The chicken-or-the-egg question of the creator economy:

“What should I build first: an audience or a product?”

And here’s my super lame cop-out answer: it depends.

(Yeah that answer’s NOT going viral…)

The truth is, both can work — and the right strategy for you will depend on your situation and how quickly you want revenue. I’m going to share a few examples of creators who are taking both paths to success.

But first I’ll share my story.

I had a small audience when I started my newsletter (ie. my product) in January 2021. My Twitter following was around 700 people. I had no other platforms to beckon people to consume my product. Just Twitter.

So instead of trying to decide which to grow first — I simply did both simultaneously.

Was that the right move?

I’m 14 months into simultaneously publishing a newsletter (product) and building a Twitter following (audience) — all while trying to promote & monetize the newsletter AND increase the subscriber base.

It’s… a lot.

The results?
→ A newsletter product I’m proud of that’s been published 60 editions in 62 weeks.
→ My Twitter audience is now ~5200.
→ The newsletter has ~1260 subscribers and earns around $200–300/month in revenue.

Others have gone about the process a little differently than me…

AUDIENCE FIRST LIKE SAMANTHA AND JUSTIN

Samantha Demers has grown a loyal fanbase of over 9,000 Twitter followers by becoming a well-known voice in Twitter Spaces as a host and moderator while discussing topics like being a mindful creator and imposter syndrome.

Samantha has no product to sell — yet — and just recently started a newsletter. Her first edition went out February 7th, 2022 to over 100 subscribers! That’s incredible. My first newsletter went out to a whopping zero subscribers.

How’d she do it? She tweeted out to her audience that she was launching a newsletter and shared the sign-up page. Given her audience’s size, 100 sign-ups wasn’t a stretch.

She now has over 340 subscribers after publishing 7 weekly editions.

Justin Welsh started creating valuable content on LinkedIn after suffering from a severe panic attack several years back, forcing him to rethink his professional career.

Justin offered a ton of value with his posts on LinkedIn and attracted thousands of followers there.

When he realized the “playbook” of how to grow an audience — and with a sizeable audience following him — he created the LinkedIn Playbook and has since sold over 1400 copies at $50 each (napkin math = over $70k).

As if you needed more proof… Justin is about to surpass $2M in digital sales in 2.5 years.

For both of these creators, building an audience first has served them well.

Building an audience first can bring you the clarity you need to create a successful product.

PRODUCT FIRST LIKE PIETER

Pieter is a prolific builder and creator. He’s built hundreds of tools, apps, and websites. And a large majority of them have failed. But instead of trying to grow a massive following first and then sell a product, Pieter focused on building and launching.

He became popular in digital communities like Indiehackers as he’d share his builds and launch products at an unbelievable rate.

Pieter did NOT slowly and strategically build an audience first — he leveraged his skills building tools and apps and would launch them to success or failure. He’s openly shared the amount of failed projects he’s launched.

He’s also openly shared his few successes: NomadList.com and RemoteOK.com which earn him a majority of his $2.9M ARR. That’s right — Pieter’s products earn him nearly $3 million dollars in annual revenue. And he did this without focusing on building an audience first.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT LIKE DAREN AND BRETT

Daren’s writing a book and selling it. But he’s not worried about having a small audience. Instead he’s going to leverage other people’s audiences as much as possible. He lays out his plan how he’s going to launch and aim to hit $25,000 with his new book release.

Brett started a one-person design business and by taking “unlimited” work for a monthly fee. Brett was too busy with client work to grow an audience and didn’t have the desire to spend his spare time doing it. So instead he bought an audience.

FINAL ANSWER: TAKE YOUR PICK

So my initial answer of “it depends” is legit. And really, that’s freeing, isn’t it — because there is no wrong way or wrong answer.

Starting with a product first is optimal if you can build and launch quickly and iterate along the way.

Starting with an audience is optimal if you’re not sure exactly what kind of product to create and if you have time to build it.

You could borrow other audiences like Daren or buy an audience like Brett. Or you could build both simultaneously like me.

The options are there which means the excuses shouldn’t be ;)

Now start building.