Yet Another Long Overdue Update

TL;DR: I stopped publishing content a while ago. Instead of promising a speedy return to form (whatever that is), I want to get into what made me stop in this update, and maybe how I can remedy that.

This is usually the point where I tell you that “yes, I am still around”, and “I am planning so many things”, and “there will be new content soon”. The urge to do just that is definitely there. But I am not sure this time. To clarify, I do enjoy making content, or projects as we used to call them. I still have long lists of ideas that I would love to make reality. I also have more Cult ideas and scripts than I care to admit.

After overthinking this situation to the best of my abilities, here are a few reasons for the current state of the Be Inspired empire enterprise thing.

It’s not about numbers, except when it is

When I started laying out this update, I thought this would be the last point to make. It is easy to frame this wrong, like I was only in it for the money. I have given up on the whole “full time maker” thing for several reasons. But I still want to inspire people through what I make, and to that end, I need to reach them first. This is where the numbers come in.

Of course, this is all anecdotal. It is more about how I felt about it than digging deep into analytics. I am confident, though, that I did not miss a hidden trend over the years. Every time I dug my heels in and posted frequently, my numbers stayed the same. I kept it up for weeks several times, but I did not reach more viewers.

In terms of numbers, I am pretty much stuck at 6k subscribers on YouTube and 2k on Instagram. Anything I post gets maybe 1-2% of that in terms of views. I am grateful for everyone engaging with my content, but 1-2 comments on average is probably not enough to tickle the algorithm. Inevitably, I began to wonder whether it was worth posting things at all, given the time investment.

My Making did not stop, but drift

I always had a problem with “niching down”. If you need proof of that, check out my other pages and the range they are supposed to cover. Anyone familiar with the online side hustle scene will tell you that “the riches are in the niches”, and here I am, going as broad as I can. Workshop projects, props, woodturning, roleplaying supplements, cooking – to name a few. I also keep bees and do gardening, I enjoy painting things I printed, and I sometimes write nsfw stories (shocking, I know).

All of this turned out to be a compounding factor to the point made above. Maybe posting about a single project every day would create momentum. The way I approached it was to mix things up, which resulted in content from a single project coming days or weeks apart. I do not know whether that even made a difference. Again, it hit the same notch of not being worth my time.

Losing that Dire Need

Over time, my desire to make content dwindled. Which is probably the only thing on this list not directly fueld by an algorithm. I still want to make things, but I kept forgetting to take pictures, not to mention video (which is a lot more of a time investment). Frankly, I do not consider this a bad thing. I still make things, and I still want to make videos again some day. Not to mention the Cultists. But I am not in a rush this time, because I have accepted that it may not be what people want to see. Which is okay, too.

In some ways, losing (or shall we say toning down) that drive has come in handy. There are things I need and want to do that are not suited for social media. From gardening based on other people’s experience (with nothing of my own to add), to beekeeping season, and the “family stuff”, I actually enjoy being less under self-imposed pressure regarding what to spend my time on. I still don’t have enough of it, but then again, who does.

And now?

I don’t know. I think I would still enjoy making things as content and share them with the world. And my best guess is that I will continue to do that in one way or another. I cannot say whether my drive to “go for it” in social media will return, but if it does, you will be the first to know.

It is entirely possible that publishing this update will make me pick up the phone and record one of those many shorts that I wanted to make ages ago. Whether I then manage to upload it is an entirely different matter, considering that I almost chose not to publish this article for reasons even I cannot put into words.

Deep down, I want to get back into it. I don’t know if I can. So we will all have to wait and see. I would recommend you join my Discord server, which is a point I omitted on this list – my failure to build a community early on, before everyone started to have Discord fatigue. But that’s a minor thing, and hindsight is always 20/20 (which, mathmatically speaking, shoult be 1).

If you read this, you are awesome, but you probably were awesome even before. Thanks for that! I hope to bring you more inspiration soon. Until then – and it has been too long since I last wrote that line – remember to Be Inspired!