Bold imagination
What would happen if I stopped updating my blog and YouTube channel?
What would happen if I updated 10 or 100 blog posts and YouTube videos today, and how would I do it?
What kind of content would you create on your blog and YouTube channel, disregarding traffic and revenue?
If you needed to earn $10 or $100 a day, how would you do it?
If you were to open a service shop, a coffee shop, a snack bar, a digital store, or a gift shop, what would you do?
What kind of shop would you like to open?
Have you considered starting a company or studio? Have you considered being a digital nomad?
What is your target company size and annual revenue? What is the content and value of your company?
Have you considered becoming a manager or even a founder? Do you know how to manage finances and a company? Do you understand the law?
Have you considered becoming a lawyer, a doctor, a programmer, or a salesperson?
Have you considered ending up on the streets? Have you considered what life would be like if you became wealthy? Have you planned your degree and career well? Do you have a systematic growth path and life principles? Have you thought about what changes you’ll make tomorrow or next week? How will you change, and what do you hope to become? What do you need? Have you thought about it carefully?
Is it day after day or year after year?
I’ve thought about it countless times, and right now I’m thinking about it, and I’m still thinking about it.
Try actively
I tried stopping YouTube videos and my WordPress blog. My YouTube earnings almost dropped to zero the next day, and my WordPress data started to decline significantly.
I also tried updating my WordPress blog a sufficient number of times a year—for example, 3, 5 posts, with a goal of 10. But I often didn’t have enough time; 3 posts were my limit. I’m always engrossed in technology, habitually sharing tutorials. My personality dictates that I need to validate my solutions first, and only start recording, organizing, reviewing, and outputting after success. This results in my content output being limited to three mediocre, frustrating posts, whether YouTube videos or WordPress blog posts.
My friend told me not to get so caught up in technology, but to share more about daily life, plans, and expectations, even if it’s just description. Always focus on technology, don’t wait until you succeed to begin.
Like crowdfunding a project, you don’t need to start with a minimum viable solution, design a development board and casing, or create a corresponding technical architecture. All you need is a PowerPoint presentation to get started. Your goal is funding; the communication and funding will help refine your goal and gradually lead to success.
The most important thing is to actively try.
Create a YouTube channel, publish short videos, long videos, and live streams.
Create a WordPress blog, publish articles, notes, and anything else you want to say.
Try learning technologies, try using AI, try analyzing data, try anything you have the time, energy, and funds to do.
Go fishing, go for a walk, go hiking, travel, read books, attend training courses, paint, do things you haven’t done before. Do what you dare not do.
Make everything work in your favor.
For example, I’ve bought hundreds of books, including some on Raspberry Pi, smart home, Linux, and IoT. I can organize these into an outline to help me complete my daily blog posts, seeing if I can finish 10 to 100. I also have AI tools, ChatGPT, and various other free AI tools, as well as large local AI models.
I have dozens of ESP32s and over a dozen sensors. I can take them all out and demonstrate them, doing whatever I want, however fast I want.
Books maintain the structure, integrity, and professionalism of the content; AI accelerates content organization and reflection; and there are also self-media tools to assist with typing, images, and other tasks.
You can watch other people’s courses, watch a series of YouTube videos, and convert them into your own.
You can also pay an assistant to do information organization and filtering (of course, this is currently just my idea; for example, secretarial work, meals, airfare, planning, video editing, post-production effects, and text proofreading and layout would all be done by others, and you would only be responsible for content output, such as speech-to-text services).
Timely reflection
Is HomeLab worthwhile? Which is better: daily simple content updates or weekly high-quality content updates?
Are there better YouTube channels and better video creation tools?
What social media platforms does a WordPress blog need for traffic?
What did I do today, what didn’t I do, what could I have done, how can I better improve yesterday’s content, and what are my plans for tomorrow?
Based on current revenue, my core is YouTube videos, so my WordPress CSS serves as a supplement to YouTube.
It’s around 8 PM now, quiet enough.
I plan to read books I’ve neglected for years and organize them into a HomeLab system.
I plan to examine my hardware storage shelves and, following this system’s organization, properly organize the services I already use, such as documentation, entertainment, and AI, including the panels and networks I’m currently using, their accounts, memory, storage, and use cases (but not tutorials, as I anticipate). If it’s still a technical tutorial, three WordPress blog posts tonight will be my limit, so it’s best to keep it simple and conversational, like sharing with friends or recommending something. (For those who need it, like how I want to share mind maps with my younger cousin who’s still in school)
I plan to output WordPress blog posts tonight instead of YouTube videos, but the WordPress blog posts will also serve as the basis for the YouTube videos. This way, tomorrow during the day, I can record my WordPress blog posts as videos and string them together, so the videos have documentation, and the documentation has video demonstrations.
If I find my efficiency is off after half an hour, I need to adjust immediately, reflect on where the problem lies, and find ways to optimize, such as using paid AI, and ensuring my body gets adequate rest and energy replenishment. I should try to avoid staying up late, listen to more music, reduce screen brightness, and do some light exercise and rest.
Continuous optimization
I could have continued posting short videos and my usual technical videos as I always have.
However, YouTube’s algorithm is constantly changing, and global trends are constantly evolving. I need to constantly reflect and adapt daily and weekly to cope with crises and improve traffic and revenue.
Stagnation is a slow form of failure (but don’t change too quickly either; the body has its limits, and so does our thinking. Take it slow).
My changes are:
Changing my WordPress blog posts from once a week to multiple times a day.
Converting my long videos on my YouTube channel to short videos.
Using WordPress blog posts as the basis for YouTube videos (embedding YouTube videos in WordPress posts, adding the blog post URL to the bottom of the YouTube videos).
Using AI for images (I haven’t used AI for text content yet), but I’ll consider it and try it; if it doesn’t work, I’ll revert back.