The Content Slider: One Simple Way To Remain Between Money and Love

Here are 5 questions to help you understand the purpose of your content.

Content creation is a corrupting job — you can do it for the money, or you can do it for love. But each creator has a content slider in mind, switching between these two opposites. And staying in the middle is more challenging than you imagine.

When you start creating content, you may not know if you are doing it for passion or money. But you should be honest with yourself and pick one. This way, you can optimize your content based on your goals and mitigate all the unhealthy effects of your choice.

After a while, however, you may want to stabilize the content slider to remain between money and love. Because if you create only for passion, you miss many opportunities. While if you work only for money, your creativity might suffer.

So how can you choose between the two? And why should you mitigate the content slider and find one simple way to remain between money and love after a while?

The Unstable Content Slider

The beginning of a content creation career is full of uncertainty and hardships. And there are so many things you need to worry about that you don’t have the energy to care about passion and money. So it is better to pick one and focus on reaching a few goals that only deal with that choice.

If you just started a new project or worked on something for a long time without any results, reset everything and answer this question:

Do I want to create content because I love what I am doing, or do I want to make money?

Be honest with yourself, and answer with sincerity because nobody is judging you no matter your choice. Creating for love or money is quite different. And you should expect different results and hardships throughout your path.

What if the content slider moves towards love?

If the content slider moves towards love, you can ignore SEO strategies, CTAs, and promotional posts on your socials. You are creating to share your opinion about something. And nothing else matters when you feel satisfied with your content.

But if you choose to create for love, the chances of making a living out of it shrink. And maybe you don’t care about it, but what if you will?

There is a possibility to make money thanks to your passion too. Yet the chances are slim.

Pure statistics may allow you to fulfill the needs of an audience without even realizing it. And maybe, in your unawareness, you create something that later becomes viral. So you can continue acting as usual because the audience is searching for you and not the other way around.

Still, if you create for love, do not expect any results. The journey can fulfill your artistic desire, but it won’t make you succeed. Even working for money can’t give you that insurance, so make up your mind and focus on making money later.

What if the content slider moves towards money?

People often judge creators who make content for money. The audience sees the creator as a sellout, but that is usually false. So you shouldn’t feel ashamed of it. In the end, content creation is similar to many other jobs.

Which is the difference between working in an office or creating content 8 hours a day?

A creator could seem more independent in comparison with other careers. But usually, a creator that works for money has an audience to please. Or, if it works as a freelancer, it may have a customer to satisfy. So try to not fall into this delusion.

If your content slider moves towards money, you may lack the creativity and motivation of somebody who loves the work. And it will be demanding to reach the same level of intimacy with the topic you are discussing, or even storytelling about it.

In the long run, you may experience burnouts or creative slumps. Perhaps because you are engaging with a remunerative niche that doesn’t align with your interests. So you can’t discuss anything you want, and your decisions follow your audience’s taste more than yours.

On the bright side, you are making money thanks to your content, which is satisfying if your main goal is to become financially independent.

The Stable Content Slider

There are two things you can’t say to a creator. First, what to do with his life. And second, what to do with his content.

So if you want to make content for money, you are free to do it. Or, if you are working for fun, you can do that as well. You can do whatever you want until you are aware of the consequences of each choice.

Yet, if you want to create good content that gives you both money and satisfaction, you should move towards the middle of the content slider after a while. This way, you can use the benefits of both love and money and create a vicious cycle that refills your motivation.

Money will increase your satisfaction. Fulfillment will boost your motivation and, therefore, your content output. And if you set up a scalable hustle, more content will also raise your income.

So by using the content slider, you will find one simple way to remain between money and love.

How to Remain in the Middle of Your Content Slider

In the beginning, a single focus allows perfection. You can choose to create for the money and learn to optimize your creations or do it for passion.

But if you want to transform your hustle into a long-term job, you need to compensate one of the two things with the other. And to do that, you can work on ten coupled slider influencers. So let’s understand which one you need to improve through five simple questions.

1 — Do you focus more on the quality or abundance of your content?

Quality versus quality is the first comparison you have to make to understand if you are working for money or love. Because when you love something, you put all your energies into providing high-quality content. While if you only produce for the income, you will focus more on raw numbers.

Focus on Quality → Nothing is perfect in this world, so stop searching for perfection, or you will never convert your passion into a job.

Focus on Quantity → Your audience might appreciate more insightful pieces, so stop giving them the same old repurposed content.

2 — Do you spend more time on building or upgrading an idea?

When you create for the sake of beauty, you spend much more time building the idea and thinking about all the possibilities that might occur. On the contrary, if you create to rank your page, you focus more on improving.

More Building → You won’t reach anybody if you don’t focus on optimizing your content a little bit. Don’t be afraid of ruining your perfect pieces. SEO is not that horrible.

More Upgrading → You can’t optimize everything you publish, or you will be perceived as made up and unoriginal. Bring out your creativity.

3 — Do you spend more time on creating or advertising?

If you enjoy creating but hate promoting, your slider pushes towards love. But in a job like this, solid marketing abilities sometimes count more than passion and ideas.

More Creation → If you don’t share with people what you created, why are you even doing it?

More Advertising → Stop focusing that much on promotion. A part of your audience may hate when you do it too much.

4 — Does finishing or checking analytics fulfill you more?

Finishing a piece of content will fulfill your dreams if you work for passion. But if you do it for the financial outcome, checking the analytics will be even more satisfying.

Fulfilled by Finishing → Don’t ignore analytics. They are the only way to study your work and understand what works and what doesn’t.

Fulfilled by Checking Analytics → If you lose too much time on stats and performance, your obsession will waste your time and reduce your output. Find fulfillment in the process instead of the results.

5 — Do you consume your content or just produce and then forget about it?

The best creators consume their content to spot their errors or stylistic progress. But if you work for money, you might focus only on producing, without ever consuming. So you will not improve.

More Consumption → Stop obsessing because of an error you made one year ago. If you find one, fix it. But don’t torture yourself with perfection.

More Production → Observe what you failed so you don’t repeat the same error. So consume your old content, and understand what you could have done better.

Final Thoughts

The content slider is one simple way to remain between money and love when creating content.

If you focus too much on passion, you will hardly transform your hobby into a job. On the contrary, obsessing over money can trigger slumps of creativity and motivation. So you need to find a way to keep the content slider in the middle.

For example, if you focus too much on quality, you may want to increase your output. Or you could stop building too many ideas at once to optimize one good argument.

It doesn’t matter how you do it. But do it, or you will never build the independent job you have always dreamt of.

Cover photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash.