"People don't do enough to build hype," Smithwrick says. "This is something that I'm trying to get a lot of people to understand. Before you begin to monetize your audience - sell to them, promote something - just start building an audience. You never know when you might need that in your back pocket."
"It took me three years of building that foundation to say, you know what, it's time for me to leave my full-time job."
"I started making content three years ago, part-time, before I even saw myself as a creator," Smithwrick says. "I was just sharing my perspective, sharing my thoughts on LinkedIn."
Ten Hundred's playing-card Kickstarter reached its $10,000 funding goal in three minutes and ultimately raised over $2 million. Brandon Smithwrick, then-Kickstarter director of content and creative and a Forbes '30 Under 30' 2024 selectee, emphasizes the importance of building an audience before monetization. He notes that consistent content creation over three years produced small branded deals that served as validation and proof points and ultimately enabled leaving full-time employment. He counsels creators to build hype and cultivate an audience before promoting or selling products so that support is available when launching monetization efforts.
Read at Hubspot
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]