Good morning and happy Saturday!
In case you missed it, Casey Neistat's back on YouTube and back in New York (for now).
I thought that December would be a slow month for freelance and creator work - boy, was I wrong.
Busier than ever and writing a recap thread of things I've learned and strategies I've used in my first year of freelancing - hoping to share it next week. For a little context, last December I lost about $500 in the process of starting my business . . . this December, I'll invoice for ~$8,000 in freelance work.
Friendly reminder:
In this week's Loaf:
• 8 Year-End Crypto Tax Planning Strategies
• Revealing how much Kevin from The Office makes on Cameo
• How creators can use NFTs as "never ending tickets"
• Freelance Bold, a resource library for freelancers, launches
Business: Should Creators Choose Equity or Cash? [Video]
Most people don't know the business opportunities that exist in the creator economy.
And unless you've had hands-on experience, there isn't a lot of information out there to learn about them.
With how lucrative the creator economy can be, you need to know where these opportunities are and how to capitalize on them. This is an amazing 20 minute conversation that dives into how brands are thinking about investing in creators, and what you should be thinking about as a creator in business situations.
Also read: Forget Cash or Crypto, Pay Me In This
Money: 8 Year-End Crypto Tax Planning Strategies [Thread]
Tax law around crypto right now is like the Wild West.
But this thread from Travis Gatzmeier, CFP breaks down the best tax strategies you can use to lower your overall tax bill.
No one wants to pay the government more than they have to, right?
Also read: 10 Terms to Know If You're New to Crypto
Strategy: 38 Twitter Tips That Helped Blake Emal Go From 700 to 65,000 Followers in One Year [Thread]
If you follow any marketing content on Twitter, you've probably seen Blake's tweets. Since I believe Twitter is the best written-form social media to grow an audience on, these quick tips will help you learn how to use twitter more effectively.
Top takeaways:
• Aim to be overly insightful, helpful, or funny
• Focus on volume of content upfront, quality will follow quantity
• 90/10 split of original content vs retweeted content
• Select a pinned tweet that has high engagement and high value
• Value first, personality second
• Engage with accounts a tier above yours
Also read: 12 Universal Lessons That Will Help You Grow On Any Social Media Platform
If there's one creator that doesn't need an introduction, it's Casey.
He's been publishing consistent videos and creating for over a decade, received billions of views, and has also created several viral short films.
He's typically a YouTube homepage regular but in 2021, he's only uploaded 4 videos. Before this week, he'd only uploaded two.
In a video similar to LeBron announcing he was taking his talents to South Beach, in 2019, Casey announced that he was leaving New York and moving to LA. This was a big move as Casey and his studio are borderline staples of modern New York City.
But to the main point, he's back (for now).
He published a video on Monday, 7 months after his previous upload, titled The Most Important Movie I've Ever Made where he made another big announcement:
The release of his filmmaking class, Filmmaking & Storytelling with Casey Neistat
I have no doubts that this is an amazing course and a creator would learn everything they need to know about filmmaking, but there's one aspect of this whole thing that I want to point out:
He released the course 10+ years after he started making videos, creating, and becoming a filmmaker
From what I've seen, it's almost become common practice to try and release a course as soon as you become a creator so you have a way to make money. I've never been a fan of this approach because I think it's misleading. Unless you have the in-depth knowledge and experience to create a course that provides more value (which is subjective) than free content you can find online, it probably shouldn't be created.
Casey didn't try to extract value from his audience early on. He used revenue from other places such as sponsorships, his work as a filmmaker, and doing a show with his brother on HBO that paid $2 million.
He was, and is, a creator - not a salesman shilling PDFs or underproduced video "courses".
The longer you can hold off on asking for things from your audience, the better. It allows you build trust and build a relationship so that when you do have a relevant course or product to share, they're more likely to buy it.
From a different angle: It's popular nowadays to hate on college and while it has many flaws, I think it plays an important role in a lot of people's lives. However for creatives, I'm not sure how relevant college is.
Enter: Monthly
Monthly is what Casey's using to host his class and it's basically another online course/education platform, but with an emphasis on the timeframe and the instructors.
Each class is one month and the instructors are people who have actually done the things they're teaching.
For example, you can learn pop songwriting from Charlie Puth or how to design & create custom sneakers with The Sneaker Surgeon (who has made custom kicks for LeBron, Drake, and Justin Bieber).
But overall, I'm glad Casey went back to NY and found his vlog inspiration, I'm glad that better education solutions are being built and if you want to learn filmmaking for arguably the greatest YouTuber of all-time, you have 16 days left to enroll.
👔 Kevin from The Office earned $1 million on Cameo in 2020
🎥 YouTube releases first-ever Copyright Transparency Report
💰 How to gift an NFT for Christmas
🎨 6 steps to create a unique, successful NFT project
💰 Discord releases paid membership feature for creators
📈 YouTube creator, Coffeezilla, creates his own "Year in Rewind" breaking down all the crypto scams that have happened
Tool of the week: Mailbrew (10/10): If you want a cleaner inbox and to receive all newsletters is one curated feed, this is the best $5 you could spend
Watch: This is the cutest 2 minute walkthrough on how to create animations you'll ever watch
Freelance finds: Marijana Kostelac releases Freelance Bold*, a resource library and database for freelancers
Keep creating,
Treyton DeVore
Creator | Content Writer
