Tag Archives: General

UGH!

I’m not entirely convinced that the Tumblr Meltdown of 2018 wasn’t specifically engineered to drive as much of its userbase to revenue-creating websites as quickly as possible, BUT…. oh well. Hopefully more people using the wordpress blogging/reading function will give people a chance to meet one another.

In other news, I’ve really REALLY got the Christmas Spirit lately, no doubt due to having been held hostage by my lovely coworkers playing Hallmark Christmas movies nonstop since October! To be fair, though, I… love them… and am eagerly thinking of ways to show my love for these shows, lmao.

(REAL TALK: A Gift To Remember? LOVE IT. OH MY GOSH. Love the DOG, love the AMNESIA, love the TWIST, it’s just so wholesome and charming I could DIE.)

Udemy Course Update!

So! I was able to finish another free course- this was an Excel Quickstart Tutorial Course, meant to really be a very quick and dirty absolute beginner’s course. I think it was pretty good- I don’t have Microsoft Office on my computer, because I have OpenOffice instead, and I wasn’t able to perform the quizzes in this course, but pretty good! I had used excel spreadsheets before at work, but extremely sparingly, and had done a lot of things manually and with a lot of errors that I had to then correct, also manually. This course made it pretty easy to see where I’d gotten it wrong, although I will probably have to use a tutorial or helpdesk the first few times I try to use it in a professional setting.

Since I have OpenOffice, I will also probably have to look up tutorials for people explaining how the two programs differ, but, I mean, it looks mostly the same, I just couldn’t figure out where certain things were.

Anyway! I have a cool signup link for Udemy again! It does benefit me by I think like $5 of Udemy credits per person who signs up for the first time using that link, but only for the first six people. I would be using those course credits to enroll in some of the coursework that is paid-access- since at this time Udemy isn’t accredited, I don’t feel totally comfortable paying for its services using real money. That being said, you might as well use it if you haven’t signed up for any courses before– there are a ton of free courses on a variety of subjects and I’m definitely going to continue using it just for the sheer joy of learning something even remotely useful or interesting.

Udemy SEO course by Moz review!

Alright well! Obviously with Halloween and various personal events and whatnot, it took longer than I expected to finish the course I mentioned, BUT:

Do I Recommend This Course: A Short Essay By Me, A Sharo

Yes actually! Okay, does it assume that you already know some basic, introductory-level terms and phrases and programs/services? Yes. I feel like a link to a glossary or even an Intro-to-Intro lecture explaining some of these basics would have been super useful, and since there wasn’t one I’ve basically been going back over my notes highlighting things I don’t immediately understand so I can research them on my own. A level-zero beginner like me should have probably looked for an even more basic course first- however, none of the content of the lectures was so incomprehensible that I couldn’t follow along with the concepts, despite having blank patches here and there. Somebody who’s even very slightly more educated than I am about this subject will not have this problem.

One thing that was a little confusing a handful of times was that they referenced rules, programs, or sites that might not apply anymore- some of this content is from as far back as 2014, and for a lecture series that mentions periodically that rules and practices are constantly shifting or changing, this is kind of disheartening. At one point they mention using Google Plus to see if somebody is a trustworthy subject matter expert like… come on bruh, haha… that’s not a sentence that aged well.

Is this all information that artists, especially artists with web-based businesses, can use? Yeah I think so! I’ve started making changes to this site based on the info in the lecture course, and while it’s too early to tell if it’s having the kinds of effects I’m looking for, I was hit with a number of ideas for ways SEO type info can help with future projects and business ventures. Is this course going to be the THING that gets your art out there in a way that actually means making the kinds of sales you’d need to survive AS an artist?

Hrm, we’ll see, of course. But here’s the link again, since it certainly can’t hurt to learn this info! As well, I noticed that when I finished the course, I got this thing that popped up that said I could get credits that could go toward paid courses (most of the courses on Udemy seem to be paid, but this one is free.) However, I did not do the thing that would have led to the free course credits, so, ahaha, maybe the next course I do will have that same popup and I can put the link here so people can sign up for other, similarly free courses through me. I’m actually enrolled in a couple other short courses right now, so we’ll see how that all goes!

 

Just a quick side note-

-I decided to take an introductory online course for SEO on udemy and I’m really enjoying learning again. It’s been eight and a half years since I was in a college class or had to really learn anything in earnest, outside of small, minor skills or trivia here and there.

But anyway! SEO is so far really interesting, because it’s kind of hitting that middle ground between “marketing for humans” and “learning how computers think,” which are both subjects I’m very interested in. Plus, it’s giving me a look at skills that I definitely will need and want to have for if/when I manage to start that business I’ve been thinking about starting. And even before that, I think it’s the kind of skillset that a lot of artists could definitely benefit from having both in regards to their personal brand and in gaining access to the types of valuable work that can be done remotely or as a single contracted gig.

I’m about 65% through the course itself (it’s 3.5 hours long, but I haven’t been able to sit through it all in one go due to various reasons) and I think that someone who has more experience with SEO would definitely be able to get through the whole thing in less than a day. But! For someone like me, who has zero prior knowledge or experience other than knowing what SEO is conceptually, having it in this form is really helpful- I’m able to pause it and rewind to take down more accurate notes, and giving myself time between the lectures is giving me a chance to review previous notes and try to look up answers to questions I had about some basics that seemed to be understood implicitly.

If you’re not like me and don’t have to take physical paper notes in order to hammer in the lesson though, this is the sort of thing you could do on your bed at any time of the day or night. It also looks like there are paid courses for the same kind of thing available, too- not sure if those come with an “official” certification or if, like the free course, there’s an “unofficial” certification you can get for them, or if there’s a real or major difference in terms of skill level/job attractiveness between the two. I’ll post a more full review along with a link to the course once I’m done!

Fun test for writers!

I tested this using a few thousand words from one of my side-projects, but I find it super interesting- especially, I must admit, because I’ve never actually read any Agatha Christie!? Now, of course, this means I HAVE to read something by her, haha. Any suggestions?

Sharo’s Creative Funding Chronicles Pt 6

Ugh! Alright, here for another update on this venture.

So 2 months ago, almost exactly, I decided to go for something that might help me get healthier as well as help me earn money, and after some debate on what would work the best I went with Sweatcoin.

There are… a number of issues with attempting to use this as a platform to earn money. The first and biggest issue is that there is simply no actual way to translate earnings into cash- theoretically, if you walk the maximum amount of steps every day for 18 months, you should be able to turn the accumulated coins in for 1000$ in Paypal Cash, which is a good chunk of money but not really very time-effective for an 18 month period. Being able to earn faster depends on 1. having a large number of friends willing to sign up and use the app so you can receive bonuses, 2. being willing to use some amount of your earnings per month to “upgrade” your account so you can earn more than the maximum number of coins per day, and 3. being physically able to walk 10000 steps or more per day.

I think on my best day I got up to 8000 steps at a theme park, but it has trouble/often can’t count steps that happen inside buildings, and any amount of physical disability (asthma, mobility/joint issues, etc) limits your ability to use this app productively. There’s also another significant drawback- it takes up a HUGE amount of space on my (admittedly, several years old) phone, and eats up data and battery life like candy.

Ultimately, I think- if you already walk a couple miles a day outside with your newer phone on data, then this app may be beneficial to you in the very long run. But as far as alternative fundraising for creative professionals goes, this is essentially just a very depressing stepcounter that means you can’t also play Pokemon Go.

I’m probably going to uninstall it when I have a minute.

Sharo’s Creative Funding Chronicles Pt. 5

Not a huge update! Mostly that after a couple weeks of total inactivity I decided to try to play Lucktastic one more time, because I was super close to getting enough points for a $15 Restaurants.com gift card. And I got the points, I clicked redeem- it asked me to log in again because apparently I had to log back in to prove I was a registered user… so, yeah, I deleted it.

Actually, because my friend is going to Las Vegas, NV for Electric Daisy Carnival (?) this week, and promised me to bring back ANY SOUVENIR I WANT if I prove that I downloaded Tinder and spoke to at least five different people, I used the newly freed-up space to download Tinder. Apparently it saved all my settings from that time two years ago when I reconnected with someone I dated in high school and was too awkward to tell him that I couldn’t meet him because I was in recovery for major surgery so my solution was to delete the app. So all my photos are 2+ years out of date!

It’s not gonna be enjoyable lmao but I’m gonna GET that cool Las Vegas keychain and postcard that I want assuming she doesn’t forget, which is forgivable as I expect her to be. . . . . busy.

KO Trivia is still my favorite right now. I’m still learning how to maximize my trivia knowledge but 2-5 dollars a week isn’t a terrible reward for doing something I’d want to do anyway.

Ah well! Here’s hoping May contains a few good surprises for me!