Steps to Get Your Digital Passion Project to Outlive Quarantine
Tags: Productivity, Side Hustle, Improvement, Life, Digital

Similarly, many of us have taken advantage of the downtime to rekindle or maybe even find new digital passions.

Instagram Live has been the go-to platform but there have also been attempts at new podcasts, Zoom webinars, YouTube channels, TikTok videos and the list goes on.

But as life returns to some semblance of normality, most of those projects are facing an existential crisis.

Are you going to crack the post-quarantine sustainability code like Tory Lanez or will you move on with your life like this whole phase never happened?

In working out whether your digital passion project is sustainable, you must ask yourself 3 questions:

#1 What’s In It For You?

Human beings are far less selfless than we’d like to think.

I’ve found that the most sustainable passion projects are a form of quid pro quo. If you’re not extracting any value from your passion project, you’re unlikely to carry on, even if others are.

Value needn’t be monetary, although that helps.

Time is such a finite resource that receiving money in return for it usually seems like the fairest exchange.

Post-quarantine, as you have less time for your passion, you’d have more doubts about chasing it. And if there’s no gold coin-reflected light at the end of the passion tunnel, those doubts will only grow.

That monetization path or promise of a monetization path is clearer when your passion project benefits from your area of expertise or vice-versa.

For instance, if you’re a financial consultant and you started a podcast to share personal investment advice, even if you never get ads or sponsors, at least the learning you get while preparing for each episode is truly not lost.

Also, you can gain credibility in your field that will boost your profile and help you in the long run.

However, if your passion project is far from your area of competence, you’d need either of two things:

Be so good at your craft that the path to monetization is short, Have something else to sustain you if that path is long.

Some folks look to derive non-monetary value from their projects. They want to help others, share knowledge, teach and so on.

For the projects done out of the kindness of one’s heart or as a creative outlet, hardcoding sustainability may rob you of the value you’ll receive from fulfilment.

#2 What’s In It For Others?

A lot of people have a problem with being used, I’m not one of them.

I understand the worst-case scenarios and the negative feelings that come with being manipulated.

However, I’ve always felt like I’d much rather be a person that can be used, and by extension be useful, than somebody who can’t be, and by extension be useless.

In any project that requires an audience, it’s important to know what use you serve — entertainment, education, something to hate on etc — this knowledge helps with your value proposition.

The projects that go the farthest are the ones where the creator and the audience both derive value.

One sure way to know if your proposition is working and that others find your work useful is to observe if it is attracting the attention of people outside your circle.

I’m sure it’s nice that your family has subscribed to your YouTube channel, there’s a lot of validation that can come from that, but who else has subscribed?

After the money, the most objective way to measure a value exchange is an audience. And except you’re buying Likes and followers in the social media black market, numbers simply do not lie.

Photo by Davide Ragusa on Unsplash

As a writer, I’ve always struggled to find the balance between what I like to write about and what the data shows me that others like to read.

But I’m not ashamed to say that the farther I progress, the more the data wins.

Some call it ‘selling out’, I call it being useful to others. As long as you don’t lose yourself in the process, everyone will be fine.

#3 What Is Your Sustainability Plan?

We were never going to be in the house forever. You need a plan for when your life goes back to normal and your audience resume activities that do not involve a screen.

Your plan should factor in the following: