I recently did a Substack live with Elin Petronella, an independent artist based in Paris who’s been building a creative business on her own terms for the last ten years.
She’s got half a million followers across Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest, and she’ll be the first to tell you that’s not even the point, as she recently walked away from monetizing on Substack, dropped her bestseller badge, and has been focusing on something more sustainable ever since.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t retain ownership this whole time. All the links are always going back to my own site,” Elin Petronella
All those followers across all those social media platforms is great and all, but if you’re not pointing them to something that’s more permanent, or if you’re not giving curious fans something to explore, you’re leaving money on the table.
As Elin explains, she has 200K followers on Instagram, and a single post might still only get 3,000 views. But if you can get just 1% of 3,000 click to your website, that’s still 30 people.
“How are you doing it before you had the idea that you wanted to monetize it? What are you already doing when people are not watching? What is your natural way of creating before you start thinking about eyes watching it or monetizing it? Double down on that,” Elin Petronella
When we start paying attention to how other people are doing things and assuming that that’s the way to do it, that’s where we can get in trouble. Trust your gut. Get back to the things that you enjoyed when you started making the work that you’re making.
