One last job. Then she’ll retire. But this job just might kill her. Isn’t that always the way?
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Almost all big audiences are built with advertising of some kind. I’m talking about big, engaged audiences here. If you are waiting for somebody else to bless you with virality, then you’ll probably be waiting forever.
Honestly, the number of people who have grown a huge fanbase organically might as well be zero. I know this is the proverbial third rail of building a creative business. All artists think they should be able to grow organically or it doesn’t count, but organic growth takes time, and eventually, it either tapers off or explodes, and 999,999 times out of a million, it tapers off.
There is a saying “The person who can spend the most on marketing wins.”
Part of that is because everybody else is waiting to be blessed from some all-powerful algorithm.
Yes, it is possible to build and monetize a nice fanbase without advertising.
Some say I have done so, but even though I didn’t start spending a significant amount on Facebook ads until 2018, I spent a LOT on conventions since 2016, which is its own form of advertising.
In 2016, I spent $7,700 on convention tables and travel, my first real full show year. I didn’t invest in advertising, and I had my worst year as a full-time creator, barely able to eek out $50,000, and losing money at a rate of $2 for every $1 I made in revenue. It sucked.
In 2017, I spent $16,425.00, and this was the year I did two $25,000+ campaigns and went over $100,000 for the first time.
In 2018, I spent $21,425.00 + $12,096 on Facebook advertising, for a total of $33,521, which is the year I ran a $39,246 Kickstarter.
In 2019, I spent $19,905 on conventions and another $12,489 on Facebook advertising for a total of $32394, which is my third year in a row with $100,000+ revenue.
Musicians tour constantly, and that counts as advertising as well, but it is recoupable advertising. I am all about creating advertising campaigns that pay for themselves immediately and then using those newfound fans as the base for my next campaign.
The more I spend on advertising, and the longer I spent it for, the more success I get. I am not naive enough to believe that I can build or sustain a business on virality.
That would be folly.
The secret is to find an advertising mechanism that is profitable. Then, take the profits and funnel that back into advertising, along with your initial spend. If you have $20 and you make $40, not you put $40 into the advertising mechanic, and then with $40 you make $80, and so on, until you eventually scale-up, I’m still nowhere near the scale I want, but I know what is working, and working to do more of that every day.
Is it possible to do without advertising?
Yes, but when you factor in the number of people who’ve had viral success and compare it to the number of total creators, it is effectively ZERO percent. There are a lot of things you can do for FREE. I know, I literally wrote the course and two books on how to build a fanbase for free, but at some point, you HAVE to advertise if you want to scale, because having 100 fans on Facebook and 20 on Twitter is just not good enough to make a living doing this stuff.
It’s not enough. You have to find another way. You can say “well, I don’t even make $20,000 in a year. How can I spend that on advertising, Mr. Moneybags?” But I didn’t start there. I found out how to sell at conventions, and make it profitable, and then I funneled those profits into more conventions, and more, and more, and that’s how I scaled.
Then, I figured out what ads were profitable, and I kept scaling those until I hit a comfortable number. I have only lost money on two shows in my whole career, and while I’ve had more than two failed marketing campaigns, I cut the ones that don’t work, and then double down on those that did.
I didn’t create magic. I took money, made more money, and then took that extra money and put it back into the system again and again and again. If I ever stopped doing that, then my company would slow down immeasurably, but because I understand what works, I can keep doing it and expect success with advertising in the future.
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