I Once Gained 5K Followers in 1 Year & Never Monetized
Published 23 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader,
From about 2023 to 2024, I was publishing a video a week on my YouTube channel and posting up to 3 or 4 reels a week on Instagram.
With enough consistency over that one-year period, I'd grown my channel by 800% percent and had a few viral videos that earned me about 5,000 new followers in total across both platforms.
I had this influx of attention that I was doing my best to manage, and really wanted to do my part to engage them.
YouTube growth chart (2023)
Anytime I offered an opportunity for more curated conversations -- a membership, paid newsletter, webinars, coaching, etc. -- it was crickets. And I was pretty confused by it.
After all, I'd spent hundreds of hours researching, filming, and learning everything I was channeling into FREE content for thousands of people. So why weren't they buying?
To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure. But I have a guess or two, and I'd prefer to explain it in this brief story:
One day, Picasso was hanging out in a little diner when a raving fan came up to him and asked, "Are you that famous painter?"
"Yes, I am," he said.
The fan asked if he wouldn't mind drawing them a picture on a napkin, to which Picasso obliged. In less than ten minutes, he handed them back a drawing in his signature, abstract style.
"That'll be a million dollars," he says (or some other big crazy number like that).
The fan was confused. "A million dollars? But it took you only a few minutes to draw it."
"Exactly," Picasso said. "What's worth a million dollars is me learning to make that drawing in less than ten minutes."
Now, I'm not saying I'm as wildly successful or talented as Picasso, but the idea is that people don't always want to pay for a million dollars-worth of expertise. Yet, as a creator, I would be doing myself a disservice if I continued to give it all away for free. Right?
Today, I orient myself within the digital marketing space, specifically with digital products. Why that niche? Because they're a modern-day solution to helping creators and professionals with decades of experience turn what they know into something low-cost, sustainable, and buildable.
There's a reason it's called the "7-year overnight success" -- people who have consistently invested thousands of hours into their craft eventually get to be so good they make it look easy. All we see is the attention.
