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2 years ago
Realized something painfully obvious today.
TL;DR : Make it and they will come is a lie. If you want to build your own brand, you need to build your own marketing first and foremost.
Out of curiosity I compared stats with an artist I admire that started roughly same time as me :
- They posted a little under 100 submissions on FA while I have 600ish
- They have a few thousands follows on twitter while I'm barely floating around 300
I'm not saying they don't deserve it or I deserve more. I wish both of us a high tide to raise all boats.
I want to use that comparison to highlight how false it is to believe in both "Make it and they will come" mentality or my previous "You just have to get lucky and keep at it".
The real reason they're much more successful at building an audience is : In the same time I did/RTd about 7k posts they made over 150k.
The path to popularity isn't about being prolific or the best, neither of us are, I now think it's about constant loquacity.
I do want to become more popular.
Because I don't generally really make anything for mostly myself. I wouldn't be uploading anything if I was.
I create mainly to distract others from the pain, escape, soothe, heal, entertain, commune, lift, prosper.
That's not super doable in a vacuum. My art generally didn't always or often have a deep personal meaning to it though I've been working on that lately.
I want to be popular for practical reasons. Even in this sometimes necrotic feeling world, I want to live off of creating and help friends and family achieve it too.
For every skill I have I know at least 5 people I'd want to see living off of that skill even more than myself and help them reach that point.
I can't shout them out if I have no community to whisper to.
Ideally, I also want to succeed myself, by doing what I love: creating. For me that'd be buying a house with a garden and not having to worry about money for food or repairs.
But I'm conflicted, I don't want to play that social media constant mindless yapping for attention game.
I don't want to try posting every waking hour to meet an arbitrary ever increasing double digit quota of daily posts while I'm comfortable around 3.
I'm saying all this for 2 reasons I guess :
1. If you are a starving artist who's already committed to making it your freelancing job:
Please, for your own sake, double down and play that game. Farm that engagement, creating a lot is not nearly as good as being talkative and posting stuff, it doesn't have to be about what you make constantly.
Because you probably can't be constantly making things, not healthily imho anyway.
Do not go the tendinitis route, it's got a bad ending. Market yourself, aggressively or find something else you can do as primary income source.
I wish you the best and haven't decided yet if that's for me too.
2. If you're a follower, a fan, a friend : Thank you.
Thank you for supporting me and helping me create for what's already been 11 years of my life. I have no regret is the understatement of the century here.
I do regret some creative droughts, but I've learned to create, gotten out of depression, met my closest group of friends (and my nerdy bf :3) through this creative fandom.
I hope I can make even more for 40 or more years still.
Thank you if you commissioned me anything, favorited anything or most importantly left even a single encouraging comment, it probably fueled me for the next 5 doodles.
Finally, thank you for helping me to reach hundreds of peeps like you by giving me a shoutout, raiding me on twitch, sharing the art I made for you or that you simply liked and helping me reach others as I've been too shy to find more peeps by playing that networking/socializing game myself.
I might have to change my online behavior if I *really* want to make a living out of it, but thank you for helping me get here with just your word of mouth so far.
It's been more than worth it already :)
As usual, please lick, cement and subsidize for more minecraft videos.
Have a great week.
TL;DR : Make it and they will come is a lie. If you want to build your own brand, you need to build your own marketing first and foremost.
Out of curiosity I compared stats with an artist I admire that started roughly same time as me :
- They posted a little under 100 submissions on FA while I have 600ish
- They have a few thousands follows on twitter while I'm barely floating around 300
I'm not saying they don't deserve it or I deserve more. I wish both of us a high tide to raise all boats.
I want to use that comparison to highlight how false it is to believe in both "Make it and they will come" mentality or my previous "You just have to get lucky and keep at it".
The real reason they're much more successful at building an audience is : In the same time I did/RTd about 7k posts they made over 150k.
The path to popularity isn't about being prolific or the best, neither of us are, I now think it's about constant loquacity.
I do want to become more popular.
Because I don't generally really make anything for mostly myself. I wouldn't be uploading anything if I was.
I create mainly to distract others from the pain, escape, soothe, heal, entertain, commune, lift, prosper.
That's not super doable in a vacuum. My art generally didn't always or often have a deep personal meaning to it though I've been working on that lately.
I want to be popular for practical reasons. Even in this sometimes necrotic feeling world, I want to live off of creating and help friends and family achieve it too.
For every skill I have I know at least 5 people I'd want to see living off of that skill even more than myself and help them reach that point.
I can't shout them out if I have no community to whisper to.
Ideally, I also want to succeed myself, by doing what I love: creating. For me that'd be buying a house with a garden and not having to worry about money for food or repairs.
But I'm conflicted, I don't want to play that social media constant mindless yapping for attention game.
I don't want to try posting every waking hour to meet an arbitrary ever increasing double digit quota of daily posts while I'm comfortable around 3.
I'm saying all this for 2 reasons I guess :
1. If you are a starving artist who's already committed to making it your freelancing job:
Please, for your own sake, double down and play that game. Farm that engagement, creating a lot is not nearly as good as being talkative and posting stuff, it doesn't have to be about what you make constantly.
Because you probably can't be constantly making things, not healthily imho anyway.
Do not go the tendinitis route, it's got a bad ending. Market yourself, aggressively or find something else you can do as primary income source.
I wish you the best and haven't decided yet if that's for me too.
2. If you're a follower, a fan, a friend : Thank you.
Thank you for supporting me and helping me create for what's already been 11 years of my life. I have no regret is the understatement of the century here.
I do regret some creative droughts, but I've learned to create, gotten out of depression, met my closest group of friends (and my nerdy bf :3) through this creative fandom.
I hope I can make even more for 40 or more years still.
Thank you if you commissioned me anything, favorited anything or most importantly left even a single encouraging comment, it probably fueled me for the next 5 doodles.
Finally, thank you for helping me to reach hundreds of peeps like you by giving me a shoutout, raiding me on twitch, sharing the art I made for you or that you simply liked and helping me reach others as I've been too shy to find more peeps by playing that networking/socializing game myself.
I might have to change my online behavior if I *really* want to make a living out of it, but thank you for helping me get here with just your word of mouth so far.
It's been more than worth it already :)
As usual, please lick, cement and subsidize for more minecraft videos.
Have a great week.
You can lead a horse to water etc.
If you got any, wear their comms with pride and signal boost them, it helps and it's very motivating to see people get mileage out of the drawings you make for them imho!