We don’t have endless time to work on unlimited projects and most projects need monetization to be sustainable. If it’s not making money, we can get dragged away by something that does.
Building a big following doesn’t necessarily lead to money and building a small following doesn’t necessarily keep us broke.
We can think through how we’re gonna make money from the get go… even if we’re making a youtube series and we’re okay with working for three years with no income.
- Are we going to sell 2000 tickets for $100 each?
- Are we going to get 400 patreon patrons?
- Are we going to sell 8000 books for $10 each?
- Are we going to have 100 people come to our retreat for $1500 each?
- Are we going to get advertisers who will pay us $40,000 for our 1 million viewers?
How much we’re making from each person changes our focus a lot as far as dedication, focus, and trust. We don’t always need a big audience for every mode of monetization, but it’s helpful to at least make some guesses about how the work turns into money so we don’t end up ditching our audience when we realize it’s not keeping the lights on.