How to Go Pro as a Creator, Succeeding at the Great Online Game, Creator Tokens are the Future, and more from the Creator Economy
John Gannon from GoingVC shares how he made $1mm in revenue as a creator
“One thing I didn’t realize until many years into my journey is how important it is to “go pro” before you think you’re ready. “
“But what I did do — like a pro would — was hire someone to help me out part-time with posting jobs to the blog.”
“There is one step to going pro that I neglected, and it hurt me: I was way late to the party in terms of spending money on ads to grow my email list. Like, eight years too late. I’m certain that delay cost me tens of thousands of subscribers.”
Big Idea: For most creators, publishing content is a part-time hobby that they will soon lose interest in. If your goal is to become a professsional creator, what would you do differently?
Would you invest more in design, paid advertising, hiring assistants and consultants? Successful creators are startups. Grow your business like a startup.
Succeeding at the great online game
Paul Millered shares the 5 principles he is focusing on to build his creator career.
Big Idea: Succeeding online requires constant experimentation, learning, and building connections. Millered offers a thoughtful article on how he is approaching the “great online game.”
Harder Than It Looks, Not As Fun as It Seems
“Instagram is full of beach vacation photos, not flight delay photos. Resumes highlight career wins but are silent on doubt and worry. Investing gurus are easy to elevate to mythical status because you don’t know them well enough to witness times when their decision-making process was ordinary, if not awful.”
Big Idea: This is a great reminder that even the apparent experts struggle and have their own insecurities.
“When you are keenly aware of your own struggles but blind to others’, it’s easy to assume you’re missing some skill or secret that others have. The more we describe successful people as having guru-like powers, the more everyone else looks at them and says, “I could never do that.” Which is unfortunate, because more people would be willing to try if they knew that those they admire are probably normal people who played the odds right.”
via @ProductHabits
Individual Before Community: Why Creator Tokens Will Precede Community Tokens — Future
Big Idea: Alex Masmej raised $20,000 in 4 days with a creator token. 600 backers will get 15% of his income for the next three years. There is a lot of potential upside for creators that figure out cryptocurrency tokens.
“I believe that creator tokens are not only the best way to start a social token, but that, as the “minimum-viable DAO,” they will achieve mainstream status before community tokens will. In an industry that is often perceived as complicated or aggravating by outsiders, the concept behind a creator token is straightforward: investing in a person — in human capital — rather than a company or group.”
via @Richard Patey
The Art and Science of getting to the very top of Crowded Creator Markets
Great Reddit thread on the importance of persistence as a creator.
- 90% of podcasts don’t get past episode 3. That’s 1.8 million who quit.
- Of the 200,000 left, 90% will quit after 20 episodes. That’s another 180,000 gone.
- To be in the top 1% of podcasts in the world you only need to publish 21 episodes of your podcast.
- Your competition is not the 2 million podcasts. It’s the 20,000 podcasters who didn’t quit.
via @ebizfacts
Forget 87.5% of your marketing. Here’s why
“Too many of us are trying to show multiple value propositions to multiple segments in multiple categories, giving multiple gifts.”
Great post on the importance of narrowing your niche and finding an effective value proposition.
via @publisherweekly
How much do authors earn? Here’s the answer no one likes
Big Idea: It’s common to mention how few creators make a sustainable income from a single source like book royalties, newsletter subscriptions, or Patreon donations. However, this ignores the fact that almost every creator that endures will have diversified revenue sources.
“But most of my money comes from teaching and hosting online classes (by myself and others) and by selling a paid-subscription newsletter, The Hot Sheet. I also offer some services and consulting, but I’ve been drawing that down to focus on my own writing and publishing. Why? Because over time, I’m earning more from my writing and publishing activities. This is the way it works for most people. You don’t earn that much at first, but you keep at it. If you can stay in the game longer than others dropping away from discouragement and disillusionment, it’s possible to see results.”
Related Link: 5 ways authors can make money outside selling books
via @iainbroome.com
The importance of being a niche creator
Dental student, Anthony Baroud gained 3.5 million YouTube subscribers in less than a year making videos about dental hygiene. He has over a billion views largely because of YouTube shorts.
Big Idea: If dental hygiene can attract 3.5 million subscribers, no niche is too niche.
via @thepublishpress
23 clever pinned tweet ideas from the most successful people on Twitter
Your pinned tweet on Twitter is the top tweet seen by anyone looking at your profile. Josh Spector shows 23 examples of people making the most of that prime real estate.
There are some really good ideas here. I highly recommend clicking through the pinned tweets that are interesting to you.
34 acquisition channels that consistently work for founders
Derek from ZerotoUsers went through 487 founder interviews on IndieHackers and created a pdf of 34 different ways to get customers or subscribers with an explanation and example for each. It’s a good read to get ideas on how to supercharge your growth.
We Analyzed 3.6 Billion Articles. Here’s What We Learned About Evergreen Content
Great research from Backlinko on the best formats for evergreen content.
Brief Summary
1. List posts and how-to posts are the two “most evergreen” content formats. Presentations and press releases tend to be the least evergreen.
2. Podcast episodes very rarely get shared over time. In fact, podcasts are 4.28x less likely to be evergreen compared to a list post.
3. Content that’s heavily shared on Reddit has a high likelihood of becoming evergreen.
4. Articles with lots of engagement on Twitter very rarely end up receiving shares and links over the long term.
Master Essential Creator Skills
Here is a selection of the best links I’ve found this week to level up your creator business skills.
How to Create a Compelling Unique Selling Proposition — CXL
Focus on your brand for the biggest impact on SEO — Neil Patel
How to Write a Pitch: The Ultimate Guide — Sean Ogle
How to Write an Irresistible Headline in 3 Easy Steps — Brett Friedman on Ahrefs
Great writing starts with a great first paragraph — BetterHumans
On-Page SEO: The Complete Guide for 2021 [Interactive] — SeigeMedia — via @tldrmarketing
Tip: For better SEO, find links to your socials and ask for them to be switched to your website — Indiehackers
7 steps to add followers with Twitter topics — BlakeEmail
The Hustle’s tips for killer subject lines — Brad Wolverton
Content strategy to convert more buyers — Drift — via @ProductHabits
