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The Midlife Remix

Hi there, I’m Kirby Ferguson! I’m best known for the series Everything is a Remix. I’m pivoting away from free content creation for financial and personal reasons. I’m seeking financial stability and personal fulfillment in the second act of life. I’m thinking aloud about all of this here. I might later revise, discard or ridicule anything said.

Operation 11th Hour

Happy Monday everybody!

First things first, are you subscribed to the Everything is a Remix newsletter? If not, I command you to do it!

It’s new emails every Wednesday about creativity and AI. Most recently, I took a swing at defining when it is and is not okay to use AI art.

When you subscribe, you’ll get my new free guide, An Introduction to Creative AI, which walks you through 11 places to start your journey into creating in collaboration with AI.

So go subscribe!

Operation 11th Hour

As mentioned last week, I have one quarter (January - March) to establish a viable business producing educational content. I’ve now dubbed this mission… Operation 11th Hour!

Sounds campy but also serious. Yeah, it is!

This is my final attempt at making an independent business work. If the numbers don’t add up come April, that’s it, and I move on to pursuing in-house opportunities.

The primary revenue vehicle for this is my new video course, Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024. (If you’ve not bought it yet, you should and you can still save $50.)

I’m now two weeks into Operation 11th Hour. How’s it going?

So far… it’s working! However, please brace yourself for a rather enormous “but.”

BUT!

This is the part that often works: the launch. 

The challenge when selling digital products is to keep the faucet of sales flowing over the coming weeks and months. It’s very common to see sales stop entirely not long after launch. My daily battle is to keep the sales going.

I got a small win this week because week 2’s sales actually surpassed week 1’s. That’s no mean feat.

A huge win would be if month 2's sales exceeded month 1’s. How can I do that?

Firstly, through ongoing sales efforts, day in and day out.

And secondly, I’m gonna try something crazy…

Video.

I’m sure many of you are old enough to remember when I retired from video content creation. Yes, something like that did happen!

But actually, it was more specific than that. I quit doing the kind of video production I’d been doing for years: making cool videos and praying. That kind of video-making is indeed over. 

When you don’t have a business model, video content doesn’t make sense. I now have one, so video makes sense.

For Operation 11th Hour, I’m trying some new things and some uncomfortable things, like ongoing sales. But I also want to play to my strengths. I need to break out the big guns for this battle… and that’s video. 

So videos are coming to the YouTube channel! (I also might make a video for a large newspaper I’m sure you’re familiar with.)

Are you somehow not subscribed to my YouTube channel? I command you to go do that too.

Steamboat Willie is now free

Did you know Steamboat Willie entered the public domain? A lot of copyright pessimists thought this day would never come and copyright would just be extended endlessly. Well, it happened. You can legally do whatever you want with Steamboat Willie.

But remember, Mickey Mouse is still trademarked, so don’t go trying to sell Mickey Mouse t-shirts on Etsy.

That’s it, folks! Have an awesome week!

Kirby

P.S. Subscribe to the Everything is a Remix newsletter! It’s my straight-laced pro newsletter. This is my screwball personal newsletter.

Order my new course, Create Content with ChatGPT and AI 2024, now and save $50!

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