Evidence-backed guidance for creators and solopreneurs. I study the world's best creators, run experiments, and share what I learn with 58,000+ readers every week.
ICYMI: Tim Urban of Wait But Why
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This week I'm re-airing my episode from January 2021 with Tim Urban.
Tim Urban is the writer of the blog Wait But Why. Tim writes about topics including artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, alien life, the size of the universe, and more.
His articles are often tens of thousands of words – the length of finished novels. The success of his blog has garnered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons and famous fans like Elon Musk.
In this episode we talk about the beginning of Wait But Why, his research and writing process, how Tim thinks about A+ work, and why he loves the struggle of writing online.
It's available on any app you use to listen to podcasts.
| Episode and Show Notes |
In this 90-minute workshop:
• What is Web3?
• NFTs, Tokens, & Coins
• Technical steps to participate
• Trends in how creators are using Web3
• Security and pitfalls to avoid
This is made by a creator for creators. You will not need to have any in-depth technical knowledge for this workshop to be impactful.
Reflecting on this episode
One of the reasons I wanted to replay this episode is that I saw Tim is going to be one of the keynote speakers at ConvertKit's Craft + Commerce.
Tim is one of the creators who has a life and style of work that I really aspire to.
He has built the trust from his audience that he can take as much time as he wants to write whatever he wants to write and ship it when he's ready.
How great does that sound?!
In fact, a ton of creators say to me, "I just want to be like Tim Urban."
A lot of Tim's ability to live and work this way comes from the fact that he has already built an audience who trusts him.
Another piece though – and this is what haunts me – is that Tim got a little bit lucky.
We talk about it in this episode, but in 2014, Facebook was releasing new publishing features. They wanted to show publishers just how much traffic they could drive to articles (so that they could charge for that reach later).
But in the beginning, Facebook could drive a TON of traffic to you for pennies (if not free)!
Tim's timing was perfect. It wasn't a giant scheme, something he saw coming, he just happened to be doing great work at the right time.
That pathway doesn't exist for us anymore.
Facebook advertising isn't even as accessible as it once was – let alone organic traffic to external websites!
So I say this all to remind you that these episodes are meant to be informative, inspirational, but sometimes what we learn is NOT that we need to piggyback on Facebook...but that we need to keep our heads up and our eyes open for the NEXT wave we might be able to catch.
It's a great episode, and I hope you enjoy it!
Cheers,
Jay
Creator Science
Evidence-backed guidance for creators and solopreneurs. I study the world's best creators, run experiments, and share what I learn with 58,000+ readers every week.
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