Jason Leow

Flurly isn't working out. So back to the drawing board. Perhaps Checkoutpages might work - exploring and asking qns now.

But feel like creating my own now. I just need to hook up a simple payment-to-download flow: product page on Carrd with payment link > payment form from 3rd party payment platform like Payhere/Superpay > redirect to unique, one-off URL of download file page > download file

Use serverless functions? Proxies? I don't even know how to start 🤔

It’s uncanny how this time round on my second 100 day streak, I’m again doing new things with my writings. Again, not knowing what to write. Struggling. Experimenting. Again, trying to push my writing to the next level. Hopefully fun will come next, as if did before. Fingers crossed that I will find my deeper why to this new way of writing.

I’m talking about writing content for marketing Lifelog.

It’s been a humbling experience, to learn anew again how to write, for a different audience. After writing daily for years I thought myself as a writer. But man do I feel like a newbie all over again now.

Full circle. There and back again.

Yet, not the same person I was then. Optimistic from lessons past that I will find a way, my way, through this new jungle.

"5k working for yourself or 10k working for a company?"

My answer would be, obviously: 5k working for myself.

Because of the potential for unlimited upside, limited downside. There’s no salary ceiling when you work for yourself. The sky’s the limit, if done well. That 5k you start with could overtake the 10k from the company real fast if you’re good at the entrepreneurship thing. The worse thing that could happen is seldom total ruin. If you fail, you can always find a job again.

Ultimately, I guess people do this self-employment and entrepreneurship thing for reasons that’s not really just about money. It’s the autonomy and freedom they relish. Just as I do.

Oftentimes, that alone is a worthwhile tradeoff for the apparent unstable income and the other downsides.

Money is not about the money.

Sent 1st draft to a few Lifeloggers for feedback on:

- structure
- writing style
- storytelling
- tone of voice
- typos etc
- if it’s compelling for target audience

Total sold = 5
Total rev = $75

Financial freedom to me is… the speed and ease in which I can say NO to:

who I work with
what I work on
when I work, if even
how much I work
where I live/work
which social cause I want to give to

Clocking in at 3700 words now for the best damned article on the internet about "how to start a daily writing habit"...

https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1379718298959454211?s=21

“I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerise myself to reach a deeper state of mind.” ~ Haruki Murakami, via Daily Rituals

Initially I stopped meeting people outside for work or catching up, out of fear of infection. But after a while, I didn’t even want to meet anyone anymore, other than for the most essential purposes. Even though the restrictions had since been lifted. I felt bad for my friends. I wondered if I am turning into some reclusive hermit living in a cave with his family.

Now I know. I was mesmerised.

Transfixed into the routine, I occupied a mindspace that was all focused on two things – my family and my work. When I’m not caring for the bay, I was tumbling deep into the rabbit hole of coding, indie hacking, making. That was all I wanted to do. That was all I still want to do, now.

Around 23-30min read time. That feels like a lot to read already... 🤔

Got inspiration for intro and outro paragraphs
Added new ideas to article

That's 4 copies sold since launch 2 weeks ago!

I’d been slaving over a piece of content for Lifelog. I wanted to write the best damned article on the internet about how to develop a daily writing habit.

But the interesting part is writing advice for others also ended up being advice for myself. Taking my own advice, I started doing brain dumps of points I want to make in the post. I stopped editing in mid-flight and shifted it to be done last, since writing and editing are fundamentally different brain work. So it seems, even now after writing for years, I can still learn new tricks to get better. It made me realised that even though getting better at writing isn’t one of my main goals, doing some level of intentional practice is still a good thing.

Damn… Funny how I only came to this after more than two years of writing. And when writing out advice for others.

If we all took our own advice, the self-help industry would be out of business.

Woohooo! The first one to reach 🔥100 day streak - our #TeamStreak mafia chief, @Lobacrow !

Crazy congrats on the other bigger streak of 853 days too, Brandon!

Guys, you have to read Brandon's secret on how to develop a daily writing habit 😆👇

https://golifelog.com/posts/100-posts-1617668698401

Fleshed out each point more, explain/clarified it
Added little examples and quotes from famous writers/creators
Started thinking about intro - this is important, how do I make them stay on to read the rest of the article? Thinking about using metaphors like organising a house party for your writing.

Collecting more as I go:

https://twitter.com/golifelog/status/1378999154781773829?s=20

With coding, it’s all very visual and visceral. Code you type into your computer renders straight away. If it works, you know. If it doesn’t, you know too. Immediately. The feedback loop is short, and definitive. I can see results fast.

But marketing loops are the opposite. Yes, you can see page views, impressions and all within the first few days, but very often content is a long game. You won’t see the real effects until you hit a certain threshold quantity and quality. From what I read, it can be many months before there’s any observable effect in traffic and conversions. Content feedback loops are longer and more ambiguous, and it’s indicators are lagging. It just takes so much longer. Longer than I have patience for.

The life cycles of coding and marketing are like the life spans of fruit flies compared to tortoises.

Created a structure for all the tips - before, during, after writing
Collated links to articles, tweets too to link to them in the article

Instead of seeing marketing as a separate business activity, something I do for a product, as secondary inputs feeding into a primary product, what if I saw it as a product in itself? How then would I approach it differently?

Instead of doing “marketing”, what if I built an info product around the key topics that Lifelog covers? What would an info product based around these themes of writing, habits, goals, productivity look like? What would an info product equivalent of Lifelog look like?

Marketing a product versus marketing as a product.

Seeking comments and additional tips/ideas to the list! Please let me know:

🧘🏻‍♂️ Find your sacred hour, a time to write w/o distractions
🐣 Keep the bar low initially: 100-200 words/day
💡 Keep a stash of writing prompts, half-written drafts
📺 Input shapes output. Consume great content = produce great content
🔥 Consistency over intensity, progress over perfection
👥 Find a community. Your tribe will nudge you on bad days, amplify you on good days.
🤔Find your why, but it might only emerge after writing a while

Felt frustrated initially with the hassles and issues of getting Stripe payouts/payments using Flurly. But the founder maker JR was super cool and engaged, worked through the issues together, and even shipped a new direct Stripe payment feature to fix things while we were DMing! Awesome shipping pace there. He even absorbed the Stripe fees for having to make a roundabout payment to me. That's some great service recovery there. Loving Flurly so far.

One of the big rewiring efforts on my brain when it comes to learning marketing, is re-acquainting myself with writing for an audience.

After writing daily for myself for slightly over two years (with a short intentional break at two year mark), I’d gotten really comfortable with writing down whatever the voice in my head is saying. What you’re reading here is literally how that voice in my head talks.

BUT…writing for an audience is so different.

I can’t be true to heart and say that I’m excited about all that work. Sometimes I still daydream about finding easy shortcuts to doing this whole marketing thing.

But the short game is to play the long game, they say.

Seems like I really got my work cut out for me this month. One thing that keeps popping up in my head:

How can I learn to start enjoying writing for an audience?