Overnight Successes

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I see people get discouraged trying crowdfunding, or who look at the success of other people and wonder why it's not happening for them.

I set up Stardancer.Org (my personal website, with its thousands—literally—of pieces of scanned art) in August 1998, and before that I'd had a website without a domain name for several years. I've been giving away free content in the form of art and bits of story for almost fifteen years.

That's how long it took me to build my audience... and I'm not even a big superstar.

If you really are committed to this road, if you want to share your work and build an audience, you're in it for the long haul. Barring some bizarre, Lottery-like circumstance, it'll be years before you start seeing returns on your time and effort, and you'll be giving away a lot of things you might have sold to some more traditional venue to do it. But if you do invest the work in it, if you keep at it, then eventually you'll grow your audience to the point where money comes in, now and then.

So... don't give up. As the old saw goes, it takes a decade to make an overnight success. :)

Comments

[themaskmaker.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I was pretty sure this was the case, but it's good to see confirmation of my hunch.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

I figured it needed re-stating... I see a lot of discouragement, not just in crowdfunded endeavors, but in anyone trying to get traction for their creative business. Unfortunately, having talent rarely exempts you from the "hard work" and "long time investment" portions of the program. :/

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I've been regularly active online since the early 1990's so over 15 years. My first website dates from 1998, so I've been giving away massive chunks of content online for 11 years; that site included fiction, nonfiction, and poetry (some reprints, some original). Those activities were intended for research, networking, and exposure.

I deliberately held off starting a blog until I had something that I could sell to people who got hooked on my work, so blogging started in summer of 2007 when Composing Magic came out. I launched the first fishbowls at the end of 2007, posting one free poem without a donation button. Then in January 2008, I introduced the "Buy It Now" feature so people could sponsor poems they wanted to make public. (I usually send a copy of the resulting poem to the person who prompted it, but 1) it's your-eyes-only, and 2) if your prompt leads to several poems, you'll get to see at least one but not always all.) A commonly cited reason for sponsorship is so the sponsor can share the poem with a particular person or people. Over time, I've added more options for support, mostly at the suggestion of my audience.

Also important: it's not just how long you've been working a particular audience, it's how long you've been working. I've been writing poetry for over 30 years, and writing it regularly for about 25. Of all my skills, this is probably the most developed; my quality is consistently high. So I can do things like ask other people for inspiration and know that I'll be able to create good poetry from whatever I get.

You don't have to have decades of experience before you can try cyberfunded creativity, but it sure does help.

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

Even going the 'mainstream' route takes many years of hard work (Eragon* notwithstanding) in order to become an overnight sensation.

I am doing my bit because, with all my health problems and my age, it is one thing I can devote my energies to and still feel somewhat useful and validated. I was told most of my life that I had no talent worth pursuing and I bought into that. I am finding out that some people enjoy my, and sordak's, bits of silly imaginings. And that is fine by me. If I make a nickel off of any one of them I will be a bit pleased. I would prefer to have a following of more than ten people, but I would also prefer to be young and healthy. And pretty. *sigh*


*I don't see the appeal of the book(s). I got the first one and read about half of it before I became totally bored and disgusted with the lack of plot and realistic characters. Different strokes, I guess.

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

Amen to this. I've been working steadily on my business since 1993, and people have always seemed to expect magic wand answers to 'how to be successful.' There aren't any such answers!