The craftsman vs the creator economy
Edition #074
Hey friends, happy Sunday!
Just the one thing to share with you this week: Full Stack Creator - As I mentioned last week the Full Stack Creator business model is one I keep coming back to and building on, this week I updated that post to offer a more comprehensive overview of the Full Stack Creator business model.
Alrighty let's get into the Filter!
One Lesson
The craftsman vs the creator economy
The creator economy rewards quantity over quality. Most social media platforms prefer you to post often over posting quality content at a slower rate.
This leads to noisy platforms for the consumer.
But the internet is a treasure trove of high quality information, it's just buried under a couple feet of shallow content.
To find those gems you need to shut out the noise and get digging.
But as the creator how should you approach this problem?
Most people tell you to focus on sheer quantity while others advocate for only posting when you have something worth saying.
Personally I struggle to know which one to focus on.
Being a craftsman at heart, someone who loves to tinker and perfect things, I tend to gravitate towards quality.
But there are huge pitfalls to being a craftsman, mainly that it's rare they ever succeed on the internet.
That's because craftsman never get to the publishing stage. They want to perfect their creations to the extent that they never get finished.
Some people call this being a 'perfectionist', which comes with a lot of negative connotations, but innately there's nothing wrong with wanting to create the best thing you possibly can.
The issues arise when that perfectionism stands in the way of you ever sharing your creations.
As with most things in life, the answer to whether you should post quantity or quality is not black or white, it's a shade of grey.
Every niche, person and topic is different.
If you're posting news content then quantity is more important than quality - but that doesn't mean you can neglect quality completely. Sure you can get away with being more scrappy, but a high volume of low-quality content will get you nowhere.
If you're creating well-produced, research backed videos then quality is likely more important than quantity. But you still need enough quantity for the algorithm and your audience to reward your work.
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This piece was very much a personal musing as I struggle with quantity vs quality for my YouTube channel.
I'd love to know your thoughts on the quality vs quantity debate - just hit reply to this email.
Two Ideas
I.
Pessimism kills dreams.
Whenever someone comes to you with an idea default to optimism, say "why not?" instead of telling them why not.
II.
“Do something. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t, do something else.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Three Favourite Finds
Building a cabin in the Italian alps: My favourite thing is finding niche YouTube channels creating incredibly high quality content about something you never thought was possible.
I’ve been obsessed with watching this guy renovate his cabin in the Italian alps - the videos are so calming + make me want to move to the woods.
Everything takes longer than you think: No matter how often I learn this, it never fully sinks in. Absolutely everything takes longer than you think, and that’s okay. Just don’t try cram your weeks full then get down when you don’t get around to everything.
Glue Entrepreneurs: Being able to code is no longer the bottleneck to tech entrepreneurship. There’s a new wave of entrepreneurs, they’re ‘non-technical’ people glueing tools together to solve problems. No-code tools enable anyone to build a successful business by piecing together other peoples tools to solve unique problems.
End note
The Sunday Filter relies on word of mouth to reach more people, if you’re enjoying the newsletter I’d really appreciate you sending it to a friend or sharing on Twitter.
Have a fantastic week!
- Stephen