Oct 10, 2018
Failure Is The Norm In Blogging — Get Used To It
“Fuck… only 50 shares?
After an hour?
It should be at 140 by now!”
-Me, at 7 AM, angry, looking at a video I posted at 6 AM.
Let’s pause the tape right there.
Who the hell was I to be angry?
50 shares on a video is phenomenal. I would’ve been happy to have 18 shares TOTAL a few months ago when I had 1,000 FB likes instead of 60,000.
But here I am. Angry. Entitled. Pissed that I spent so much time on a video and it turned out to be another “dud.”
‘I’m only going to make $20 from it,’ my brain says. Can ya’ll taste the saltiness? Gosh, it’s horrible. I’m embarrassed.
I recently had some success on Facebook making a couple videos. I’ll let you read about this story on your own, but ever since then I’ve lived and died by the statistics.
I mean, for gosh sakes, my last viral video happened in mid-September, and it got over 3 million views. Why haven’t I made another viral video yet?
I’ve been trying. I’ve made 6 videos since and none of them took off. I’m starting to doubt my abilities as a video creator, and further I’m stagnating creatively.
Every video has the same style. The same setup. I go through the same process for each one because, guess what — it works!
But there’s something I’m forgetting here..
First Off, Failures Are The Norm
I probably put out 5–6 pieces of content per day on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and here on Medium. And Twitter — can’t forget about Twitter.
Not everything I post to Instagram does well. Same with LinkedIn. Heck, Medium doesn’t always do well either for me surprisingly, and I’m supposed to be the expert.
Steven Spielberg still made shitty movies, okay? And think about how crappy that must’ve been — most movies take 2–3 years to make IN TOTAL.
When you’re dealing with creative work, simply put, nobody knows for sure what’s going to work. Casey Neistat once said he had no idea how to make viral videos despite making dozens of them over the last 10 years.
He clarified, saying he knew how to maximize the possibility of a video going viral, but it was not an exact science to him.
Creativity isn’t science. And because of that, it’s difficult to create something that you KNOW is going to do well.
So lots of failure happens. Make no mistake — the greats fail a lot.
But there’s a silver lining..
You Can Try Again Tomorrow
What separates us from everybody else is we can try again tomorrow. We don’t have to wait 3 years to write another book or make another movie.
You can get to work RIGHT NOW to prove you still have the juice.
Because you’re damn right in thinking that you do. Now get back to work.
Experiment First, Go Viral Second
One thing that’s helped me with creative failure is baking in some sort of an excuse for myself.
You can laugh at me now.
Hear me out.. With every video I create these days, I do something different with each one — whether that’s insert a cool title animation, or decide to shoot B-Roll footage to go the extra mile.
I try something new with every project, even if it’s a little thing, just to see what happens.
These experiments might make the video a massive failure, but at least at the end I know what NOT to do.
You have to understand that experimenting is much more valuable than going viral. It really is. Because experimentation leads to real growth as a creative.
Now you know what doesn’t work.
Success isn’t just about doing everything right — it’s about knowing what NOT to do as well.
I could’ve wrestled a fantastic match in high school for 5 minutes and 30 seconds, but if I made ONE mistake in the last 30 seconds, I could get tossed to my back and pinned.
That’s still a loss, even though I wrestled perfectly most of the time.
It’s the same reason many people don’t get exposure simply because of their headline.
Which brings me to my next point..
Your Work Wasn’t Bad, It Just Wasn’t Shareable
A lot of times when we get crappy views we believe the entire article was terrible. Guess what?
It wasn’t.
Like my wrestling example above, you might have just made one costly mistake or a few costly mistakes..
I’ve gotten better as a video creator over the last 6 videos I made — despite them not performing well. I’ve learned editing tricks and REALLY put more time into each one.
It’s time to start championing growth over performance.
Because if you focus on growth, better performance will ALWAYS come later on.
Here’s another tip..
Think Of Your Work In Chunks, Not One-Off Projects
I could have a video go viral tomorrow. It could do 3 million views and make $3,000. Fantastic.
Now, I could divide $3,000 by the 8 hours it took me to make that video and come up with some ridiculous hourly rate calculation..
Or I could divide $3,000 by 50 hours or so — the time it took me to make the 7 videos SINCE my last viral hit, and come up with a completely different calculation.
See what I mean?
Because my next viral hit will likely have elements of each of the 6 “crappy” videos I made before it. I had to make each of those 6 videos to gather the new creative tools that — when put together — made a viral hit, right?
Therefore it makes sense for me to spread the value everywhere. It WAS valuable for me to make those videos that didn’t do well.
When you do this, your focus shifts away from statistics entirely.
And that’s a good spot to be in.
Listen, It’s Okay To Get Upset By Performance..
I get upset still. Everyone who gets upset, well, cares. And that’s good.
Some people downplay giving a damn about statistics and to a certain extent I think you shouldn’t care.. but I also do think caring can give you the drive to try harder and experiment and, therefore, grow.
Almost like how taking a loss in sports makes you want to get better.
I think it’s good to feel the initial sting, but then to make yourself feel better, pop this article open and remember that there’s a lot to be gained from our losses.
I hope you do. 😃
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