Newsletter

Konnichiwa,

Welcome to my (Okuha) newsletter! The newsletter is always more or less about anime and manga art, artist life, and anime, of course. I hope you stick around!

What happened this week or so...

Konnichiwa!

I think it was like yesterday when I watched Gary V’s interview, and in it he said (not a direct quote) roughly something like subscribers, followers, etc., numbers don’t matter anymore. It’s all about interest.

I personally think the numbers (followers, subs, etc.) haven’t mattered for more than a year already. But I wanted to remind myself why I thought that way. Or more like, why do I think that way currently?

Now, probably the best example I can find online is this:

Just look at the stats:

2.7M subscribers

Yet the videos average roughly at 3-15k views.

That’s like nothing compared to the number of subscribers the channel has.

Now a quick analysis could be that the video quality sucks somehow or that the person doesn’t know what he’s talking about or something along those lines. Yet, that is not the thing.

The production value is there, the knowledge is there, the value is there, and the videos are good. So why is it like that?

I haven’t had the time to analyze it further, but one thing could be that it’s not raw enough. Maybe the thing they are missing is relatability?

I truly don’t know, but I find it fascinating.

Now, what does this have to do with anime and manga art? One might ask…I wouldn’t.

So, the reason why I’m talking about this is very simple. The concept is super simple, but insanely powerful.

When we artists are trying to grow our following…we might (not sure) want to start looking inside. What I mean by this is this:

From Seth Godin (not a direct quote): Ideas worth sharing, spread.

I will turn this into art worth sharing…spreads.

This means that instead of worrying about numbers, you should worry about your skills and how you are growing as an artist.

I want to believe that when your art gets good enough (I’m not yet there), it will spread and be seen.

This also means we shouldn’t worry about followers, likes, comments, etc.

By thinking through this lens, it should lower the pressure for you. Lower the pressure of getting this and that metric on social media.

Yesterday, a member of my community posted a comment that linked to an artist who is struggling financially.

Yet, when we go to his YouTube channel, he has like 13k subscribers. So you could think that he would make at least some kind of money through social media. But no. That is not the case.

A few weeks back, I found another creator (not a visual artist) who had 170k subscribers or something, the videos got 150k+ views. You know what the end result was?

$84/month to his bank account.

So it’s definitely not about subscribers or even views anymore. Views are important, but there has to be a backend system behind everything you do online (business-wise).

I’m currently building a monetization roadmap for my members that lays out how to make $1k (not guaranteed—it’s all up to you) online as an artist.

I’ve made that multiple times (the money I mean) and make that currently, and I have social reach of…basically nothing.

This is not to brag (hard to brag with these numbers anyway) but to make the point that the numbers shown online are already rather pointless. They tell…basically nothing.

So I hope this short email gave you some relief if you are worrying about social media numbers or if you feel like you should hit some magical social media number online.

There are not that many things online that matter. What matters more is your inner growth. Focus on that.

That's All!

That's it for this week's newsletter. I hope you enjoyed this newsletter and found it helpful in your journey to master anime and manga art.

Have an awesome rest of the day!

Arigatou,

Okuha

600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246
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