HEAVY METAL EMAIL

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YOU SHOULD HAVE YOUR OWN TV SHOW

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YOU SHOULD HAVE YOUR OWN TV SHOW

Carve out your space in your own unique way

Seth Werkheiser
Jan 28
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YOU SHOULD HAVE YOUR OWN TV SHOW

heavymetalemail.substack.com
Photo by Kaique Rocha

Fact: people watch TV shows about storage lockers.

It just makes this post from Lauren Nicholas hit home:

Treat your content like episodes of a TV show. What makes people tune in week after week? What compels people to binge just one more episode? What hypes folks’ excitement after a hiatus?

There’s a TikTok show called Buying Time, where people come in and buy expensive watches. It’s bonkers.

That’s a lot of money.

It was made by Adam Faze and the Mad Realities team:

Twitter avatar for @adamfaze
mr. fazeworld @adamfaze
in just 4 weeks since launching a slate of original shows on TikTok, we’ve gotten 30M views, 4M likes, & over 350K followers we did this - on accounts that all had 0 followers - w/o spending $1 on promotion - on a shoestring budget - w a 5 person team whose avg age is 21
6:26 AM ∙ Nov 26, 2022
879Likes37Retweets

Now, is this realistic for an independent creative? A writer, a band, a photographer?

Heck no, but the point isn’t “making a show.”

You already are the show.

Think about it: if a TV crew (or a writer from Rolling Stone) followed you around, what would they capture?

I promise, your everyday process is interesting, especially your fans.

People watch other people cooking. Cooking shows are a thing.

You are more interesting than $2 burritos, and look at how Taco Bell sells them:

So tell people about the interesting things you’re doing, like the Rick Rubin quote I included in my newsletter from this week:

Everything was trying to make something cool to play for our friends that they would like. That was all it ever was.

Are you bugging your friends about things you think are important, or are you showing them the cool stuff you’re making?

Make cool stuff, show your friends.

WEEKEND TASKS

Here’s four things you can do before Monday:

  1. Go look at some media sites outside of the music world and see what sort of features they’re doing. Check out skate / BMX / art / poetry websites / socials / magazines and see how they promote their work.

  2. Buy a domain name at Hover this weekend (that’s a referral link).

  3. Clean up your “link in bio” links, please. Dear lord, no one is skimming through 20+ buttons.

  4. Haven’t updated one of your social media sites in awhile? Write a new post, and tell people to visit your website.

LINK IN BIO UPDATE

Instead of promoting my Goodnight, Metal Friend mixes a few times on social media this week, I just wrote a better newsletter. Less time on socials mean I’m making these mixes every week - more time making cool stuff, less time shouting into the void about it.

Because, yikes:

I’m just using “link in bio” on socials to drive people here, to HEAVY METAL EMAIL. Even with this little traffic, I still managed around 35 new subscribers in January from direct traffic, without the social media eyeballs.

LISTEN UP

Good time stoner-ish desert rock from LA.

Use my ideas! Raise your rates! But please upgrade to a paid subscription so I can keep offering HEAVY METAL EMAIL to the masses.

Not the “subscribing” type? I also accept cups of coffee via Ko-Fi, Venmo (@Seth-Werkheiser), Cash App ($ethwerkheiser), or PayPal.

P.S. Planning a week in NYC (Feb 20th or so), let’s get some coffee.

-SETH WERKHEISER

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