What Does It Take to be a SWU Content Creator
What does it take to become a SWU Content Creator? What’s involved? How hard is it to do and maintain?
“To be a successful content creator you have to love the work you’re doing.”
-Mike Gemme aka BobbySapphire KTOD
Intro
Both myself and the others at Porg Depot do not claim to be the best content creators or masters of content creation. We are just trying to give back to the Star Wars Unlimited community in our own way. The below are some things that we’ve learned in getting our site up and running over the past few months.
Ideation
Have an idea and start running with it.
The initial idea that sparked my getting into SWU content was when somebody called me a Boomer Gamer. I hadn’t thought I was that old, but I guess having played collectible card games for over 30 years puts me into some category like that. That generated the first small written piece “What is a Boomer?” and the start of idea generation revolving around complaining in a somewhat satirical way about the modern state of card games and telling people to Get Off My Lawn. (Those original articles can be found here.)
Eventually Porg Depot was born out of necessity when the original content host, SWU Harvest, decided to shut down.
You also don’t just need an initial idea but consistent new things to write or talk about. The game itself helps out in that there are always new cards being released and new events to recap.
Time and Cadence
Working on anything takes time. Be prepared to spend time not only on the actual content creation itself but also on the pre-work and post-work that goes into it.
Doesn’t matter if you are writing an article or producing a video. Things need to be thought out ahead of time to make them coherent and edited to keep a good flow to them. Also just posting a link to something on Facebook or Reddit isn’t always enough as you should probably be checking back in on those posts and replying to comments and questions.
It’s also important to think about how often you are going to create and post content. It is much easier to do something one time per week than every day. If you do decide to go on a more frequent cycle then probably a good idea to have recurring themes. We’ve used Mondays and Fridays for example to take a look at the pricing markets for showcase and legendary cards.
“So many content creators make a couple of videos and never post again, so creating content that excites and drives you will help everything else fall into place. This will also help you stay consistent without feeling a burnout. It’s better to put out good content weekly for six months than trying to overextend or failing to get motivated.”
-Mike Gemme aka BobbySapphire KTOD
Niche or Not
Is there an opportunity to carve out a unique space?
It’s important to figure out the space in which your content will sit. Will you be trying to compete with other YouTube creators that are talking about highly competitive decks and already have a following? Or do you have a different spin on it which could make the content unique?
A non-SWU example of this is the podcast “Girls Who Don’t D&D”. There are certainly other Dungeons and Dragons podcasts out there, but there probably aren’t many (or any) that took a group of women that had never played before and had them recorded live while learning the game and getting really into it.
The specific space where Porg Depot exists has shifted slightly and certainly expanded. We really enjoy the satire space especially with silly tier lists. We’ve also worked on creating content that may not get addressed elsewhere such as our Math and Probability article which was well received and the associated Hypergeometric Calculator tool for odds calculation in drawing specific cards, or our new Porg Value Calculator tool for comparing units with its kick off article. Plus keeping everything in written format separates us a bit from all the video content.
Agility
Things move very fast and you have to be able to shift quickly. You could have your next few articles or videos planned or even ready to publish for viewing and suddenly there is a shakeup in the meta. On any given day during spoiler season some crazy new card could get released and it becomes important to jump on the shiny new thing right away.
If something happens and you don’t talk or write about it until weeks later, it’s no longer relevant. Nobody is watching people play a Spark of the Rebellion meta matchup at this point when there are multiple other sets released.
Help
Having friends that are willing to contribute is extremely advantageous. Whether you have people to bounce ideas off of, or enlist them to help edit content or even help in the creation, it is better to not be in a bubble by yourself. It makes it more fun in the long run.
Thick Skin
The internet is full of trolls. Regardless of what kind of content gets put out there, somebody somewhere is going to disagree with it and call it dumb, uninformed, etc.
“You either have to be strong enough to not read the comments at all or be strong enough to pull up a 300 comment Reddit thread about how terrible you are, how stupid you are, how you’re scamming people, and how despite you explaining your ethos for months and years in the content creation space people still put words in your mouth and try to rob you of your ethical perspective.”
-Mike Gemme aka BobbySapphire KTOD
You have to take things in stride. If somebody is taking the time to read or watch your content and then react negatively to it, to an extent you have done your job. Getting a reaction out of the content absorber either good or bad is often the goal. Especially with an opinion not everyone will agree.
I’ve had people message me telling me how the initiative token tier list is “wrong”. Been told to “Knock it off with the Finance Bro stuff” when tracking prices. Even the good comments will sometimes poke at some aspect of the content that they don’t like.
Engaging is good. Just don’t go to the end of the Earth to defend something when often people just want to argue with you. It’s important to just shrug off anything negative for the most part.
Temper Expectations
By all means try to monetize your work but generally you aren’t going to get rich being a content creator.
Porg Depot is using Google Ads just simply at the bottom of each post and a Buy Me a Coffee widget. When viewed on a non-mobile browser you also see this stuff on the right side menu as well. The idea is to recoup some of the server hosting costs and maybe eventually pay for a couple packs, but all without being intrusive to the reader. We are still wildly far from this goal.
Are there creators out there making a ton of bunch of money via YouTube’s built in monetization and Patreon subscriptions? Absolutely. Just don’t figure you will hit it big. You have to want to create for reasons other than trying to make money and often the creation itself will actually cost you money either for hosting, or equipment, and certainly on the opportunity cost of time spent.
Conclusion
We noted right at the very beginning of this piece a quote from Mike Gemme from KTOD saying “…you have to love the work you’re doing.”
Content creation is fun for us at Porg Depot and certainly other creators out there as well. If something is not fun, then why are you doing it? Just be aware that to be a creator often takes a ton of time and energy to get up and running and then to keep it going.
Of course this is mostly just our point of view. Feel free to disagree with any of this, we’re going to keep creating regardless.
