I wrote a semi-popular blog for a couple years as I was coming up in the advertising agency world as a digital strategist.
I knew enough about media planning to not bother trying to monetize my content; the ROI would never pay off if that were the goal, and I'd caution against it, unless you already have an active audience in the 10,000+ range who is anxiously waiting to hear your personal thoughts about a specific topic.
The likely outcome is farther below your expectations than you're likely to guess. We're talking thousands of hours before you make hundreds of dollars. And the income from this activity is the opposite of "passive". Content creation is the least scalable activity you could engage in.
The strategy that worked for me - and works for nearly everyone who sticks with it for something like 18+ months - was to use writing (or other content creation) as proof of expertise, seriousness, and passion. Proof that you're an interesting person worth listening to about something that's important to someone else.
My blog dramatically accelerated a career, led to important new business relationships, speaking opportunities, and let me do consulting projects (which often generate more revenue in a week than a site could make in a year).
Content creation is the least scalable activity you could engage in.
Don't tell 22words.com [1] and BoredPanda (and the 370 clones) about that. They're currently riding the great Facebook junk content spam train to tens of millions in annual revenue off a very modest amount of daily low-value content. They're the new version of the Demand Media / Google content machines (except they're doing the same traffic with 1/100th the content). Facebook will smash them sooner than later as it begins to overwhelm the platform, however it's gangbusters for now.
I guess where we differ is that I don't think those are content businesses. The OP was looking for alternatives to building a service or app, and those businesses are automated marketing systems. I think they're closer to apps than not.
I took the OP's question to mean s/he wanted to create content.
Comments
I wrote a semi-popular blog for a couple years as I was coming up in the advertising agency world as a digital strategist.
I knew enough about media planning to not bother trying to monetize my content; the ROI would never pay off if that were the goal, and I'd caution against it, unless you already have an active audience in the 10,000+ range who is anxiously waiting to hear your personal thoughts about a specific topic.
The likely outcome is farther below your expectations than you're likely to guess. We're talking thousands of hours before you make hundreds of dollars. And the income from this activity is the opposite of "passive". Content creation is the least scalable activity you could engage in.
The strategy that worked for me - and works for nearly everyone who sticks with it for something like 18+ months - was to use writing (or other content creation) as proof of expertise, seriousness, and passion. Proof that you're an interesting person worth listening to about something that's important to someone else.
My blog dramatically accelerated a career, led to important new business relationships, speaking opportunities, and let me do consulting projects (which often generate more revenue in a week than a site could make in a year).
Don't tell 22words.com [1] and BoredPanda (and the 370 clones) about that. They're currently riding the great Facebook junk content spam train to tens of millions in annual revenue off a very modest amount of daily low-value content. They're the new version of the Demand Media / Google content machines (except they're doing the same traffic with 1/100th the content). Facebook will smash them sooner than later as it begins to overwhelm the platform, however it's gangbusters for now.
[1] https://www.quantcast.com/twentytwowords.com
I guess where we differ is that I don't think those are content businesses. The OP was looking for alternatives to building a service or app, and those businesses are automated marketing systems. I think they're closer to apps than not.
I took the OP's question to mean s/he wanted to create content.