As American as mom and Apple’s Why – Clarity Lab Issue 78

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Non-Fungible Smokin’

We’re living amidst a potentially massive shift in the way creators like you and me can make money online. If things keep heading the direction they’re starting to head in, we could soon find ourselves with more ways to earn income from the things we create, whether we make art, essays, blog posts, or online courses.

Things are starting to shift away from the ad-supported revenue model towards a model that allows for direct payments to creators. If you’ve been following the rise of paid newsletters on Substack, that’s one great current example of this shift.

I’m not a big fan of the large 10% cut that Substack takes from the writers who use their platform, but they could be a harbinger of things to come with their business model.

Even though I don’t like how much Substack takes as their cut, I like the ad-supported model for creators even less. As Sari Azout and Jad Esber point out in a recent essay, “One study found that making it to the top 3.5% of YouTube channels—which means about 1 million views each month—only gets you $12,000 to $16,000 a year, right around the federal poverty line.”

It is tough to get to 1 million views of your videos on Youtube every month. And if you pull that off? You get a poverty level of income.

The essay I linked to above is itself an experiment in this emerging direct-to-creator business model. Read through it to see more about what they’re doing, which involves a group of people buying the essay as an NFT (non-fungible token) and sharing in the proceeds when someone else resells it in the future. Maybe I should start selling these newsletters as NFTs. Possible benefits would include free doughnuts.

+ Counterpoint: Seth Godin on NFTs: They’re a trap.

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Swamp feature.

Various versions of this kind of diagram have floated around the internet for years.

This one feels accurate to me. I’m not sure who created it, but all of us small online business entrepreneurs go through this journey, it seems. Have a read through this diagram and see where you’re at in the journey. Maybe it will help you feel less alone to know that we’re all at some point on this journey. I seem to keep pitching my tent somewhere on that bridge.

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Waiter…deck, please?

There’s a lot about the tech startup company space that I don’t like, which is why I’m currently running a multi-year experiment to see how good of a life I can create as a company of one.

But I will give the startup world this: their pitch decks, when done well, are works of art…sales art.

Much of what we do as small online business owners comes down to conversion copywriting, which is the skill of writing words that gets people to take action, like buying something from you.

We can learn a great deal from the best startup company pitch decks because they’re trying to do the same thing. It’s just that the audience for the pitch decks is venture capitalist investors rather than customers.

In this article, Andy Raskin unpacks the greatest pitch deck he’s ever seen and explains why it worked so well. Everything he says about what makes this pitch deck amazing is also what makes a great sales page for an online course convert visitors into paying customers. Don’t skip this one, my friend.

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Mission Is Possible

“People frequently tell me that something we need to do can’t be done. My response is often, Show me that it’s not possible. I then follow up by saying, if you can’t prove it’s impossible, then I believe it’s possible.” That’s Robert Refkin, CEO of real estate tech company Compass, with one of three questions he uses to crack seemingly impossible problems in business. I believe you can make an extra $100,000 in the next 12 months. *Stares into camera* Show me that it’s not possible.

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As American as mom and Apple’s Why.

One of the benefits of this Clarity Lab newsletter is that I don’t always bring you only the best new things. Sometimes I find amazing older content that has stood the test of time and proven to be worthy for the current time.

Case in point: Simon Sinek’s original TEDx talk where he first presented his big idea around finding your businesses “why.” Many of you have probably seen a clip of this talk, but even so, it’s worth it to revisit it and watch the whole 20-minute presentation.

His idea is so powerful, even though he gave this talk in 2009.

People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.

+ Related: people buy a better version of themselves, too.

Alright. It’s time to go get it. Make some things happen today.

~Forest Linden

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