What's all this *stuff*?
Updated: May 19, 2023
This week, I've been continuing to make sure everything looks and behaves like it should before people actually start looking at it. I connected various social media pages together, and published the bare-bones version of my Patreon.
I did a little research on content filtering algorithms last night, and I'm beginning to understand the importance of good tags and metadata. I've definitely been neglecting this kind of stuff so far, but honestly I'm not expecting things to take off right away. Personally, I'm much happier building up a body of work that I'm comfortable letting a general audience see, before trying super hard to get a lot of people to actually see it. I know this is pretty counter-business brained, but I have no reason to rush right now.
Existing more online over the last few years, I've realized that stuff that just gets people to click on it is not actually that important. The creative people I really admire are able to make a living by developing a consistent (if smaller) community of supporters, rather than creating viral nonsense just for the hell of it. I think if you make something that's high quality and rewarding to engage with, you'll be able to develop a community of people who enjoy it.
A big part of this project over the last year or so has been building all the *extra* things (like this website, the social media accounts, this blog, the merch shop, the secret merch shop...etc...) At first, I didn't quite know why I wanted/ felt I needed to make these things. It felt like something you had to do to be taken seriously as an artist/ musician/ creative person in the world right now. But I'm beginning to realize that these things are important because they contribute to the overall experience I'm creating through the work. Creating a satisfying, interesting, worthwhile thing is something I think a lot about as an artist, and this pursuit should be no different. Creating and understanding the context of a piece of work contributes a lot to how it will be appreciated. I've always put a lot of care into the details surrounding how/when/why an interaction with a work of art happens, and I hope this kind of intention shows and is felt in the final product.