astukari Newsletter #70 - Give Away 99%, Sell 1%
Hi friends,
This biweek, I've been thinking a lot about the evolution of each of my projects. Obviously, the job is never done — but some are a lot more mature than others. For example, I'd say the blog and newsletter are pretty well set by this point. The Twitter and Youtube are doing pretty well, but could use improvements here or there. And as I mentioned last biweek, the Instagram is kind of a mess. I'm still experimenting with that.
So with that, it's time for some new changes! Last week I made a Ko-fi. Originally I was planning to make this exclusively for Apalla, but I think I'll combine the benefits of the Substack and the Ko-fi to be the same. In addition, I think I'll use the Ko-fi as a "central command" for plans that I have with my projects in general. It's under my impression that most people subscribe to this newsletter for the links, and probably don't want a massive essay on my current plans at the front of it. Obviously the posts there won't be paywalled, but it helps me keep everything in one area.
Last thing: the Discord will no longer be behind a paywall. I feel like a community is on the same level as a newsletter, and making the newsletter free but the community not sits as a weird move for me. Fortunately, there still remains a lot of reasons to subscribe to premium (and hopefully more later on) so at this point I find this a good chance to make the Discord public finally. You can check it out by clicking here.
🔨What I’ve Been Making
Buying Immortality - In a previous post I talked about immortality in the way of people remembering you after you’re gone. But can you buy remembrance?
Do this, but… - There’s a lot of conflicting advice online. How do you sort through and find what’s right for you?
[For those who prefer audio, there are now video summaries for The End of Education and Honor and Glory]
📚What I’ve Been Reading
Give Away 99% For Free. Monetize The Last 1% - This is a lesson I’m still learning. Over the course of the past few months I’ve freed up some of my long-form articles, some short stories, and also the Apalla databases. My focus has always been to get my voice heard over making a load of cash — so why shouldn’t I do it this way?
Dak Prescott’s Heal Turn - I don’t know much about Dak Prescott (I haven’t followed American football for about ten years), but this is an excellent biographical piece. I feel like we’ve had a drought of purely great profiles recently, so this is a welcome change!
We Don’t Sell Saddles Here - This is a classic among the startup hivemind, so I might have posted this before. The main lesson from this article comes from the idea of “understanding what people think they want and then translating the value of [your product] into their terms”. A good lesson in selling!
Quickly Training Game-Playing Agents - The newest job to be threatened by machine learning: Game Testers! Jokes aside, game testing is a tedious and expensive process that often involve long hours for those who work in the field. Being able to quickly spin up an AI that can test a variety of cases allows a tester to free up their time to focus more on bug prioritizing.
Growing A Tokenized Community - I’ve talked at length in previous newsletters about how the number one draw of crypto is its ability to simplify and decentralize the creation of businesses. This post serves as a guide to that process.