When You Can't Find an Audience
haikujaguar wrote a post about being an indie midlister. I commented about the value of interaction within a niche market. Then jsl32 observed, "It is precious and I find it to be amazing in so many ways. But that makes it so much more crushingly brutal when you can't find an audience in the new world of micro-appeal."
Yes, that's often a miserable experience, and there can be many reasons why it happens. You can do something about most of them.
* You could be expecting too much of a new project or audience.
* Sometimes your technical skill isn't ready for public view.
* Sometimes your storytelling or other aesthetic potential isn't ready.
* You may be using a platform that is poorly designed and doing nobody's exposure any good.
* You may be in a venue where the audience just isn't into what you're into and you'd have better luck elsewhere.
* Maybe you're falling short on self-promotion skills.
It's not always easy to tell these factors apart. Understand that several of them may stack, too. Here are some general ideas for identifying and fixing such problems.
* You can't tell the success of any online project in less than about a year, which is also true of most businesses. If you've been at it less than that, keep plugging away, it may improve. If you've been at it longer, then more troubleshooting may be helpful.
* If you've been writing/painting/whatever actively for less than 5 years, and the audience response is not very favorable, it's probably your skill level. Go make some big hunks of creative material and then try again. Fanwork is awesome practice; for original work, bingo cards and prompt calls help with inspiration. If less than 10 years, low skill is still pretty plausible. Pick a technique or a content type that isn't your best and push to improve it.
* If people have liked your work before and now they aren't, suspect context over content.
* If your audience is consistently complaining that a specific feature is unsatisfactory, you have two options:
-- Change the feature to please your current fans.
-- Look for new fans who would like what you're currently making.
* Use multiple venues. Make them different types of venue too. It's amazing how people go online in a bunch of places, but the people in any one place are different than who's in other places, and it can be hard to get them to migrate. Expand your use of venues where you get attention and drop ones where you don't. Try new ones.
* Watch for people to complain about things they can't find or don't like. It's targeting information, use it. You can ask your audience for input too. Or you can just go out and mine some place that tracks what people like. Writing or art? Hit fanworks. It tells you what people love so much that they'll cobble up some on their own to get more of it. Just pick whichever of the dozens of popular tropes you personally like, and load that stuff into your original canons.
* Study self-promotion techniques. If you have potential but little practice, then do more and you'll get better. If you just suck at these skills, admit that and try to find other people to boost your signal instead. You can often find friends to swap skills with. Nobody is good at everything, and that's okay.
Yes, that's often a miserable experience, and there can be many reasons why it happens. You can do something about most of them.
* You could be expecting too much of a new project or audience.
* Sometimes your technical skill isn't ready for public view.
* Sometimes your storytelling or other aesthetic potential isn't ready.
* You may be using a platform that is poorly designed and doing nobody's exposure any good.
* You may be in a venue where the audience just isn't into what you're into and you'd have better luck elsewhere.
* Maybe you're falling short on self-promotion skills.
It's not always easy to tell these factors apart. Understand that several of them may stack, too. Here are some general ideas for identifying and fixing such problems.
* You can't tell the success of any online project in less than about a year, which is also true of most businesses. If you've been at it less than that, keep plugging away, it may improve. If you've been at it longer, then more troubleshooting may be helpful.
* If you've been writing/painting/whatever actively for less than 5 years, and the audience response is not very favorable, it's probably your skill level. Go make some big hunks of creative material and then try again. Fanwork is awesome practice; for original work, bingo cards and prompt calls help with inspiration. If less than 10 years, low skill is still pretty plausible. Pick a technique or a content type that isn't your best and push to improve it.
* If people have liked your work before and now they aren't, suspect context over content.
* If your audience is consistently complaining that a specific feature is unsatisfactory, you have two options:
-- Change the feature to please your current fans.
-- Look for new fans who would like what you're currently making.
* Use multiple venues. Make them different types of venue too. It's amazing how people go online in a bunch of places, but the people in any one place are different than who's in other places, and it can be hard to get them to migrate. Expand your use of venues where you get attention and drop ones where you don't. Try new ones.
* Watch for people to complain about things they can't find or don't like. It's targeting information, use it. You can ask your audience for input too. Or you can just go out and mine some place that tracks what people like. Writing or art? Hit fanworks. It tells you what people love so much that they'll cobble up some on their own to get more of it. Just pick whichever of the dozens of popular tropes you personally like, and load that stuff into your original canons.
* Study self-promotion techniques. If you have potential but little practice, then do more and you'll get better. If you just suck at these skills, admit that and try to find other people to boost your signal instead. You can often find friends to swap skills with. Nobody is good at everything, and that's okay.