SHP #15: My Second Brain Needs a Workout

So does my first brain, but that's another matter :D

I'm a side hustle hoarder. Here are the side hustles I'm currently hoarding 🤣:

• Several websites spanning personal finance, online presence, coin collecting, making money online, and weight loss

• A number of domains

• 130+ stories on Medium

• Followings on several social media sites

• Two YouTube channels, neither monetized

• Pinterest boards

• Several Facebook groups, one with nearly 23k members

• A mailing list of 300+ wonderful subscribers

• Two newsletters (one daily, one weekly)

• A website design and maintenance client

• A reselling presence on eBay

• Accounts with sporadic affiliate or referral income

• And a piano student with leads on others

• A few dozen musical arrangements and compositions

The boldface pieces are what I'm focusing on now, mainly around the currency collecting community I've built.

Building my Zettelkasten for easier content creation

One issue I've had for quite a while is the following:

• I'll sit down to write something (late at night)

• I won't have any idea what to write about

• It takes me a while to figure something out

• It's mediocre at best when I do

This is my own doing.

I don't have a system to draw from when I need to.

Three consistent pieces pretty much every day

I've been doing these things each day (or at least six times a week):

• Sending out my Solid Cash Tips newsletter

• Dumping at least 750 words into 750Words.com (67-day streak!)

The third thing I'm doing now is this:

• Adding notes to my Zettelkasten (second brain)

I've had one, but I haven't been adding to it consistently. And I haven't been consulting it much.

I've come to view it in a new light: like a friend who I need to spend time with to keep the relationship going.

If you don't touch base with a friend often, you'll forget things, and you'll need to spend time catching up.

If you talk with them a few times a week, or every day, you'll have great, deep conversations.

It will take a while to build up my second brain, but I have to believe it will help.

Learn from one Side Hustler's Progress!

Let's go!

1. Monetizing a YouTube channel: One regular video

I posted one regular video to my Cool Serial YouTube channel.

This makes 109 videos on the channel. Some statistics:

• 67 regular videos and 42 shorts

• 833 subscribers (+4 from last week)

• 143.8k views and 4.5k watch hours (lifetime)

Continuing to add CTAs to videos

I have an ebook on Fancy Serial Numbers for Fun and Profit that sold a few dozen copies a few years ago. The sales had gone away for a while because the sales plugin had started to get a bit flaky.

(No sales yet from this but the more times I add it, the more likely someone will be to click. That's just numbers.)

I'm continuing to add calls to action (CTAs) to my videos, and I've developed a template to add it to new videos.

For the coming week: Two more videos and two more shorts.

2. Solid Cash Tips newsletter

I use Kit (formerly ConvertKit) to manage my minimalist Solid Cash Tips newsletter.

Issues 167 to 172 went out each weekday and Saturday. All of them went out at 8:40 AM except for today's which I had prepared but forgot to send (oops!)

Here they are if you're interested.

Solid Cash Tips continues to be consistent.

It's one of a few things I'm holding onto for dear life to as I build systems to put content out consistently.

For the coming week: Get out an issue every weekday again and Saturday. (This is the one piece of my journey that's been consistent.)

3. Creating long-form content: Two posts

I got two long-form article out this week. I had planned for three.

One piece was on recognizing when an audience is beating down your door (this actually happened a few years ago).

The other talked about two pillars on my main blog (outlined below).

The pillars on my main blog:

• Spend Less

• Make More

• Live Well

I've created two Medium publications, Side Hustle Progress and Less Spendy .

I'll re-publish posts from my websites to these two publications.

For the coming week: Get out three long-form pieces.

Continue with the calls to action!

I'll continue with the flywheel concept of using one asset to promote another:

• Newsletter subscribers are led to check out YouTube videos as well as the Facebook group.

• Community posts give people links to watch the YouTube videos, and to subscribe to the newsletter.

• YouTube videos have links to the community in their descriptions, or offer to sign up for the newsletter, or offer to buy an ebook.

I did this on some YouTube videos, and in the Facebook group.

Summary of how I did, and what I'm going to do

For the past week, meh follow-through:

• Post two more YouTube videos and two more shorts. PARTIAL (one regular video)

• Get out an issue of Solid Cash Tips every weekday again and Saturday. DONE!

• Get out three long-form articles. PARTIAL (two)

I'll look to do the same things this week.

What other things would you like to hear about? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for subscribing and reading!

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