past, I was pretty adept at figuring them out and rising to the top. But it is much, much harder now than it was in the past.
But, there was life before the internet -- and I remember it well.
In those days, it was challenging for visual artists, musicians, and writers to earn a living, but it wasn't totally impossible.
How did they do it?
There isn't a single correct answer to this, so there are lots of interesting possibilities to ponder. But I believe the multi-faceted array of possible answers to this question present the keys to moving forward.
The future isn't the past, so there will, of course, be major differences between then and now.
It's interesting to me that many of my favorite content creators gained prominence before the rise of the internet.
These people all create dramatically different content. But otherwise, they have much in common.
So I've been studying them and what they do in hopes of working out what I need to do next, because I have no intention of dying at the hands of the algorithm.
This is what I'm planning to write about in my second Substack (I have 2 of them), but that isn't happening as fast as I'd like it to, because I have to prioritize copywriting tasks for my husband's tech startup.
Well, I'm thinking you'd probably have more readers if you didn't keep deleting your Substacks...just saying. It takes time and consistency to gain traction with any platform, and I'm sure this one is no different. So, if this is what you want to be doing, I hope you'll keep at it!
What are your goals?
I'm glad to know that you've observed positive changes here since you started. I'm new to this platform, but not new to email marketing. I'm working on migrating a list of thousands of subscribers from my old platform to this one. It'll be a lot of work, and I'll likely lose a lot of them in the transition, so I didn't make the decision lightly.
In my experience, people will pay for content that fills a need.
I get suggestions from my readers fairly often, and they aren't shy about letting me know about what they want and what they'd be willing to pay to have me offer them. So, if I can actually manage to get my Substack off the ground, I plan to deliver those things. I think it's really ideal to do it that way (hopefully no begging required.)