So. I'm seeing some conversations about writers creating Content and also Patreon and how hard that is.

As a person who has been in that game with my own frustrations, I have some thoughts.

Take from them what you will.

First of all, there are two separate problems: GROWING an audience (or finding one to begin with), and MONETIZING that audience.

That latter isn't a dirty word! Content creators bust their asses; it's ok to want to get paid.

These are, fundamentally, marketing problems.

Marketing problems live in two worlds: STRATEGIC problems and TACTICAL problems.

Part of the feeling of screaming into the void sometimes comes from grabbing the wrong tool in the toolkit.

On a strategic level, what medium of content are you creating and what's it ABOUT?

Blogs used to be THE SHIT. Then the rss feed got discontinued and well, starting new Blogs kinda went to shit. You can, but it's MUCH harder.

Strategic considerations also are things like "how hard is this thing to make?"

Part of why I dialed back my videos is because I was putting in at a minimum, four hours a video. More likely 6 to 10.

Strategically I wanted actual cinematography in my videos, not just a talking head. And that's HARD.

Tactically my process wasn't efficient enough for the rewards.

Ok so right. Before I digress too far to my own Youtube considerations let's bring it back to center on those two problems: GROWING (or finding) and audience and MONETIZING that audience.

Oftentimes the portrayed solution to finding an audience is just "MAKE MORE." WRITE MORE. BLOG EVERY SINGLE DAY. MAKE 5 TIKTOKS A DAY. GO GO GO.

That's not always the best solution, something I actually got pointed to by @_ThePilot_

If you're getting no traction you need to evaluate both levels.

One incredibly crucial tool worth knowing is SEO techniques. It's literally how people find you on the internet. I learned some of this from @robertoblake

(Brb bb)

Tactically, is the stuff your doing optimized for SEO? It makes a HUGE difference.

I had one video about writing conventions that got traffic but performed badly. Why? Because people searching "writing conventions" are folks learning to write English. Whoops.

I had GREAT videos that got zero traffic aside from my Twitter links.

Conversely I did keyword research on a video and it STILL gets a steady trickle of traffic every week, on an otherwise dormant channel.

Strategic considerations: your topics.

This is where writing Youtube videos might be a mistake for marketing. Because writers are an audience with a relatively low ceiling.

So growing an audience is HARD. Looking at what kinda content you're making. Look at the medium. There's pros and cons to EVERYTHING.

"BUT MIKE. I WANNA WRITE ABOUT THE STUFF I WANNA WRITE ABOUT, NOT BE DICTATED BY SOME ALGORITHM."

Look you do you, but know that medium matters. The person who desperately wants to sell corner pamphlets? They're going to struggle.

That's how some people approach their Content. If you DECIDE you want to do approach X, that's fine! But if all the macro-strategic considerations say strategy X is really really hard...

Look I dunno what to tell you.

I'm not saying you should give up! But if you're not iterating your approach welllll.... things probably WON'T change. Not easily.

Part II is going to be a separate thread because this is long enough already.