Online Writers, Please Stop Trying to Compete With Buzzfeed

When you chase the follower count, you’re playing a game designed for you to lose.

It used to be that to succeed in life, you had to build the biggest building in town.

In Business

To be able to make any significant revenue, you had to build a huge shopping mall, hire 5,000 employees and invest hundreds of thousands of dollars on McKinsey research.

In Art

You had to compromise your tastes to make money (i.e., solve the “starving artist problem”), and hope that you’d be picked by a powerful producer. More on that below.

In General

You played a game that had its main KPI as “quantity” (not quality), and you could succeed by selling a mediocre product or service to as many people as possible. Let’s not forget —you did all of this while interrupting them with your ads — until your brand becomes a comfortable choice.

You don’t have to play those games anymore. If you’re reading this, then you have the ability to create meaningful work, get paid, be happy and live a fulfilled life.

The Leverage Has Shifted

If you’re a musician, you don’t need to be picked anymore by a corporate music label, you can pick yourself and move on by distributing your work on Spotify and YouTube.

Today, you can use platforms like Medium, Amazon, YouTube — to build an audience and make things that matter. You can make a living doing something you love.

Will you be able to make the most amount of money? No, probably not.

But will you be able to do meaningful work, while not sacrificing your core value, and make enough money to pay all of your bills and have something extra?

Absolutely.

Stop Competing With Buzzfeed

My message to most online writers (including myself, because I am no saint): stop competing with Buzzfeed.

Writers who obsess over their stats, and try to maximize reach, likes, followers, claps and then boast about how many email subscribers they've got — are playing a game designed for them to lose.

Your blog can’t out-communicate Buzzfeed, which has millions of unique monthly visitors on their website and social media. You can’t win the New Yorker in terms of reading reach. And your podcast can’t beat NPR by ratings. No way.

You can’t win that game, so simply stop playing it.

Play a different game instead.

What Game Creatives Should Play

Wake up. Brush your teeth. Go for a run. Eat breakfast. And then show up.

Every single writer on this platform and every single creator in the world has an audience. Even if it’s just them. So — show up for them.

Woody Allen says,

“Showing up is 80% of success.”

But don’t just show up and say, “Hi.”

Say something meaningful. Bring value. Show up like you want other people to show up for you. And try to make each day’s work better than yesterday’s.

Instead of playing the game of amassing a large audience — because you were trained that “big = successful” — play a different game. Try finding your audience.

How many people do you need? I don’t know, you tell me. Kevin Kelly says you only need 1,000 — but it really varies on what your needs are.

The point is, you don’t need a lot.

Change Your Attitude

When you stop chasing the number, you change your attitude towards creative work.

You start prioritizing other things:

1. Instead of spamming people, you start building relationships with them.
2. Instead of trying to reach everyone, you look for “your people.”
3. Instead of taking, you give. Because you now know, that if you focus on the giving (your best ideas, insights, stories), the “taking” will take care of itself. You’re rewarded proportionately to the value you provide to the network.

The Starving Artist Problem Has a Solution

There are still many creatives who are struggling with the “money problem.” I know, it’s hard. I feel you. But it has a solution — in theory, at least.

It used to be that to succeed, you had two options:

1. Change your tastes and do what other people find valuable. For example, my dear friend George who I’ve already mentioned in other posts, started DJing — although he hates DJing — because it pays well.
2. Or be broke. My other friend, Eugene, decided that if his movies are not commercially successful, then he’d better tell the world to “fuck off” and sit at home creating art for himself.

Those were the only two choices.

But today, you can find your people — people, who are interested in the same things as you are.

The general approach is simple: use a platform to build an audience (Medium, YouTube, Amazon) — it’s free, but takes a lot of work. And then use SaaS like Substack or Podia, to build intimate relationships with your audience, allowing them to support you directly.

Again — this works in theory, but I am putting my money where my mouth is.

That’s the strategy behind my content.

Live The Meaningful Life

The best thing about the modern “connection economy” — as Seth Godin calls it — is that we don’t have to sacrifice meaning for money anymore. No more soul-crushing cubicle work for those, who dare to take the risk and venture out on their own.

I find it greatly inspiring. You don’t have to build a huge company. In fact, “huge” is a bad strategy today. When you go niche, you compromise quality, and we need quality nowadays.

You can forget the New York Times bestseller because it doesn’t matter. It’s just one group of people telling us what they think is “cool” to read, but nobody trusts them anymore.

Everyone is a New York Times bestseller. People now trust personal book recommendations more. So — instead of having one bestseller list, we now have millions.

You’ve got to go niche. You’ve got to find your own audience, and serve it.

How long, you ask? Forever. Why? Because you’ve made a commitment and a promise. Show up on your promise, and you’ll build the scarcest asset of the 21st century.

Not attention.

Trust.

Become my email friend.