Building an Audience from Scratch Can Be Simpler than You Fear

You have a single goal. It'll shape your entire agenda.

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Foto di Elijah O'Donnell: https://www.pexels.com/it-it/foto/luce-leggero-uomo-scuro-7711126/

Being a beginner creator is overwhelming.

Endless baffling decisions paralyze you:

• what’s my niche?

• What’s the best platform?

• How do I find the time?

• How do I find ideas?

• How will I monetize?

And so on. And on. And on. Additionally, every decision, brings a domino of tasks.

I talked and worked with hundreds of creators. This burden of uncertainty make them work slowly, consume more energy, or never hit publish for the first time.

But the fog dissipates when you have an audience. Until you have one, you can focus on a few crucial tasks and leave the rest for later.

Only one priority

You may want use your content to start a business and escape your cubicle. Or to impact people with your creativity. Or to gain supporters for your cause.

Regardless of your purpose, in the beginning you need a single thing. Without it, nothing else is possible.

You need to build an audience. A sizable and engaged audience.

The right size depends on your purpose. Don’t get fooled by follower count, though:

• becoming a follower is too easy, there’s no commitment,

• all algorithms are based on the single pieces of content you publish, views are only in small part determined by the follower count.

Instead, do everything reasonable to convert your viewers into email subscribers. A safe goal can be 1000 subscribers, with 40% open rate. At that point, you probably have a critical mass feeding your views and sales.

This goal simplifies everything. It tells you exactly what to do.

And if you’re stuck wondering what your niche is, who are you writing for, and what you are talking about, I have a guide for you.

It will show you how to stop overthinking your niche, find a place to start and gradually improve it. Here’s the guide:

Stress-Free Niche Finding: an alternative approach to stand out without limiting yourself

Your simple, but hard todo list

Until you have a sizable and engaged audience, do only one thing: publish a lot of helpful content. (Or a lot of compelling art, if that’s your groove)

Despite our painful need for certainty, there’s not much we can predict before meeting our audience. That is, before getting views on our content. We can spend hundreds of hours analyzing the market and spying competitors. The performance of our content depends on too many factors outside our control.

We discover what works only by thinking and acting like scientists:

• every piece of content is an experiment,

• the results of our experiments consist of the engagement the content gets (views, likes, shares, comments, emails, conversions…),

• based on that data, we understand if our content is working and understand what changes are needed.

Repetition, combined with the information we gather, improves our skills, grows the audience, and increases the engagement.

What about monetization?

Our clever brains tell us: “Don’t start publishing without something to sell! You’ll attract the wrong audience!” And we happily comply, “Thanks clever brain! Another wise reason to procrastinate, back to the drawing board!”

We can’t know in advance what content will work best. We can’t tell what offer will sell more.

Of course, you may have a general idea of the kind of offer you’ll make: a book, a course, coaching, or a mix of those. You may also know how your expertise and skills can help your intended audience. But only when you come into contact with them, not with a generic user persona, you know exactly what they need and what they want to pay for.

Publishing brings clarity also with monetization.

What about my website?

I’ve been publishing online for 13 years. I always owned at least one WordPress blog. But now, when you’re starting out, you don’t need it.

For most people, it’s just a hindrance. Another thing bringing hundreds of new decisions to make.

If you have enough self-control to accept using a template, quickly whipping up a site, and never touching it again, at least until you have your 1000 email subscribers, go for it. And congrats: you’re superhuman! Most people can’t accept a “less-than-perfect” website.

This will speed up everything

Networking.

This is the hardest thing in the world for me. But I’m learning how to do it online. And it’s brought me hundreds of email subscribers.

Do you know why some creators appear out of nowehere and skyrocket to thousands of followers in just a few months? They usually have a handful of friends, creator themselves, committed to engage with and share everything they publish.

It isn’t a conspiracy. They really are friends, at least online. They share the same goals and understand the value of collaboration. (But it’s true that you can also find artfully created engagement pods, with the sole purpose of inflating numbers)

So, whatever platform you’re on, if you want to grow faster, get more feedback on your content, and also speed up your improvement, schedule some time each day to engage:

• comment on other people’s content,

• share it,

• talk to interesting creators via DM or email,

• schedule 1:1 calls,

• be active in communities,

• guest post,

• collaborate on content,

• interview and get interviewed.

You can network by “just writing” if you use guest posts to grow your audience. By finding creators with overlapping audiences and offering valuable guest posts, you gain exposure to new readers and expand your reach.

Here’s my ultimate guide to find guest posting opportunities and make the most of them:

The Ultimate Guide to Guest Posting: Just Write and Grow Your Audience

What about collecting email subscribers?

As I’m writing this, there’s an easy answer: Substack. For the first time, there’s a single platform where you can: publish long and short content, network with other creators, collect subscribers, and send your emails.

I don’t know how long growth will be so strong on Substack. But for now, it’s a guaranteed jackpot.

The traditional alternative is to open an account with an email service provider. It’s a bit more complex, but tools like ConvertKit and Mailerlite make it very easy. They also provide landing page templates, so you don’t need a website.

Then, of course you need to publish a newsletter, to enage your audience. But then we get back to your first priority above.

Now, take action

As a creator, you “can” do a lot of things that will bring results. But 99% aren’t necessary in the beginning. Here I listed 30+ you can happily ignore:

If you don’t yet have an audience, or it’s still too small, do this:

1. choose a content platform you like,

2. (optional) create an account with an email service provider if your platform isn’t Substack,

3. start publishing as often as possible,

4. (optional but recommended) network with other interesting creators in your niche,

5. send a weekly or fortnightly newsletter.

And if you need help, leave a comment.

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Good luck!

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