How To Create An Audience On Any Online Platform.

Simple steps that will help you create an audience and begin making money online.

I’m currently building an audience on two platforms — Medium and Pinterest. I’ve seen a level of success on both, and I want to share the steps that are helping me move towards making a full-time income online.

First, let’s address the fallacy that social media is creating — a lot of the popular ways being shown to make money online have these steps backward.

You’ll hear a self-proclaimed expert say, first, find a product, then start advertising it and create an audience.

In my opinion, this strategy doesn’t work in the long term.

If you want to create a steady online business, you need credibility.

One of the surest ways to help establish credibility is longevity — you have been around for a period of time, providing valuable content.

So here are some steps I believe will help you build an audience and allow you to remain in any online space.

1. Find something you like and can be consistent with.

And can be helpful/provide some form of value.

If you’re providing value, that means in the future, you can charge for said value.

But let’s focus on the most important part — longevity.

You want to find something that you’re good at and enjoy. Why? Because if you don’t like what you’re doing, you will end up quitting.

Let’s use me as an example.

I like writing. When I found Medium, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. I had no idea there was a website that would allow me to monetize my writing.

I also enjoy video editing and creating content in video form. Hence, Pinterest.

Some of you may think, why not YouTube? I will explain that in the next section.

How did I find out that I liked video editing and writing? I gave both a try. The funny part is I failed miserably the first few times I did it.

What do I mean by failing? I didn’t become an overnight success with my writing or videos going viral. My writing needed a ton of work, and so did my video editing skills.

But I did find out I enjoy doing these things.

I’ve been writing on Medium for a little over two years now, and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

I’ve also been posting regularly on Pinterest for about six months, and I’m just getting started — longevity.

2. Focus on one or two platforms at a time.

This is why I’m not on YouTube yet.

I did make a few Youtube videos a while back, but I wasn’t consistent with it and dropped it pretty quickly. Why? Although I enjoyed it, I was mainly doing it for the money.

I needed to grow from that mindset.

Thankfully I have, and now I’m in a headspace where I’m playing the long game.

I’m not trying to overwhelm myself with content creation. I’m building my way toward handling a more rigorous schedule. And I believe you can only do that by conquering one or two platforms at a time.

I work as a bartender, and that’s how I make the majority of my money.

My plan is to slowly transition out of bartending by creating multiple sources of income using different methods and platforms online and scaling them.

Building these takes time and developing my skillset.

Once I’ve mastered one platform, I will then move on to another one. I recommend you do the same so you don’t end up feeling overwhelmed or frustrated and quit.

When you quit, you take yourself out of the game, and that’s a guarantee you’ll never make it.

3. Consistently post content — this is the key to building a steady audience.

This is also the step that will take the most amount of time.

Creating content that’s valuable over a relatively long period of time establishes credibility.

This is also a step that will always, and I mean always, need to be done in order to maintain the audience you have built.

You cannot build an audience, maintain an audience, and still make money without posting content on an ongoing basis.

You can refurbish old content and make it better. But you cannot stop producing it.

This is why it’s so important to find something you’re good at and enjoy. You’re basically picking your career field.

Does that mean you can’t pivot? No. You can always change towards something you’ve become better at.

But if you don’t focus on one thing, like writing, you will not build an audience because there’s no reliability on your end.

If you appear one week and not the next, you won’t grow.

Some of you may be thinking this is obvious, and the advice or tips I’m giving are nothing new.

They’re not. However, this is something we need to remind ourselves of constantly.

We seek comfort and ease. Becoming your own boss and making money online is the complete opposite of comfortable and easy.

This takes discipline, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, trying and failing, and failing some more. You will be tested in ways you never thought of.

I believe this advice to be necessary because we’re constantly being advertised the idea of easy money and overnight success.

These are a myth! You will not make six figures in one month. Not even five, not even four, not even three figures.

Do not spend your hard-earned money on something you can learn on your own for free.

Not unless you want to replicate somebody’s exact blueprint and want mentoring services.

To become great at something, you must master the basics, and these are the basics of building an audience which will lead to making money online.