For friends and family who want to support my creative endeavours
A couple of days ago, a friend of mine reached out to me to ask how I get people to listen to my podcast (yes I have a podcast, I will circle back to that in a second.) She wanted to find out if there’s anything she could learn from me because she too just started a podcast of her own. (It’s a podcast about the experience of dental school, you can check it out on spotify) My answer to her was that I begged.
I just tweet and beg people.
I am a begger
Whatsapp status begging.
Instagram begging too.
I tell people directly too.
This story is relevant seeing as the aim of this post is to beg for money. The conversation circled back to how I get listeners to the podcast I created and now produce, to which the answer is ‘I don’t’. I currently am not actively trying to grow the listeners of my podcast. The way I am thinking about gaining listeners is the same way I have always thought about bringing attention to the work I create. I ask my friends on social media to click a link.
I have been doing creative work in some manner for the better part of my decision-making years and the more I think of it these days, the more it seems like the kind of work I want to invest a large chunk of my time into doing.
Which is where I am currently, investing chunks of time into doing creative work. As is usually the case when you spend time doing anything, there is a desire for some form of return. For me, that desire is currently met by the knowledge that I enjoy doing what I do and the support I get from people that see what I do. What is that support?
The Support I need.
The support I have asked for all those many years of creating things has been that people (friends and sometimes strangers) check out the thing I created and if they like it, to share. I always add the clause ‘if you like it.’ I do not want you to go around sharing something that you wouldn’t endorse.
The first type of support I ask for is that you check it out.
Read a story or an article or listen to something I cut together. If you check it out, you have supported me and for that, I am eternally grateful.
The second type of support you can give me is telling at least one person.
Now, I am not greedy. I don’t need you to tweet everything I share to all your followers. It would be nice if you did but you don’t have to. What I would love is for you to tell one person (by word of mouth) that your friend, me, made something and they should check it out for *insert reason.* I still think this is the most effective way of sharing content. Doing this would mean so much to me.
The third type of support is that you sponsor my creativity.
I am currently in uncharted territory. This is the part where the begging for money comes in. I have been messing around with the idea for about two years now and finally, I feel like I have gotten to a point where I can justify asking people to donate to my work. Here’s why I feel that I can do that.
My history with creating content of any type has been a rather selfish one. The justification for me making any type of content in the past has been that I thought the idea was cool and who doesn’t want to do cool things. The only result of my work was that feeling in myself of enjoying what I did. As I have grown, the justification for the things I set out to create has changed. It has evolved I even dare say. I truly believe that the projects I currently work on offer real value to the people that come in contact with them. So the first reason I think you should sponsor my work is that you will be contributing to something that creates value in people’s lives.
Aside from the value, my work is now creating. I am also infinitely more intentional about creating. I am not simply a victim of the wait for inspiration. I spend a lot of time thinking and scheming how my creation will happen. I have google sheets and checklists and notes (lots and lots of notes.) I have long conversations with people I think can help me think better. I spend hours upon hours reading and researching. Even more hours go into writing and editing (ps: I have found that editing is just a fancy way of saying deleting and rewriting.) Beyond the time I invest in creating, I invest a lot of the money (which is not a lot to start with seeing as I’m a corper) I earn back into creating. I pay for the internet and subscribe to publications and go to many places for research or production reasons. My projects now involve collaborating with people and those people I pay for their time. I think the fact that I already take all of this risk by myself shows how serious I am with creating and knowing this will encourage people to want to help me with some of that burden.
My goal this year is to create as much as possible at the highest possible quality I can reach. That’s why I am not currently actively looking for listener growth. I want to invest all my energy into creating at the quality that people can endorse and support me in the ways listed above.
So just like an entrepreneur trying to start a business, I am coming to my friends and family and asking you guys to invest in my dream by going to my patreon page and becoming a supporter of my work.
What you will be supporting if you decide to
Inside A Bubble
is a podcast I started last year. Production is currently ongoing for the first season but you can listen to our first two episodes and teaser to get a feel of what the podcast is about. It is a crowdsourced podcast about social bubbles hosted by my friends Seyi Oluboba and Bisi Adedun and it exists to tell stories of people from different bubbles as they relate to unifying topics. I do a huge chunk of the production, writing and technical production for the podcast.
The approach for this podcast is to make episodes that are rigorous in production. Things that sound extremely intentional and whose quality is evident in every second of listening. When trying to make a podcast like this one (with a lot of production value) the production cost itself can get quite much for someone like me to handle. Currently, every single piece of audio in our available episodes was recorded using a phone’s recorder. The editing has been done using an open-source editing tool and all production cost has come out of my pocket. We distribute to all the most popular podcast places including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google podcast and Soundcloud.
The Original Impostor
This is my main writing project. The project whose articles take me the most amount of time to write. Since I first started working on it, the idea has morphed from one form to another and even the articles I have written in it have been very different from each other. A few things have stayed consistent though and one of those things is that every one of the articles is very intensive. I will be honest with you, the publication is still not any one single thing. The name comes from my relationship with what I write. I first got into writing articles because I thought they made me seem smart and I liked pretending to know a lot more than I actually do. I often tell people that the point of the posts on the publication is to oversimplify complex topics so that people can come away either feeling smarter or thinking differently about a topic that they had previously not given serious thought to. A good chunk of the articles meet that criterium, they oversimplify something extremely more nuanced (but not dangerously), just enough for people to get the drift.
This year, I have plans to take on some pretty challenging topics. Things that will take me a much longer time to understand enough to oversimplify. Things that need to be explained so people can think the right way about them. Topics that might actually add real value to the readers. Some of my favourite articles from the publication so far have been about road rage, climate change, VR and quality.
I want to write more articles like the ones on road rage (which took me six months) and climate change. (which took my two weeks) I also want to make the publication into a full-on content website (although it will still live on as a publication on medium) so it feels like a more legit thing.
So there you have it, the two main projects you can help me make by going to patreon and donating. There are other things I am working on and you will see them pop up over the course of the year but for now, these two are the biggest most challenging I need your support to do.
There is absolutely no pressure to actually donate. If you can't donate, don’t forget to support by sharing and endorsing it to a friend. And if an endorsement is too much to ask for, you can support me by simply being a dedicated consumer.
Last Note. I am using patreon because it literally exists so people can support creators which is what I am but I also understand that I am Nigerian and you probably are too so if you know something more suitable for Nigerians please suggest to me so I can add it to this.
