You may be asking will subscription services allow you to grow as a maker? You might be just starting out and wondering what’s the best way to turn your hobby into a business. You could also be looking around and seeing all the content that most subscription makers have amassed.
The short answer is that you’re right to be concerned because it will take a lot of practice to become a subscription maker. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t just get started. There is actual value in sharing your journey with other people who want to chart a similar path.
The short-term value relates to the number and character of conversations you can have. You can ask questions about how other people have gotten started. You can ask questions about where other people see your hobby/industry heading. There value in all these questions for who are at similar stages in their journey.
It’s become common practice to seek out successful people and to follow any advice they have to offer. The challenge is that these heroic individuals took time to attain their stature. And not everything is as it once was. Put another way, just cause it worked for them doesn’t mean that it will work for you.
In fact, you should append the phrase, “your mileage may vary” to every story here about how things used to work. There is value in holding discussions about what has changed and where your fans think that things are going.
Here is a good place to introduce “fans” as an asset to be cultivated. Fans are people who support in the work that you do. They give you positive feedback when they approve of what you are doing. And they are willing to tell you where you are going wrong. Also, they defend you when they think that you are getting a raw deal.
For the record, fans are the coin of the realm when it comes to subscription services. Identifying and engaging them early in your journey the smartest thing that you can do. Once you have decided to take your steps then is the best time to reach out to people may someday become your true fans.
You’ll hear this term a lot around the internet. True Fans are people who will buy anything you produce. They will be the first people to buy your subscription services. And they will stick with you when you decide to expand into something new. They’ll see you through rough patches.
Subscription Services are the hardest things in the world to sell because they are not simply transactional. They are more conversational than what you may be used if think about what it takes to sell a box of candy bars. Subscription Services are also never complete. They grow and morph as time passes.
This is the nature of growth in any hobby/profession. You start out thinking that things work one way then you listen to people who have done before and decide it really works differently. However, you run it pass your true fans before you give up. So yes you can continue to grow once you start a subscription service. Zachary Alexander