This week was a pretty normal week business related, but unfortunately a broken arm made life difficult.
Hi and welcome back to Instructions Not Included, the series where you follow and track me Ryan McLean as I try and make a decent living online.
This week has been a very interesting week. On Saturday we had an absolutely great morning as a family. We all went rock climbing together – well, the kids rock climbed.
I belayed them which means that I stood at the bottom and held the rope making sure that they didn’t fall and plummet to their death, but we had an absolutely great time. My son won a medal for the best effort for the day.
However, when he got home he then rolled off the couch which is like half a meter off the ground and he broke his arm. He broke two bones in his arm straight after we got home. So he then proceeded to spend the next two days at hospital with my wife.
It took a day before they could get him into surgery and to reset his arm. It didn’t need any screws or bolts or anything like that, just reset it and it’s in the cast. Therefore all is good there but this definitely threw us for a six for the weekend in terms of ‘family time’.
I lost a lot of sleep in terms of stressing about it and basically I had a pretty rough week recovering from that.
In terms of work, not as much work got done this way as there was not as much time to spend on work. My brain hasn’t been as engaged as I would have liked. However I did get quite a few things done because before the broken arm incident I did have a lot of interviews lined up for the week.
I had some On Property interviews and I had some interviews for my site melee.com which is a site about the game that I play Super Smash Brothers Melee. I had some of those interviews so at least I’m still productive and still able to get content out the door this week even though I wasn’t really feeling peppy. I was kind of feeling tired and stuff like that.
I had some of those interviews so at least I’m still productive and still able to get content out the door this week even though I wasn’t really feeling peppy. I was kind of feeling tired and stuff like that.
Melee.co has now started so let’s go ahead and check out YouTube and see how it’s going. The easiest reach tweet I have ever gotten is tweeting out that the interview with this person has gone live. You kind of tag them in the tweet and then they just go ahead and re-tweet it because obviously they’re featured in the interview. Therefore in terms of getting
Therefore in terms of getting exposure that way it has been very easy. But the people that I have been interviewing aren’t the biggest people in the industry and in terms of getting thousands of views that’s not really happening. Let’s go ahead – I’m going to go into the analytics of my YouTube account and just see where we’re at.
First let’s go to the video manager and just see how many views we’ve got. We got 55 views on one video and 22 on another which isn’t massive but it’s better than the zero views that my other videos have all gotten – less than 10, less than 5 views. So if we go to the analytics I guess this will be the true test to see how people are actually watching and enjoying these interviews for a long period of time because the interviews themselves go for about an hour if not over an hour.
We can see that I’ve got in the analytics 41 views on one of the smash stories. A total watch time of 400 minutes so for 40 that’s a hundred minutes. Is that right? If 40 people watched it for 400 minutes and they are watching it for 10 minutes each, therefore on average people are watching it for 10 minutes. That means some people are going to be watching it longer and some people aren’t going to be watching it at all but people are watching it and so I am happy.
We can see that I’ve got in the analytics 41 views on one of the smash stories. A total watch time of 400 minutes so for 40 that’s a hundred minutes. Is that right? If 40 people watched it for 400 minutes and they are watching it for 10 minutes each, therefore on average people are watching it for 10 minutes. That means some people are going to be watching it longer and some people aren’t going to be watching it at all but people are watching it and so I am happy.
In terms of revenue let’s just say it’s on ten cents. That’s not much revenue coming from this at the moment. I’ve got a few more as I’ve done three more recordings and these need to go out and that will generate more which over time will generate more revenue as I get more and more people onto the show. So this is going to be a long term thing. This is a passion project and eventually it could generate a nice little passive income on the side but it doesn’t generate anything super serious.
This is a passion project and eventually it could generate a nice little passive income on the side but it doesn’t generate anything super serious.
In terms of On Property, that has been going well. I’m just going to go to YouTube and check out On Property as well. We’re hitting record-breaking figures in terms of traffic for this site so both the site and YouTube are definitely improving. I remember back when I was getting 300 views a day for On Property; however it’s now consistently most of the time over 600 views a day. It is still not massive in terms of the viewership compared to the blog however it is very popular and I have had some episodes that are starting to do quite well in terms of generating both traffic and revenue as well.
It is still not massive in terms of the viewership compared to the blog however it is very popular and I have had some episodes that are starting to do quite well in terms of generating both traffic and revenue as well.
So even though the bulk of my income comes from my own products and comes from Ben I’ve still made – looking at last month almost $100 in ad revenue for the month which isn’t much given that I make $5,000 to $10,000 a month in terms of other stuff. But every little bit counts. On Property has been going well. Melee.co is going well.
There is nothing really massive to report in terms of making strides in my business or anything like that but I’m just continuing to work away on it. Today I had a situation where I just wasn’t feeling it. I was just kind of sitting here staring blankly at my computer and decided to have a shower – a nice long hot shower and get a coffee. That really resets my mind and allowed me to do this recording today. I’m then going to go on and do more recordings for On Property as well as for Melee.
I was just kind of sitting here staring blankly at my computer and decided to have a shower – a nice long hot shower and get a coffee. That really resets my mind and allowed me to do this recording today. I’m then going to go on and do more recordings for On Property as well as for Melee.
That really resets my mind and allowed me to do this recording today. I’m then going to go on and do more recordings for On Property as well as for Melee.
If you’re ever stuck on your business, consider take the timeout, sacrifice a half an hour or whatever go have a nice long shower, get a coffee and hopefully that will help you to focus like it has for me today. There is nothing huge to report but business is going along as usual and if things change then I will let you guys know.
Until next time if you want instructions go and buy some furniture.