Yep, still on holidays from the blog. Summertime is absolutely the worst time to have a hacking cough and a chest cold, and I have been suffering from an especially nasty one this past week. But, other than that, I am having rather a nice break, and I’m in no real hurry to come back. I think I’ll take the rest of June off, and get back to blogging in early July. Have a happy Fathers Day and enjoy your summer!
Have you joined the RyanSchultz.com Discord yet? More details here.
*sigh* Of course, the very next day after I announce I am taking holidays from this blog, Akeruka goes and announces an anniversary group gift. And this one is definitely worth coming back to blog about!
You might remember that I told you that it is worth joining the Akeruka group called [AK] Heads News & Support for L$150 and staying a member, because every six months or so, Akeruka offers both male and female Bento mesh heads as group gifts. Well, it’s that time again! From now until June 20th, you can pick up the Cleo female Bento mesh head for only L$1. Here’s what the ad looks like in the store (here’s the SLURL):
This is a fully-featured, completely adjustable Bento head with included teeth and (colour-changeable, human and alien) eyes, and a HUD with eight different skin tones, and a variety of eyebrow and hairbase colours to choose from. The HUD includes eyeliners, eyeshadows, blush, freckles, and lipsticks. And, even better, the package includes body skin appliers to match the 8 head skin tones, for Maitreya, Belleza, and Slink mesh bodies, plus Omega skin appliers for any Omega-compatible mesh body! Here, I have used the Omega skin applier on the recent Juliet mesh body group gift from Altamura, with all the makeup options turned off so you can see the features more clearly:
Looking good! This avatar is wearing:
Mesh head: Cleo Bento mesh head by Akeruka (L$1 group gift; group costs L$150 to join)
Mesh body: Juliet mesh body by Altamura (a former Valentine’s Day group gift; Omega-compatible; more details here)
Omega skin applier: (included as part of a package of body skin appliers that comes with the Cleo mesh head; you can pick up the Omega applier kit for Altamura mesh bodies for only L$99 at the Omega Solutions store at this exact SLURL)
Clothing: Eleni T-shirt and Thalia jeans (part of the Baby Monkey capsule wardrobe, available free from the Free*Style freebie store (more details here)
Shoes: black flats (part of a free sample pack of Slink-compatible shoes from Garbaggio, available on the SL Marketplace; Altamura mesh bodies have Slink-compatible feet)
Hair: Beyoncé hair by enVOGUE (a L$1 gift from a previous year’s Hair Fair)
If past history is anything to go by, you can expect an announcement of a male Bento mesh head group gift after June 20th. So stay tuned!
O.K., back to my holiday from the blog!
One thing that I have learned in running this blog (and starting the Metaverse Newscast show with Andrew William) is that getting eyeballs in front of your content is hard. And making some money from that work is even harder!
Now, I’m not discouraged by the fact that I am only one blog out of millions, and only one YouTube channel out of millions. I feel that I am well positioned, and I already have a nice little niche carved out for myself (social VR and virtual worlds). I am working in an area which will only gather more attention (and more eyeballs) as time goes on and consumer VR continues to roll out over the next few years. And organic growth, while slow, is best. It’s better than marketing schemes which bring in lukewarm or disinterested users, and have unintended consequences.
But I am somewhat discouraged by how uninventive I have been in, for example, offering more attractive, meaningful perks to my Patreon subscribers that will keep them engaged and supportive. I’ve been racking my brains and not coming up with much, and that really bothers me. I want to do better, and I want to give value for money! So I am going to need to do some more homework here, and learn from others.
Getting eyeballs in front of what I write here on the blog is also a struggle sometimes. Not the eyeballs of regular visitors; it’s attracting the eyeballs of newcomers who never knew that my blog existed before, and it’s doing the work to reach new audiences. Right now, I get between 300 and 5,000 blog viewers per day, which is wonderful, and I am grateful for the attention, but I want to take it to the next level if I can. Again, organic growth via word-of-mouth is probably best.
Maybe part of that is deciding what content to focus on, what to include and what to exclude. For example, should I be focusing less on worlds that are, so far, less popular (Sansar and High Fidelity), and more on worlds with higher levels of concurrent users (VRChat and Rec Room)? My Second Life blogposts have proven to be extremely popular; should I continue down that road and expand my coverage beyond news about steals, deals, and freebies in SL? So many questions to answer.
And putting together a regular YouTube show is a lot of work, most of which rests on my talented and hard-working producer, Andrew William, without whom I would be lost. I get what I think is the easier job: standing in front of the camera, coming up with and asking questions, and chatting with people. (At least, I think it’s easy. It comes naturally to me.)
I think it’s important to take some time, every now and then, to stop and figure out how you got to here, and where you plan to go from here. And I find myself feeling a little burned out by social VR and virtual worlds at the moment (which is hardly surprising, considering how many worlds I’ve covered and how many blogposts I’ve churned out in almost two years!). Again, perhaps I’ve spread myself a little too thin.
So I am taking a week (or two or three) of holidays from the blog. (Andrew and I are still working on upcoming shows for the Metaverse Newscast, and I expect that we will still release one episode per month, as before). I just feel the need to get outside now that it is summer in Canada, relax, and stop worrying about eyeballs for a bit.
It’s just a break; it’s not permanent! I promise, I’ll be back soon.
The Legendaire V.I.P. group is once again free to join for a limited period of time, and when you join their group, you can scoop up 36 group gifts at their redesigned store location (here’s the SLURL to take you there):
Here’s the Like I’m Gonna Lose you gown, paired with the Boho earrings and Reese shoes, all free group gifts:
The shoes come in ten different colours, and the gown comes in four different patterns.
And this is the Georgia dress paired with the Jadore boots:
Once again, the boots come in 10 different colours and the dress comes in 4 different textures.
This avatar is also wearing: