How Writing has helped me- even though it's failed [Storytime Saturdays]
Benefits of content creation from the perspective of someone “failing” at it
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Recently, I’ve had a few readers reach out to me asking for feedback on their articles/ discussing a collaboration. A majority have been newer writers (or creators with fewer articles in their publications). This prompted me to write an article that might help some of you stay more consistent.
I’ve been writing for almost 2.5 years now. When I have some time, I make YouTube videos/Reels on IG and TikTok. All this time, I’ve been improvising my way through the content creation scene. I had no expertise in actually making videos or writing articles. I had some technical knowledge, basic communication skill, and a desire to document and share what I learned (Fun fact- my original goal with writing was to get into a Ph.D. program). So with dreams in my eyes and songs on my lips, I got started with content.
Now normally when content creators talk about the benefits of creating content they present the following benefits:
(Passive) Income: Monetization from affiliate marketing, ad revenue, and paid sponsorships amount to a pretty decent income if you’re successful. Add to that the fact that this income is largely passive (a video will keep making you money once it’s published), and you can see why many pursue content creation.
Fame: Reaching millions of people is definitely a huge perk. It’s gratifying to know that your words reach and help so many across the globe. Knowing that people of different areas and backgrounds follow your content (and the positive messages) is a huge incentive for a lot of people.
Branding: If your content does well, it gives you the credentials of an expert in that field. This can be great for success in the future and open a lot of doors.
Helping People: Another plus of being a content creator are the messages you receive. Knowing you help people across the world is a huge plus. Scroll down to the comments section of 3Blue1Brown, Professor Leonard and you’ll see what I mean. Great channels like Plain Bagel for finance were created in order to help people understand complex topics and not get swept in bubbles.
Now that I’ve created content for around a while, I can say this: I have failed to get any of these benefits (except for number 4, and slightly number 3). The monetization of my content is nowhere close to paying my bills (so far when we look from an ROI perspective, I have only lost money). I am also far from being famous. While I do have a fairly strong and diverse reader base, I’m not yet a globally ‘acknowledged’ expert (if you’d like to help me with that, make sure you share my stuff). By all traditional metrics, my writing has been a failure (a massive one given all the time I’ve spent on it).
In spite of this, I can say that my content creation, especially my writing has made a lasting positive impact on my life. In this article, I will share the benefits that bigger and more successful creators miss. Following are the benefits of content creation from the perspective of a growing creator like myself. These benefits don’t require a massive audience or a major following. Hopefully, reading about them can help you stay more consistent in your journey and stick it out when the ‘normal’ goals seem out of reach.
I won’t keep this article behind a paywall so that it can help y’all. If you’d like to support this cult’s expansion, make sure you buy me some chocolate milk/a pizza using the button below-
Exposure
A huge benefit of creating content has been the exposure I have received. As more people have found my work useful, I have started to be invited to various conferences and events in the AI Space. I’ve also been able to come across different tools, ideas, and people. This has many benefits. Firstly, I can network with various people and organizations doing very interesting things. And I have some value to provide to them while I’m talking to them. Secondly, this gives me a finger on the pulse of the industry. Multiple ML startups have asked me to test their tools and provide feedback on them. Having my ear to the ground like this has helped me in my content creation, data analysis work, and in integrating software ideas and concepts into my work.
The crazy thing about this is that the benefits of exposure started rolling in relatively quickly (just don’t expect big names immediately). Within my first few articles, people were reaching out to me with ideas and offers to collaborate and ideas. Pick a platform with great content discovery mechanics (and one that matches your style) and you will find people reaching out. I’ve had some very very senior leaders reach out to me after reading my work. These are people who would normally be out of access for a nobody like me. But they somehow found some content of mine, read through it, liked what I had to say, and bang- that’s a connection. Below is one such example, of a reader of mine who happens to be a senior tech leader. Dhananjay and I have never met, but he was willing to publicly endorse my content because he liked what I had to say. You don’t need millions in your audience to reach the one person who would be right for your goals.
Related to this point, there is another massive advantage to writing- that I gained even before I had a ‘large’ audience.
Learning
Hard as it may be to believe creating content has helped me become better at Machine Learning and software. Wanting to be consistent with creating content means I’m on the lookout to learn new ideas and concepts. I have to stay on my toes to read more papers, learn new concepts, and figure out connections. All of this keeps me sharp. I come across new ideas and learn new techniques, even after I publish the articles. Readers often reach out to me with feedback/insights about ideas related to what I covered. Take this example of a conversation I had with Paul, a follower of my work.
Paul read my article, “Learnings from SimCLR: A framework Contrastive Learning for Visual Representations” and shared his experience in Contrastive Learning and SimCLR. Thus I was able to learn so much from his experience. If I ever got into Cancer research (almost did coincidently) or any other imbalanced classification problem, I will have his insights as a great data point to consider.
Something Interesting to Lead With
My content creation is something I can often use to start conversations with people I’m interested in. My content was instrumental when I was negotiating with The Motley Fool, one of the leading stock-picking services for investors in the USA. Here is a snippet of the conversation.
My pitch of them was simple- my ability to write about technical topics in a way that was relevant to a larger audience would allow me to go beyond the standard financial analysis often found on blogs. If you’d like to know more about my offer from TMF and my learnings from that process, check out this article.
Documentation
Leading off the last point, breaking down the various ideas in tech and AI has been very useful to me when it comes to documenting what I do know. These articles are proof of my knowledge and ability to understand complex topics. It’s also very useful to me because now I can point to articles and videos when I want to go into more detail about topics. For example, when I tutor people for coding interviews, I often point them to my articles, this newsletter, and my YouTube videos on the topics. During one of my internships, I was talking to my manager about possible ways to frame a particular situation. And the situation reminded me of something I’d written about. So I shared it with him, and he took a look at the article.
I myself go back to my articles and videos to refer to some ideas or processes I had come across. If I think an idea has potential, I will reread my annotated papers going over what I thought of the experiment setup and how I believe it could be extended. Once again, you will gain this benefits even if you have no followers.
Better Communication, Thinking, and Articulation
This is a no-brainer. As you practice writing and speaking, your communication skills will improve. Recently, my video on Permutation Based Feature Importance became the top-ranking video recommended by Google Search for the topic. I was very proud of this. So I decided to rewatch it, out of nostalgia, pride, and happiness.
Rewatching it was interesting. I noticed some times when I stuttered or tripped over my words. I also noted how many opportunities where I missed chances to go over different applications, talk about how I used it during my work experience, and cool things the viewer might be interested in. All in all, I was not as fluent in the video as I am in my more recent videos (I also have no memes 😢😢😢).
Making videos has lead me to become better at speaking, both scripted and off the cuff. Writing and framing my ideas definitely come to me a lot easier now as opposed to when I first started on Medium.
I’ve also gotten more thoughtful when I approach things I read. When I go over papers for my articles, I often spend a lot of time thinking about the assumptions the authors make, the nature of their data, how applicable their approach would be to a large variety of problems, and I might improve upon their approach. This has carried into my daily life, and I find myself thinking more about such things when I come across new ideas.
Closing
I honestly never expected it to do as well it did. While I’m not the biggest creator, I am the most internet-famous person in my bedroom. The reception has been positive, and I will definitely continue to improve my content and add more variety as I grow. If you have any feedback let me know.
If you’re on the fence about creating any kind of content, I’d suggest trying it out and approaching it with some consistency. Even if you’re not traditionally successful, this can be very helpful to you (as it was to me).
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Devansh <3
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AI Newsletter-
I love your writing style, and also, to be brutally honest, I initially wondered if it was generated by ChatGPT. I think this will become more of an issue in the coming months. Keep up the great writing, and have you read "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday? I found it very helpful to keep working. 👍
Beautifully written. Your writing and the discipline and rigor you adopt has also inspired me to be more focused and regular in my writings. Keep it up.