There was a time when the word monetization sounded sophisticated to me. It had the same sort of glow as passive income or thought leader. These were things successful people said while standing on stages with wireless microphones and wearing sneakers that cost more than my car.
I assumed monetization meant getting paid to do something you already loved. What I eventually discovered was that it mostly meant finding increasingly creative ways to annoy strangers until a very small percentage of them bought something.
You know… The carnival game business model.
As someone who’s built more than a few platforms and writes a great many essays that relatively few people ask for, I eventually wandered into the world of online marketing. At first it seemed harmless enough. Watch a few YouTube videos. Read a few books. Learn how the successful people do it.
Before long, my recommendations consisted almost entirely of men in fitted black T-shirts explaining how they’d made seven figures while standing in front of rented Lamborghinis. (Apparently, every millionaire lives in an empty warehouse with exposed brick and a podcast microphone).
The advice was always remarkably consistent. Post more. Post every day. Ten times a day. Repurpose your content. Optimize your thumbnails. Create a funnel. Build your email list. Split test your headlines. Never waste a piece of content. Never waste an audience.
Never waste… Never. Never. Never.
At some point I realized that I hadn’t actually created anything in weeks. I’d been studying how to sell the things I wasn’t making.
That’s when the hamster wheel revealed itself.
You don’t just create anymore. You create content about creating content. Then you create content explaining the content you created. Then you edit the content into short videos so people who would never read the original content can ignore it in a different format.
Eventually you’re spending more time feeding the machine than doing the thing that made you build the machine in the first place.
It’s strangely addictive.
Every view feels like the next scratch-off ticket. Every new subscriber whispers that perhaps this is the one. Maybe this post goes viral. Maybe this video finally catches fire. Maybe today the algorithm smiles upon you like some mysterious digital deity that accepts sacrifices in the form of hashtags.
Most days it doesn’t.
Tomorrow, though…
Tomorrow could be different.
I understand why people get caught in it. Some people become enormously successful. Good for them. Truly. But I’ve also noticed that many of them seem to spend every waking hour teaching everyone else how to become enormously successful.
It’s like finding a gold mine and then deciding your real passion is selling maps.
I stepped off that hamster wheel fairly quickly. Partly because I don’t have the temperament for it. Partly because I’m old enough to recognize an addiction when it politely introduces itself as an opportunity.
I’ve also accepted something that’s oddly liberating. I’m not built for mass appeal. I’m built for a small group of people who actually care. I’d rather have a thousand readers who genuinely think than a hundred thousand who accidentally wandered in because I learned the optimal posting time on a Tuesday.
Maybe that’s age. Or maybe it’s finally understanding what success feels like.
These days I don’t finish an essay wondering how many people will click on it. I wonder something much more in keeping with my newfound idealism.
Did I say what I meant? Did the words string together in just the right way? Does the website I finished designing excite me? Am I satisfied with the result? If the answer is yes, then I feel richer than I ever did chasing monetization.
And that… Feels like success, to me.
