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All content is a hustle
Speaking the quiet part out loud has always seemed a dirty part of content creation. To the ancient Greeks philosophy was the preserve of those who had the means to support themselves, either through teaching or being paid to perform their philosophy. Whole schools of thought arose to oppose the commercial need to support yourself, something which drove at the heart of monasticism and later movements to remove thinkers from society. Yet, as Shakespeare and Marlowe highlight in the 1590s without money your writing and ideas simply could not gain traction. All content, be it books or YouTube videos, require money to sustain, meaning that unless you are prepared to hustle for sponsors, patrons, or a book deal your content is reliant on a 9 to 5 job. This matters because the modern idea of content creation essentially mirrors the Renaissance notion of patronage, except in the 2020s creators have thousands, if not millions, of patrons who expect a certain brand for their buck. It also means that content creation becomes a matter of drawing an audience to you and hitting the zeitgeist at the right time.
If you watch any form of YouTube content, click on a certain type of Reddit account, partake in any X thread you will invariably see where the money is. Content creators can be subtle about it, though usually is blunt and on the nose. Adverts, sponsorship, Patreon and other revenue streams are plugged to the…
