When events started getting canceled and St. Patrick’s Day 2020 parades country-wide became victims of the pandemic, I wanted to do something to help those who love St. Paddy’s Day. Of course, I had to use what I had, so my wife and I put together this penguin parade! The video will go live at 9am West Coast time on March 17.
Continue readingCategory Archives: Creativity
‘Ride of a Lifetime’ Offers Iger’s Lessons Learned at Disney
Disney CEO Bob Iger shocked the business world by announcing his decision to step down from the company’s top position. He led Disney through some of its largest expansions – both in terms of intellectual property (IP) through acquiring Pixar, Marvel, LucasFilm and 21st Century Fox, and parks built or expanded, including Shanghai Disneyland and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. In his book “The Ride of a Lifetime” (affiliate link), Iger allows the reader to see what he has learned during his tenure at the Disney Company, where he started at the bottom and worked his way up.
Continue readingCombat Covid-19’s Consequences with Creativity
I don’t know if the news that came out yesterday regarding the novel coronavirus, aka Covid-19, shook you as much as it did me. I do know that as more events are canceled, and we’re asked to self-isolate, or self-quarantine, we’re going to have a lot of time on our hands. Those of us who are sports fans, fans of wrestling, fans of parades, those of us who love going to movie theaters, plays, or operas, and those of us who made travel plans or other plans that involved meeting with people are going to need to find something else to do. Those of us who get the virus are also going to need some way to occupy our time. We need to combat Covid-19’s consequences.
Continue readingNew Zealand: Photos from Toitu Otago Settlers Museum in Dunedin
The Toitu Otago Settlers Museum is located next to the Dunedin train station. It has exhibits that focus on creativity, vehicles, and what was important to the people that lived in the region.
Continue readingMars in Suburbia
Tim had married a beautiful woman far above his station in almost every way. Sure, Diana was attractive, but she was also intelligent, capable and powerful. Tim was a little mousey, but he was creative and smart. More importantly, he was just a good guy. Tim thought he was marrying a goddess and only found out that it was literally true on their wedding day.
Continue readingThe Salmon on Turkey Day: A Guide to Swimming Upstream against Greed and the Corporate Mandate
Updated Nov. 26, 2019 — Every year, the same thing happens. Retailers offer big discounts, they steal time from their employees and their customers with stores that open too early, and some of those customers die (12 dead since 2006) or get injured (117 since 2006). Let’s work to change that, again.
Continue readingDirector Taika Waititi Talks Creativity at TedxDoha
New Zealand Director Taika Waititi gave a short talk about creativity at TedxDoha. While his talk may seem like rambling, his insights into creativity are priceless – if you can find them. Creativity lies in the combination of seemingly unrelated, or never related before, subjects. It also lies in the absurd. The talk is about 18 minutes. Three highlights are below the video.
Continue readingNew Zealand: A Short Survey of New Zealand’s Creativity
The Arts Council of New Zealand is dedicated to opening the world to the arts of New Zealand. It facilitates creative exchanges and helps fund everyday artists and their works. Called “Creative New Zealand,” the organization is funded by the government and confirms New Zealand’s dedication to the arts and their proliferation.
Continue readingWhat Do I Need to Do Better? A History
When I first started Penguinate.com in 2012, it was because I learned that people who were able to talk to classmates or others on the job were able to reinforce their learning. They retained more information and learned more than people who had to rely on themselves and their memory to learn. I was going to Disney World to be a part of their College Program, and I wanted to remember everything that I learned there. Not knowing if I would find people to talk to, I decided to start a website where I could keep my observations and put down what I learned, giving myself one more way to remember what I deemed as important and one more connection to tie the information to my brain.
I monetized the website, and as I went through school, I created movie and book reviews. When I started at examiner.com as a reporter, I posted videos on YouTube to support the news I was reporting. I monetized those as well. By the time I went to get my Master’s degree, I was making just enough to pay for my Internet usage, and all indications were that it would keep growing if I kept at it. Then everything changed.
When YouTube changed its policy about who could monetize their videos, I was on the outside looking in. I lost half of my web income. When my website hosting company decided to eliminate contact with Russia, I lost half of my income again. Then I made the drastic decision to move website hosting companies, and my income dropped to almost zero. I thought I had things moving in the right direction when I took another hit in August, my worst month at my website financially speaking, even though I was in the midst of a 251-day publishing streak. September responded in a “hold my beer” fashion, and I’m staring at two months of unexplained decline in income from my website – even while September was my best for “ads served.”
In the midst of all this, I turned to writing books as an additional source of income. My wife has made penguins to help supplement what we’re making. I’ve tried freelance editing with two paid jobs and one that didn’t pan out but kept me from working in September. I’ve started publishing at Medium, where I earn based on the number of views by members and their interaction with the articles I write. I’ve attempted to expand our Patreon base and failed with every offer that I’ve put out there. I have a small but mighty core of supporters. I tried starting an email list – my wife and I are the only ones on it, which makes it a lot less work. We’ve made two calendars – one of which we’ve offered for free to our Patreon members.
So, this is where we are – facing crickets with our web presence and our ability to get the word out about what we have available. I’ve gotten messages about how people love my books. Our penguins have gotten great reviews – in private, so it can’t be the products that are the problem. That leads me to believe my biggest issue is marketing. How do I inform people about what we have available and how they go about getting it?
I have read about marketing, watched videos about it, and participated in courses about it, but for some reason, there’s a block. Either I’m not using the things I have learned, or I am using them ineffectively. I’m not sure where the disconnect is, but it must be somewhere within me, or between me and the computer. Somehow, I’m not translating what I’ve read and thought about into something productive for me. It’s a lot of wheel spinning as I use social media and Google ads to little or no avail. How do I do it better?
If I am right, and marketing is the main problem, then it’s time for me to return the blog portion of the website back to what it was built for – to help me learn. It’s time for me to start going through the marketing materials I’ve already read once, and re-read it with an eye to distilling it down to the main points: Benefits marketing, tell-a-story marketing, and other marketing tactics. Whatever type of marketing I need to learn, it’s time to buckle down and do the research and figure out how to turn it into something usable.
And after all this talking, the one thing I probably need to learn most of all is to how to listen. People may have been telling me things that I have missed. Since I have missed them, I don’t know what they are.
If you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments.
Changes to Penguinate.com Publishing Schedule
This post will mark my 251st consecutive day of publishing on Penguinate.com. For the last 8+ months, I have posted at least one article. I didn’t take any weekends off, and some days I posted more than one article. All of that work, plus what came from the beginning of November 2018, has created less than $2 worth of revenue, and August was the worst month for income, even though views were the third highest. So, I must be doing something wrong.
With this information, I have decided that I probably need to step back from publishing so much on Penguinate.com and start concentrating on the places where I can bring in more money. To that end, a lot more of what I publish here will be accessible by Penguinators (those who are a part of my wifes and my Patreon campaign) only. Not everything, just much of it.
Obviously, I’m not going to try to keep my streak alive. I may or may not publish anything tomorrow. Those 251 articles represent enough material to make a book if it had been written as such. So, I urge you to join my wife’s and my Patreon to help me continue writing and to read all the great content you get here. No matter what level you join at, you’ll have access to everything on Penguinate.com.
If you have a better idea of how to overcome this discrepancy in work versus pay, let me know. Leave your content. Otherwise, thanks so much for reading and through that supporting our creative endeavors.
Penguinate! Positive Creativity 