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Are You Producing Content Just For Content’s Sake?

Do you even have a business strategy?

I have a confession to make: for the last five years, I have been creating content for the sake of creating content. There hasn’t been a larger strategy behind my actions at all.

• I didn’t know what I was selling
• I didn’t know what I wanted my readers to do
• I didn’t know what came beyond the content

I just kept producing content every single day. I thought that if I would keep going at it, then I would understand who my readers were. Understand what problems they were facing. Figure out what products I needed to offer.

But no… I was just plain lost.

YES… one can become reasonably successful at attracting readers to his/her blog without having any clue what to do with all of that traffic.

The question one needs to ask himself is: for what purpose am I creating all this content and attracting readers to my site?

To be honest with you — my only purpose was that I enjoyed blogging. I thought that if only I kept going at it, then eventually I would be able to make a living off it.

I expected that eventually all that effort would pay off.

It didn’t.

Selfishly motivated.

If you’re creating content just for the sake of creating content, then you’re selfishly motivated. You may think that you are doing so to ‘create value’ for your readers, but in reality you are doing so because you enjoy the process.

If you’re honest with yourself, then content creation is nothing but your hobby.

Whether that is blogging, vlogging, podcasting or whatever other form of content, you fell in love with the process of creating it. And now, you can’t stop yourself from doing it.

You keep going at it in the hope that one day, you will make some serious money from it. That you will be able to get rid off your shitty job and replace it with that one thing you love doing.

Trust me, you won’t.

Not if you keep going like this, anyways.

The market doesn’t reward selfishness. The market only cares about what the market wants and needs. It couldn’t care less about you and your plan of making money doing that thing you love.

A shift in mind-set.

You urgently need to make a shift in mind-set away from ‘I am writing about this because I love it’ towards ‘what problems am I solving for my potential customers’?

There is no point in producing content, if it doesn’t address the needs of your target customers.

Here is what content production is at its core:

You are providing serious value for your potential customers by solving (parts of) a specific problem for them.

You may then offer paid products/services that go beyond your free content but actually address pretty much the same problems like your existing and free content does.

In other words, you are providing something FOR other people. Not because YOU enjoy it.

(Obviously, in an ideal world you enjoy the process, too. But your enjoyment alone won’t be enough for you to make a living).

Your blog/vlog/podcast is no business.

This is, I think, one of the most important ideas that content creators need to get their head around. By itself, your blog/vlog/podcast isn’t a business at all and will never be.

It is just a content platform.

A content platform doesn’t generate money.

It is what you are doing with that content platform, that has the potential to make you money.

Like any other business-owner, an influencer should always start with the following questions:

• what market I am serving?
• what problem am I solving?
• what solution (product) am I offering?

Until you have properly answered these questions and validated your idea by making your first profitable sale of a scalable product, you don’t have a business. You have a hobby.

Conclusion:

If you are a content producer without a business model, then you really need to take a step back and think things through.

You always need to start from the position of knowing exactly who you are serving, what problems you are solving, and what your (future) solution/product will look like.

And your content will have to be a reflection of this.

Honestly, you can’t just create any content and expect that you will eventually be able to monetize that. The only way of doing so is through advertising. And unless you drive enormous amounts of traffic, that won’t be profitable.

So, here’s what I am suggesting:

1. Start with a very clear business model in mind, and then build your content strategy around that business model
2. Make sure that all of your content is solution-oriented and addresses a very specific problem that your target market is facing
3. Always produce content with a purpose (i.e. the next step that you want your target customer to take)
4. If you don’t already have one, focus a big chunk of your attention on testing and building your first product ASAP

Call to action:

I’ve put together a free step-by-step guide on how to turn your blog into a profitable business. You can get the guide by clicking here.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 348,974+ people.

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