Grow Your Audience Alongside Me
You want a sustainable audience growth. But if you’re wanting to earn a living from your writing, what you need is for that audience to provide monetary value. And this is where we encounter a glitch in the Matrix. In order to generate value for yourself, your writing has to generate value for your reader first. Providing for your audience is what brings value back to you in the form of income.
I’ve encountered a few writers here that suggest they offer writing advice, yet when you read some of their advice, their article’s introduction is comprised of a rant about how poorly they’re doing.
Let’s call these writers ‘Problem A.’
The troubling part is that those of Problem A have a few thousand followers. It’s troubling. But it’s not surprising. And it’s something you can and should avoid.
Undoubtedly, there will be some math geniuses reading this while referencing my own number of followers so allow me to save the rest of you a trip over to my profile. As of 29 Nov 2023, my follower count is 25. So, the obvious question & answer dance to come is ‘What makes my 25-follower count relevant against someone with over 4,000?’
The simple answer is that I’m not trading follows with other creators. The authors that are part of Problem A are following twice as many people that are following them. How can you realistically follow over 8,000 people?
I’ve seen identical practices on other platforms, and I’ve been asked to swap follows, views, likes, and all the things. But this whole arrangement is a house of cards. There’s no substance to it, and it’s not authentic support. More followers means more visibility and more views, but what good is it to you when your followers aren’t interested in your content. The two of you are literately just numbers for one another, and they’re not going to generate views for you.
So, if you’re a newer writer and want to make a living off your writing, focus on improving the quality of your work, not gimmicks that suggest fast success. If you continuously improve your skill and provide your readers with something they find valuable, you will grow.
Let’s call this group ‘Solution A.’
Of course, you’re welcome to try the Problem A method. There’s nothing preventing you from doing so. But if you do, I encourage you to check back on my progress in a year’s time. After all, this is a tortoise race, Mr. Hare. :)
Adapting
If you choose to go by way of Solution A, know that this isn’t a quick process, and it’s slower when you chase bad mentors. This is something I’ve personally experienced in my own growth pursuits. I’m not suggesting that my advice will be everything you need, but I share what I’ve had firsthand experience with and what proved helpful for me. It is my hope that you can leverage my hard work to avoid some of my earlier mistakes.
When I published my debut novel—Twilight Wolf—in September 2023, I learned something valuable that may sound counterintuitive to what I dismissed as Problem A.
To be successful as a writer, you need to establish an audience—a following—then provide them with the content that made them follow you to begin with.
You see why this is different from Problem A, don’t you? That following is based on a swap, so their reason for following you has been satisfied. There’s no more need for the two of you to interact. But if someone follows you due to your shared stories, the advice they find helpful, or just to vicariously follow your experiences... That arrangement is open ended. You can continue providing for them. And doing so will generate a growing resource that others can find their way to.
Time & Effort
It’s important that you set your expectations early on. I mentioned Solution A was going to take time, but what it’s going to require in an equal amount is effort. And those participating in Problem A are going to create a greater demand of both from you.
There are a lot of writers out there, and they’re collectively throwing up a lot of content. I don’t have much in the way of quantifiable numbers regarding your direct competition, but as I was uploading my Goodreads request to have my novel added (7 Oct), I counted the number of similar requests since the start of the month. That number was 1,083.
Think about that for a moment.
In six and a half days, 1,083 requests were made, each seeking to have a new novel added to a single website. Obviously, not all of these are direct competition for my book because the genres are going to vary.
That’s a lot of writing, which creates both good and bad news for us. The bad news is that it’s a lot of noise that’s competing for reader attention right alongside your own work. But the good news is that a significant portion of it is just noise. A lot of these writers are from Problem A, and while they may reap short term gains, it won’t be long lasting. A new reader might lend their attention for a short while, but if it’s poorly written, the writer has lost that reader forever.
When followers do find their way to your work, due to your steadily growing catalog of material and high quality writing, again, you’ve created an open ended arrangement with this new reader, and they’ll be with you until you stop providing them with the reason they followed you to begin with.
Conclusion
Prioritize Solution A. You’re going to focus on three things and none of them are audience growth. This is what your focus should be on:
Improving your writing skill.
Value. Provide value for your reader, either in the form of entertainment or as a lesson that teaches them something that they want to know or use.
Volume. You need to consistently produce so that followers remember you, more of them find you, and so that your writing skills continue to improve.
If you do this, you will see growth.
So, I have to ask—with the two aforementioned groups in mind—which do you want to be a part of? The Solution or the Problem? :)
