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You can be creating content for multiple reasons – as a side-project or hobby, to make some side-income, or this creating content is your full-time job.
So there needs to be a way to measure your success as a content creator. Milestones.
Milestones help you track your progress and success. But more importantly, milestones motivate you to keep going.
YouTube created its milestone awards based on subscribers. You get the Silver Creator Award at 100K and at 10 million you get the diamond creator award. It’s a neat way to encourage creators.
Now, not everyone is creating content on YouTube. So what can you do if you are a podcast host, blogger, Instagram content creator, product creator, or just anything else?
One way is you can look at the metrics such as views, likes, and comments which is an okay way to measure engagement. It’s a form of validation, it’s a useful way. If your engagement is increasing, you are on the right path. If it’s going down, you have to course-correct.
But these are vanity metrics. There are multiple factors involved. If your end-goal is to make money from your content, the milestones need to be monetary.
I have a way of tracking milestones which I am calling the ‘The Creator Milestones’. I know, it’s not a flashy name but gets the job done.
It’s essentially tracking your success through sustainable monetary milestones. The word sustainable is key. You cannot have the monetary milestone for a month to reach that level. The money needs to be sustainable at each milestone.
The First Dollar
I personally feel this is one of the toughest milestones. It is always difficult to get started.
A lot of people fail right here. They come up with great ideas but are never motivated enough to implement these ideas. They face psychological setbacks, impostor syndrome, procrastination, or the ‘something else came up’ dilemma.
By the time they deal with these, the idea isn’t good enough or someone else has already implemented it.
And then it starts over.
Yup, getting started is the toughest. But even once you get started, the challenges continue. You’re not getting 100 likes or 50 subscribers per day like your favorite YouTubers. Survivorship bias is real.
Most people miss this or don’t understand it – creating content online is a simmering process. It’s slow. The outcome is tempting.
Let’s say, you have created your content and monetized it. And now you’re waiting for that paycheck. But there’s nothing. Not even a bleep. This is the first step.
It’s important to know that not everyone can make money as soon as they start. There is an initial phase where you are just figuring things out.
Branding, creating your pages, polishing your content, publishing and marketing, networking with people through social media, selling your content, and waiting for those page views. It’s a very slow process.
If you’re a blogger, for example, this Income School video says that in the first 6-months if you earn more than a 1$, you have done an incredible job. Yup, 6-months, and the target is still $1. Graham Stephan breaks down his YouTube earnings in this video and shows that in his first 3-months as a YouTube creator he hardly made anything. And this is Graham Stephan! I have friends who have been creating videos for months and still get 10 views per video.
But the idea is to keep going until you earn your first dollar! I earned my first dollar 6-months after posting online.
And that’s why I think it is the most important milestone. Once you have earned the first dollar online, you have your foot through the door and have gone through the initial challenges.
Pizza Money
You have earned your first dollar, congrats!
The next milestone is earning pizza money. Yes, a pizza per month. I am talking about the entire pie not the NYC $1 slice.
Why a pizza? The rate is usually consistent across the globe for a pie; about 10$ which in this milestone you’re earning sustainably every month.
This is an important milestone for beginners because this shows that you have been working consistently on your content after the first dollar.
You have built an audience and are continuing to grow. You have been taking feedback from your audience, improving your content. This also shows that you are looking for ways to monetize your content or product to earn consistently.
This milestone is all about consistency. Any successful content creator will tell you that the most important thing about publishing online is consistency.
“Greatness is consistency.
Meditating once is common. Meditating daily is rare.
Exercising today is simple. Training every week is simply remarkable.
Writing one essay rarely matters. Write every day and you’re practically a hero.
Unheroic days can make for heroic decades.”
James Clear
Once you are consistent and have earned that pizza, enjoy your pie and move on.
Ramen Profitable
I am leveraging this concept from Paul Graham who coined the phrase in his article here.
This milestone again relates to sustainable profits. The money you’re earning from your content should cover your (and your team’s) minimum living expenses.
“Ramen profitability is the other extreme: a startup that becomes profitable after 2 months, even though its revenues are only $3000 a month because the only employees are a couple of 25-year-old founders who can live on practically nothing. Revenues of $3000 a month do not mean the company has succeeded. But it does share something with the one that’s profitable in the traditional way: they don’t need to raise money to survive.”
Paul Graham in Ramen Profitable
You can sustain yourself just through profits from your content and no other income.
It’s important to note that he says the profitability in revenue sustains a couple of 25-year-old founders living on practically nothing. Hence, your minimum living expense per month.
You’re not living that lavish Logan Paul life but can survive just on your content every month.
A lot of people quit their full-time jobs when they reach this milestone. They can survive on their side-project income, hence, quit your full-time job and grow your side-project.
If you’re smart, you’ll recognize that a quick way to be ‘ramen profitable’ is to reduce your expenses. I mean, reducing your expenses is always a good way to be wealthy. But a lot of people move to cheaper countries around the world to be ramen profitable with their content. A bunch of digital nomads, hence, flock to Bali or Mexico. The cost of living is less and they are able to work on their content.
Tiramisu Money
And this is the final milestone, Tiramisu money.
You are now earning enough to order desserts in a restaurant without giving it a second thought.
You’ve made it. You are not only surviving just through your content but more than profitable.
Why Tiramisu? Because I like it.
From here your next milestone could be being filthy rich like Mr. Beast or continuing to earn this amount sustainably.
You can even start a new project from the income of your current project. You know, start all over again.
