The Concept of Creative Compounding and Why You Need To Understand It Before Quitting
You won’t give up on creating content after reading this
Content creation is the job of the century.
Thousands join the bandwagon of creating content each day and make passive income while doing what they love.
Most people quit in the initial months before they start seeing any results.
Why do we people leave a profession allowing them to be themselves and practice any craft they love. It can be videos, words, audio, visuals, or even memes.
After creating content for 7 years on various channels and failing miserably in most of them, I have found why people quit before seeing massive results. I call this theory Creative Compounding.
Creative Compounding
Einstein called compounding the 8th wonder of the world.
In the world of finance and the stock market, compounding is how most people become successful. Investopedia explained it as a process in which an asset’s earnings, from either capital gains or interest, are reinvested to generate additional earnings over time.
Similarly, Creative Compounding is the point in your creative career when results start showing up for all the previous work because of your one viral piece. For content creators, the asset is the content, and interest would be the traffic or engagement.
In this case, instead of making money on the money you earn by investing the initial money. Your capital is the content piece that did exceptionally well, and because of that one piece, you’re getting interest by getting all your previous work getting more eyeballs.
It’s the best kind of profit and experience altogether.
If you look closely, you’d see a pattern in most of the creators you follow and admire. They follow straight-line progress in the beginning, and then you see a convex curve.
Once you reach that point, all your work gets noticed, and your old creative projects also start seeing the daylight and become a success.
A Few Examples
This may not be true for everyone, but every successful creator I have interacted with has had the moments where their career took off. It was the moment when the creative compound played its magic and acknowledged all their hard work.
Let’s understand this by taking the example of Youtuber R C Waldum.
I started watching R.C. Waldun’s channel when he had 10K subscribers. I saw his channel get to 100K in a matter of months. He covers topics viz classics literature, dark academia, and philosophical essays. His channel picked up during the lockdown, and all his previous videos started circulating and generating views like never before.
He didn’t change his strategy or topics he covered; he just happened to create the videos he enjoyed and stayed consistent throughout. The best part of creative compounding is you don’t have to change yourself to seduce the algorithm. You don’t have to talk about buzz topics and viral trends to experience it.
The same thing happened with Beeple, who sold his NFT for $69 million. Again, the power of creative compounding with the right timing allowed him to emerge as the face of NFT God in the crypto world. And that one event has led the effort he’s been putting out for years.
These examples from two completely different creators show that creative compounding works in all domains and works for all creators.
The Bottom line
There were 4.66 billion people using the internet at the beginning of 2021— 59.5 percent of the global population. However, countries like India only have 34% of their population using the internet.
That number is increasing exponentially with cheaper technologies. Most people will use the internet to consume. Now, you don’t have to think about all those billion people; you only have to think about 0.001% or even less.
If you’re creating content for a niche-based group and doing it consistently, your content is going to get used. If not today, then tomorrow; if not tomorrow, maybe next year.
The articles which tanked in 2020 started seeing the daylight in the middle of 2021. It was not only on the Medium that I saw the massive hike; it also happened with one of my YouTube videos. This is the video I posted almost a year ago, and it gets more views than when it was released.
When I observed closely, I could see the creative compounding trickling slowly in my creative endeavors. I am far from ripping its real benefits, but I got the taste of it, and I am sure it will do wonders for me as I continue my journey as a multi-disciplinary creator.
The caveat to creative compounding is it doesn’t depend on it depends on the algorithm. But the interesting point here to note is that Algo God blesses people who create on their platform regularly and make others stay longer on the platform.
The content we post is evergreen, even if we get only 3 views. If it’s valuable and helpful, people will keep coming back to it even after you’ve retired from the internet world.
Conclusion
We keep forgetting that people used to go to factories a few decades ago do some hard labor to put food on the table. Now when we have the opportunity and privilege to sit at home and share our stories with the world, we don’t appreciate it.
We give up way before we’ve reached the point where creative compounding does its magic. We expect to see any results while we are still in the process, while we are learning.
Seeing my own content creation trajectory and studying successful creators have taught me a great deal about patience. If you have the patience to wait and enjoy the process, your journey as a creator will become a fun ride.
And when you feel like quitting, remember that your creative compound might be a week away or maybe a month. I will leave you with Warren Buffet's famous quote.
“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”
