My Messy Back End, Fully Exposed

Hi Friend 👋

How’s it going?
This week I too time to really think about the direction of this newsletter. Getting closer every week to issue 100 and two years of continuously writing theses letters made me think about the bigger picture and the impact I hope these words have.

After unsubscribing from countless newsletters myself, I realize how easy it is to create another piece of digital clutter that fills up your inbox to collect virtual dust or go straight to to trash.

Nobody wants that.

What I want the Orbit Newsletter to become is a invaluable resource for solo creators who want to grow without loosing themselves. Sharing systems, strategies and stories that enable you to create more freedom and opportunities in your life.

To start this off let’s go back to basics.

💛 Valentin

New in Orbit:
 An Honest Conversation With The European Creator Guy (That’s me 😅)

How do you organize your files?

The first media organization structure I learned was on traditional film production, where every card was transferred to a drive as soon as it was full or the day was over. Following this simple structure:

DAY - CAMERA - CARD #

I never really questioned this structure as everyone followed it. As far as I know it originates from film and mirrors information written on the slate. The cool looking thing that makes CLAAAP to sync sound. I also shows important information for the post process.

Once I got more into editing in the corporate film making world I saw that system expand to facilitate the volume of work. Starting with the sequential numbering of projects.

YEAR
↵ 000 Project/Client
↵ Media - Camera - Card
↵ Premiere
↵ AFX
↵ Export

Can you tell I had to work with Adobe? Actually at that point it was the best option.

But now that I’m a content creator, working by myself and for myself does this structure still hold up?

As I’m on a never ending side quest to organize my digital files to a point where I always know where to find and put information I recently went on a bit of a reorganization spree. Resulting in the current system.

Starting with the overarching areas of building a creator business.

The numbers basically rank it in frequency of use. Obviously YouTube is top of that list. Since there is no day I don’t open that folder.

In there I split it into a few buckets

• Assets - Contain graphics and visuals I frequently use, like backgrounds.

• Podcast - All recorded convos. Keeping everything on my drive until a season is wrapped.

• Solo Episodes - Any of my talking head videos

• Playground - A dedicated space to just put random things that I’m not sure of

• Research & References - Videos from other creators or social to analyse

• X Archive - Past seasons or Videos that need to get backed up

• xx_copy - My default project template

• YT Downloads - Just a default folder where I download YT videos to.

The xx_copy folder contains everything to start a project.

• Audio

• Media

• Thumbnails

• Stills

• Export

Honestly, the Audio Folder is 98% empty. I keep all my music and SFX in a separate place. So this folder only contains files if I recorded sound separately for some reason.

The Transcript is the newest addition to this system and I’m still deciding whether it belongs in the Media or Export folder. Creating a transcript after every version allows me to load it into ChatGPT and start talking with it about packaging.

The system for it is still developing but it already made my process much faster and helped a friend of mine 3x the views on his latest video.

That is my uncensored back end. Now I’d love to know how you organize your files.

This post was actually sparked by a conversation inside the Orbit Community.
If you’re into building systems like this and want to swap notes - come say hi.

My favorite things this week

Now that I already confessed that Laura Kampf is my secret top guest I might as well share her latest video where she builds her first commission for the Patreon video studio.

What are you watching, reading, listing?

In case you missed it:

⬅️ Last week I research my audience with on reddit

➡️ Next week might be the third guest post …