In March, my girlfriend and I started an Unsplash account. We wanted a shared place to curate pictures of the food and travel we enjoyed together, and we thought: Why not do that in public? Maybe others will enjoy them as well.
It was never a commercial effort, but for kicks and giggles, we set up a $1 tip jar on PayPal. Unsplash has become a photography behemoth with some 20 billion views each month, and we too saw our stats rise quickly.
2,500 views in March, 16,000 in April, then 40,000, 60,000 — on and on, the zeroes kept piling up. This month, we racked up nearly 140,000 views, bringing our total to over 650,000 views in nine short months. We also got around 5,000 downloads. The only thing we didn’t get was a single $1 tip.
This is just a small example with no stakes, but it highlights a worrying trend: We now live in an age of unpaid mass attention.
The Proof Is No Longer in the Numbers
“One of the TikToks I posted yesterday had 250,000 views, which is really good for my account size — I only have 100,000 followers.”
Um… what?!
When Jade Darmawangsa talks about her social media strategy, it sounds like Madonna mapping out the details of her next show. Meanwhile, she and other influencers brush off six-figure statistics with worrying ease. Darmawangsa has enough followers to fill the Wembley stadium, but… eh? Welcome to 2020.
If you produce good work that turns heads, it is now easier than ever to actually get those heads to keep turning. A funny video can blow up on TikTok any time. A great tool can find an immediate audience on Product Hunt. But what happens after?
In 1964, someone who could guarantee 100,000 eyeballs on something might have made millions of dollars. Today, those eyeballs are a mere ticket to entry, and they won’t even guarantee you’ll get to keep playing. The viral dust settles quickly, and, once it does, you’ll realize you’re no further along than before.
Amen Alarefi made one of the most viral transition videos ever. He seamlessly switches his clothes and position in a brilliantly crafted 30-second clip. The video generated over 50 million views.
Alarefi now has over one million followers on TikTok, but I doubt he’s much closer to commercializing his efforts. He tries to redirect people to his Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter; but at 4,000, 1,000, and 80 followers on those platforms, that’s a fraction of the audience he has on TikTok.
In July, TikTok launched a $200 million creator fund, its first initiative to pay creators directly. Until then, users had to monetize via live stream donations and sponsored posts, the latter of which they’d have to source on their own. Compared to TikTok’s 800 million user base, the money seems like a drop in the bucket, especially if artists want to make a living from their work.
Comedian Andrew Rousso is also nearing the one-million-follower-mark. His videos routinely get millions of views, but his Teespring merch shop and list of donation links scream: Why can’t we figure out how to pay creators properly?
Are You the One in a Million (Who Will Pay Me?)
In 2008, Kevin Kelly wrote about the idea that 1,000 true fans will be enough to sustain a creator or business indefinitely. After all, if each true fan pays you $100 per year, you’ll make six figures. Andreessen Horowitz took it even further: Why not have 100 hardcore fans pay $1,000?
Both concepts are as valid as only math can be, but it takes more and more people to find that one true fan. The reach required to engage those willing to part with a dollar is ballooning because each day, more artists vie for our attention, yet our wallets are as thin as ever. Who should you even support?
I’m no exception. I’ve used hundreds of photos from Unsplash, and I always give credit, but I never give dollars — even though some photographers could really use them. We must all pick our battles, and while I do support writers, musicians, and entrepreneurs whose work I rely on and enjoy, I can’t pay all of them because if I did, I’d have no dollars left.
Now, marketing in any form has always been a tough game, and it is possible to make a lot of money on any social platform, but it seems that, right now, the onus is far too much on the creator and far too little on the business.
While YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram become billion-dollar behemoths, the people on whose backs their empire was built are trying to sell their accounts for cents on the dollar. You can buy a TikTok account with a million followers for as little as $7,000.
In 2016, Nathan Baschez launched Hardbound, a new, compelling way to consume stories on a phone. They were featured on Apple, Product Hunt, and Fast Company. They attracted 250,000 readers, but, less than a year later, they shut down. People didn’t want to pay. It’s a sad story told far too often.
Product Hunt is littered with clever designs on dead domains and “Product of the Week” badges that may as well be tombstones. “We’re just the messenger,” these companies might say, and, technically, they’d be right. But I wonder what would happen if they invested more into making the hits they surface sustainable.
Not because they had to, but because they want to see awesome people succeed — people like Jade, Amen, or Nathan… people like you and me.
Make Sure You Can Work Even if the Numbers Don’t
In an interview with her friend Salina, Jade breaks down how people can currently make money on TikTok. A year later, Salina checks all the boxes: She’s verified, sells merch, does brand deals, and has 1.8 million followers.
Persistence often pays off, but the social media circus has never been bigger, and the hoops for humans to jump through have never hung higher. For every one who succeeds, 100 fail, many having what would have been — only a short while ago — promising numbers.
In the age of unpaid attention, it is easier than ever to garner views by the bucket and more difficult than ever to convert those views into dollars. The gap between the two can easily grow large enough to test your faith in humanity.
In 2016, I launched Four Minute Books. It was a simple website, and, after a few months, I was laughed off Reddit for having only a few thousand users and $700 in my pocket. This year, we first broke six figures in revenue. We still need to launch on Product Hunt, by the way.
Even in times of louder, viral, faster — slow and steady still does the trick. Don’t lose hope when people don’t donate. Keep your head down and build. Bootstrap. Be sustainable, not flammable.
Don’t expect the numbers to magically work out, no matter how large they become. Make sure you can keep playing. If you focus on staying around for tomorrow, you most likely will — regardless of what the algorithm feels like serving the world today.