This week I want to get you to take action. Open a blog and start writing. The first thing that will come to your mind is the “if I write, who will read it” question. Don’t get stuck on that. In the first year maybe only your cousins and your siblings will read it; maybe not even them — you may see 0 visitors in your stats every single day.
Here’s the real point. If you walk into a room and can say “I already have posts written on these topics, you can go and read them”, then your blog has fulfilled its purpose. Because the fact that you think this way and tell people about your posts is the sign that what you wrote is genuinely useful.
Another point: I don’t think we should write just so people will read it, because;
“Writing Helps You Think Better”
Writing doesn’t just help you understand what’s going on and clarify your thoughts — it also lets you think of new ideas and find solutions to your problems. While thinking, you may miss certain points; but once you start writing, all the dots are laid out in front of you, so you can connect them and grasp the subject from a wider angle. And that gives birth to new ideas and new thoughts.
At some point, blogging alone won’t be enough either. You should also keep a journal — to know yourself better and, really, to not forget. You might think journaling is hard, who’s going to bother? Of course, the first priority is that you journal every day. In later years this will be a wonderful resource for you. As you see how you reacted to what you lived through in the past, your self-awareness will grow even more. Most older people today don’t realize they once lived their youth just like today’s young people do — their brains only steer them toward remembering the parts that fit their current way of thinking. That’s why I recommend keeping a journal.
If you say journaling every day is too hard, I keep two kinds of journals. I journal during certain special months of the year — not 365 days, but covering just one month, for example. And those journals turn out to be really special. For instance, I wrote every single day during my military service, and I’m so glad I did. If God grants me grandchildren one day, I intend to leave them the journals I wrote in those special times. Or it could be keeping a journal through a month of Ramadan, for example.
My other method: every 2-3 months I write 5-6 pages summarizing those months as “what stayed with me”. If you can’t write daily, 2-3 months is a good writing cadence. You’ll say “I forget so much within 2-3 months.” Yes, you will. But once 2-3 years pass, you won’t even be able to recall those little sparks. So even if it’s every 2-3 months, sit down now and then and write what has been happening in your life.
What writing will win you is this: you’ll notice and weed out your own thinking errors yourself, instead of someone else doing it. It’s a good method for questioning yourself.
“But What I Write Won’t Be Original”
If you look through the posts I’ve written on burakbayram.com, you can find most of them elsewhere on the internet. There are two variables here: first, your way of telling it may be more readable; second, the fact that a post exists somewhere else does not make yours worthless. Think of math classes — does every math teacher invent a new formula, or do they teach what already exists? And does teaching what exists make the knowledge they give worthless?
Let me illustrate exactly what I mean. What if I told you that the post you’re reading right now was inspired by Alexey Guzey’s “Why You Should Start a Blog Right Now“? It’s not a one-to-one copy, of course, but it gave me a path to follow, and by adding my own stories I produced a new piece. You too can just say bismillah, open a free blog on wordpress.com right away and start writing. In fact, if you sit down and write a blog post after reading this, please send it to me. I’d love to read your first post and comment on it. My mail address: burakbayram@outlook.com
Let me also give you a title for your first blog post. You don’t have to write about this, but you can treat it like homework and get started: “There’s a fire in the building. Your sibling and 17 other people are inside. But you can only save either your sibling or the other 17 people. Which side would you choose?”
We have a small change this week. I’m going to try writing the newsletter using zero images — only links inside the text. Through these links you can reach the topics you want.
📢 For Content Creators;
- Youtube Shorts is now watched more than TikTok. While TikTok gets 1 billion monthly views, Youtube has reached 1.5 billion monthly views.
- With TikTok Creative Center you can find out which song, hashtag or trend is trending in your country or in other countries.
- Like and view counts will no longer be shown on Instagram Reels.
- When you share a story with a question box on Instagram, you’ll be able to receive photo replies.
- Instagram is working on a tab where you can see the people you have paid subscriptions to.
- Instagram is moving toward a TikTok-like full-screen layout. All the content you see is expected to become full screen.
🎁 Tip of the Week
If you earn ad revenue through Youtube or Instagram, I have good news for you. In Turkey, you can now have this income taxed without owning a company (for the portion up to 880,000 TL per year).
What you need to do: either go to the tax office or log into the interactive e-tax office with e-devlet;
Start transaction > Tax transactions > select the Social Content Creation and Mobile Device App Development Exemption Certificate Request Petition (Income Tax Law, repeated art. 20/B) and fill in the required fields.
After this step,
you need to wait for your petition to be approved under Transaction status and results > My petitions.
Once your petition is approved, my advice is to take it to a state bank and open an account. Other banks work too, but a state bank makes the most sense because other banks’ branches may not even know about the process.
When opening the bank account, don’t forget to say “I’m opening an account for the social media exemption” — the transaction is processed accordingly.
After your account is opened, go into the Interactive Tax Office again;
Start transaction > Tax transactions > Social Content Creation and Mobile Device App Development Exemption Certificate Bank Details Notification Petition (Income Tax Law, repeated art. 20/B), and enter the new bank details — your IBAN — and your petition. After your tax office completes the registration;
the state will automatically withhold 15% of every payment deposited into this account, and beyond this deduction you won’t need to pay withholding, income tax or anything else. But keep in mind: for situations that require taxation such as sponsorships, you still need to own a company.
🚀 What Did We Produce?
This week we hosted Rana Yılmaz on our Kreatif Durak account. Rana is an entrepreneur with a company focused on social media, and with the knowledge she has gathered she prepares mini informational videos on social media.
On the Yerini Alanlar side, we’ll be trying different content types this week. So we’ve wrapped up our 2nd season. We hope Season 3 starts in a month. For now we’ll follow an account style that introduces the Yerini Alanlar team members more closely, warms people up to the team and aims to grow followers. Like Salih’s vertical video “Shooting the First TikTok Video in History“.
♥️ A Video, A Channel, A Whatever
I recommend checking out the Mendebur Lemur channel we’ve been following for a long time. The Youtuber, whose real name is Hakan, reviews unusual products and has built a channel around making. I’d say it’s currently the most watched Youtube channel in Turkey for maker-style content.
If watching someone else unbox packages interests you, this video is for you. I recommend “Bulk Package Opening“, one of Mendebur Lemur’s formats. Taking it as a format, you can see how big numbers automatically make people watch, and how a simple unboxing is presented to people as if it were an entertainment video.
Anchor is an intermediary platform that lets you upload your podcast free of charge and publish it on platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcast and Google Podcast — a sub-brand owned by Spotify. While most people still use paid sites to publish their podcasts, the number of people who have discovered Anchor still seems insufficient. If you want to start a podcast too, you can use Anchor free and unlimited.
✍️ Quote of the Week
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
🎈 One Last Thing…
This week, again, we came to you with new experiments. Next week I’ll explain the effects of publishing the newsletter at different hours and on different days. We’ll look at the mail open and click rates together.
I think you shouldn’t miss this data if you work in this field or intend to. Because instead of experimenting with the existing data yourself, quickly spotting someone who has already experimented and acting accordingly will automatically carry you one step ahead.
To find me on social media, you can check my “Links” page.
Take good care of yourself, goodbye, and may Allah protect you!
