Tag: fun activity

Posted in brain games, My Etsy journedy, Thoughts

Thoughts on Etsy and a Symbol Math Addition Quiz

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

My experiment with creating a brain game channel continues. My hope is that I will not only build an audience that will eventually allow me to qualify for You Tube monetization but will also lead to increase sales of my brain games in my Etsy shop and activity books on Amazon.

The first challenge will be to gain an audience. I am doing my best to be consistent in posting in spite of my chronic health issues. And thankfully I have enjoyed a little blimp of modest growth. Over the course of 2 weeks, I went from 15 subscribers to over 50. Those few days were really encouraging, but for the past few days that growth has slowed down and stalled out. Thankfully I am still enjoying a small bump in views, but the amount is probably 1/4 of what it was a week ago which is very disheartening.

Still, I am trying to keep up hope. I have taken a look at some of the game channels out there and I know that there is an audience for brain games. I mean some videos are only 11 months old and have over 664,000 views. There are even some videos that are less than a year old with over a million views. Then of course there some channels like mine where most long form videos are lucky to reach 50 views and a breakaway short gets four or five hundred views.

But at least since some channels in my niche are getting hundreds, thousands, and even millions of views there is some hope that over time my channel might grow and at least get a few thousand views here and there, even if it never reaches the dream of being one of the fortunate ones to get millions of views.

Unfortunately, outside of the struggle to grow made far worse by the interruptions caused by chronic health issues like anemia, there is one thing that I did not consider. And that is how will I know if my efforts are paying off?

Thanks to You Tube metrics I can see if my videos are getting likes and views. I can see if my channel is growing and getting new subscribers. Thankfully at least for now I have that bit of information. But what I did not consider is how will I be able to tell if after watching one of my videos, someone decides to buy a book or activity pack. With KDP you can tell which keyword brough in a sale using their paid add. But outside of using their add platform you have no way of knowing what led to a sale. They do not share any of that data with you so you have no way of knowing if that sudden bump in sales was due to the video you put on you tube, the post you created on Word Press, or just mere coincidence.

And unfortunately, it is not so easy to tell in Etsy what brought you a sale either. Over the past couple of years since I started on Etsy they have cut down the amount of information that they share with you. You can go to their metrics and see if someone came over from Facebook or Pinterest. If you want to know if someone came from a link on your Word Press or You Tube channel you can go to a spot and see if the web address appears. If you find the web address you can see how many views you got from there, but if they tell you any more than that, they have done a good job hiding that information.

Which I think is a big mistake. While I know that they want to encourage you to stay on their platform and not move over to your own platform the moment you make a few sales. But still, it is a bit short sided to hide all the information on what key words are working, which links from sites like You Tube and Pinterest are bringing in sales, because it prevents shops from knowing what is working and what is not working. They might wrongly think that the sudden boost in sales was due to the post they made on Pinterest and put all their effort into increasing their Pinterest presence, when instead it might be that a video talking about some of their products that are perfect for Mother’s Day got some traction and the boost came from that. Sadly, without easy to access stats, it makes it really hard to know if what you are doing is working, or it is just as useful as moving a pile of rocks from spot A to spot B, and back again.

Posted in brain games, spot the difference

Spot the Difference Royal Colors Edition: Exercise Your Brain

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

I thought I would give a little update on my new brain game channel. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I found an inexpensive tutorial on creating a You Tube game channel, and I thought that it might be a fun and easy way to advertise my activity book as well as my Etsy shop.

Instead of only seeing a plain add with some pictures taken from a book or activity pack, viewers could have the fun of playing a brain game like this spot the difference puzzle in real time. And I would highlight my books and etsy shop by mentioning in the opening that these fun quizzes were made by De Graw Publishing, and in the closing of most videos I let them know that they can find more games and puzzles in my Etsy shop.

I was able to set up an automatic insert that allows me to add the link to my Etsy shop in all of my video descriptions. This is great because if I am having a bad day, which has been the rule rather than the exception lately, I can generate an AI video description, copy and paste it into the box, and at minimum have a link to my Etsy shop. If the video happens to be related to a topic for which I have already published a coloring or activity book or created an activity pack on, and I have a bit of energy to spare, I can just copy and paste the title and a link.

It is too early to tell if it will be successful. But hey, you never know if someone will enjoy a video so much that they decide to click on one the links and find something that they like. Even a couple of sales a year would be a small victory.

With 16 subscribers my channel could hardly be called a success. It certainly is not the great start imagined when hearing talk about how some of these game channels have thousands and even hundreds of thousands subscribers. Looking at channels where videos have thousands of views and twenty thousand, fifty thousand, even a hundred thousand subs, and comparing it to my little start is a rather discouraging.

I try not to, as I know it is highly unlikely that my channel will ever take off, but it is hard not imagine what it would be like if my channel took off. It is hard, after being shown channel after channel with millions of views making You Tube Ad money, not to dream of how different my life would be if I managed to make even the first layer of monetization for You Tube which requires 3000 hours of watch time and 500 subscribers where you can link a shop to your channel. Never mind full monetization where you can get paid commercial views, potentially have a link to your shop or book, etc. At that point the chances of making a sale in my shop or someone buying my activity books would increase tremendously.

While I worry about the risk of falling in the center of the donut hole, where my income is too low to cover medical cost and allow me to be a help to my family, the dream is if I could just bounce out of that hole to the other side where I could earn enough to help us afford our own home, pay my medical bills, and have enough for a few wants and needs like a small garden and some chickens, that would be so great.

Read more: Spot the Difference Royal Colors Edition: Exercise Your Brain

I try hard not to let myself even imagine that, because I have so many days like today, when I have to prop myself up a bit with some pillows and pull the laptop desk under the sofa because I do not have the strength to sit up. And I know that my poor health is putting a big dent in the chances of my ever reaching my dream. In a thousand ways it impacts the likelihood of it ever becoming a reality as it impacts consistency, quality, and so much more.

Still, even though I know my hopes are most likely futile, I cannot put in words the joy and bit of hopefully healthy pride that fills my heart whenever I manage to upload a book, activity pack, or video. That little victory, pale as it might be in comparison to the grand accomplishments of someone fortunate enough to be selling $2000 plus worth of books, making $19000 a month in profit from one of their Etsy shops, or getting thousands of views a month from their video, is for me a bit like winning Olympic gold.

Because I know that had to overcome the looming hurdles of intense pain where at times, I could not find a comfortable spot or could barely tolerate to look at my screen, or energy so low that it seemed like it took every ounce of strength just to breathe. That book, pack, or video might represent the journey of a week, month, or even a year where like the turtle vs the hare I plodded along. Taking a few good steps to do one task, pausing for a time as I battled the great dragon of pain, recovered, licked my wounds, and completed the next task before monster fatigue blew its blinding haze upon me.

While it is heart breaking to me that my little channel, my books, my Etsy shop might not rise up in a blaze of glory, allowing me to fulfil my desire to take care of my mother and sister, there is a satisfaction in knowing that I tried. There is a something satisfying in knowing that when sickness knocked down my door, I did not lay down and give up and give in to pain. But with every ounce of strength that I had I fought to have some sort of life.

While it is true that my Etsy shop, my activity books, and You Tube channel are not a success by the world’s standard, in their own small way they are successful. Because each video, each book, each activity pack, each t-shirt or mug, or each pack that I manage to list represents a small victory in my determined war against the life altering battle with the misery that is fibromyalgia, migraines, anemia, and as yet unknown autoimmune disease.

Posted in brain games, Find the Difference, Fun Puzzles, life, spot the odd, Thoughts

Spot The Odd Bird Challenge Your Brain🦢🐔🐦 Find the Difference Quiz: Can You Find Them?

Posted on by katherinebrianneparilli

It has been well over a year since I have actively posted something to this blog, because of the uncertainty created by having to sell our home thanks to the sky rocketing cost of living. I figured that it would be a while before I would have a chance to post again, so I set up about six months of articles that would automatically post. Hoping that by that time we would have found a stable place to live. Was I ever wrong.

In less than a year we moved 7 different times, going from one AirBNB to another. Until thankfully, my Uncle recognized that we were in danger of ending up on the street and invited us into his home. And true to the saying, no act of kindness goes unpunished, one health disaster after another has resulted in my mother and I being unable to drive for the last 8 months. Instead of enjoying leisurely days, he has had to ferry us from one doctor appointment to another, take us to pick up meds, and even drive us to the grocery store.

It is sad but true that stress is the word of the day and has been for the past few years. And it certainly has not been reduced by looking at the price of housing. Ouch! It is hard to believe that a moldy, hole ridden, major fixer upper, now cost as much as a two story, 5-6 bedroom, 4 bath home, with pool did only a few months after we moved into the house we had to sell in 2008, never mind what it would have been able to get when I was a kid.

Needless to say, I needed something to get my mind off of the intense stress of wondering if we would ever be able to have our own home again, and what will happen next if my health keeps slipping. 24 iron infusions in a year triggering major fibromyalgia flare ups hardly establishes confidences in one’s future. We are definitely giving our trust muscles a major workout as we do our best to cast our burdens on Jesus.

I knew that I needed some type of down time as we try to regroup and figure out what is going on and what we should do next. Yet I also wanted a way to advertise my books on Amazon and activity packs on Etsy. Thankfully the Lord opened a door to an inexpensive course about creating quiz videos for You Tube. I was already making Bible games, but it had never occurred to me to try and make quiz videos using some of the games in my activity packs.

I do not know if my little quiz channel will take off. Nothing I do seems to work. I certainly give it my hundred percent, but sometimes I think that my hundred percent is equal to -1000. It really is frustrating, but as long as I have reason to believe this is the path I am supposed to be walking in right now, by the grace of God I will plug along like a determined turtle trusting that one day He will help me to win the race.

It might never take off and grant me the hundreds of sales that I need or even reach the mark for getting monetized (although I wish it would and that is my goal), but at least it has been fun to make. And maybe if I am lucky, it will at least bring me an extra sell or two. I hope that you enjoy this video. It was the very first one that I released for my new quiz channel.