The Astukari Newsletter #102
Weekly Update #009
(Taken from IndieHackers)
With Boys & Girls: Part I finished and out of the way, I'm looking towards new projects. There's a lot of experiments I want to try to see what's successful, but so far the progress on each has been slow. I'm hoping to speed that up now that I'm free.
There's two main things I want to test: short video and SEO. Short video is in regards to TikTok, YT Shorts, and Instagram Reels primarily. I've discussed this on past Weekly Updates (as well as on Monday Morning Coffee), but I feel as though shorts could be a really fun way to market major projects given if I can figure shorts out. I feel like in terms of cross-platform -- TikTok, YT, and Insta -- there isn't too much variation I need to worry about, other than differences in algorithm. Shorts always seem to give more views than traditional video content (60-120 baseline views versus traditional's 0-5) and I feel like if you can figure out how to catch the attention of that first pack you can then figure out the overall system fairly quickly. I have a few ideas -- each spanning across astukari, JBR, and the fun/joke content. Obviously no spoilers yet, but hopefully they will come out sooner rather than later.
On the SEO front, I've been trying to figure out the new trend that I've seen a lot of companies do. Instead of doing content writing, they now do "template pages". For example, you might make a template page "Our Company vs. [Competitor]", then make a page for each competitor you have. Those pages then each have a chance of ranking if people look up "[your company name] vs [competitor name]". This is of course much simpler and quicker than doing SEO blogging, so I have a few plans to implement this on both JBR and Astukari and seeing what happens.
New Releases
Blog posts: Trends in Mass Murder Techniques & Changing to Fit the Times
Monday Morning Coffee: #12 & #13
Astukario: what’s happening back there? & Yui810 is a Pathological Liar
Podcast: Art as Inspiration, Art as Education
Other links: Pinterest, Quora, JBR Subreddit, JBR Tumblr
Updates
Creative Focus: Boys & Girls: Part I is finished! You’ll be seeing it on Gumroad on December 21st, 2022. In the meantime check out the website.
JBR Focus: JBR shorts will come up on the Youtube channel, starting… today! However, I am releasing this newsletter before uploading the first short. You can check out the channel here (and by the time you read this it will probably be out :) ).
Astukari Focus: Less making new stuff and more organizing the stuff I’ve already got. I’m making a content calendar (far overdue) to collect in one place all the stuff I’m releasing, to cull off experimental stuff, manage ads, analytics, etc.
Other Stuff
Currently Reading: Azumanga Daioh. Getting near the end now and I’m completely sold. Slice of Life has the potential to be the greatest genre ever made and this is a perfect example.
Currently Watching: Does editing your own videos count?
Currently Listening: Since Kanye is on his way out now and it will soon be uncool to listen to him, I’m going back into the archives and getting my fill. Forgot how utterly fantastic the Good Friday singles are. Just in time for Christmas in Harlem!
Currently Playing: Forza Horizon 4. I know 5 is the newest one but I get both with XGP and feel like I should play them in order.