Reddit wants to make it harder for people to visit its website.
That sounds like a terrible business decision. After all, isn't the goal to attract as many people as possible? But according to The Verge, Reddit is considering requiring visitors to log in before they can browse the site.
Why? Because Reddit recognizes something that could change how you think about growing your own business: Reaching more people and making more money are two different challenges.
The 80% Difference
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman says that more than 80% of the company's monetization comes from logged-in and app users, even though logged-out visitors account for a majority of its daily users.
Reddit has good reasons to encourage more people to log in. Identifying users allows the company to deliver more targeted advertising, personalize their experience, and better protect its content from unauthorized scraping. By encouraging more visitors to create accounts, Reddit hopes to generate more revenue from the traffic it already attracts.
The number of people you reach doesn't tell you how much money you'll make.
The Problem With Chasing Everybody
If you're a content creator, you've probably spent a lot of time trying to reach more people. You optimize headlines for search engines, study social media algorithms, and experiment with different formats, hoping something will go viral.
And when those efforts work, you celebrate. More views. More followers. More subscribers.
But what happens when your audience grows and your revenue doesn't?
You could have 100,000 followers and still struggle to pay the bills, while another creator with a much smaller audience generates enough revenue to run a thriving business. The difference isn't necessarily the quality of your content. It's how you create value for your audience and how you turn that value into revenue.
Attracting attention is only the beginning. You still need a way to make money from it.
What Else Does Your Audience Need?
Imagine you host a podcast about gardening. You could spend the next year trying to double your downloads by producing more episodes, posting more social media clips, and booking bigger guests.
Or you could ask what your existing listeners need that your podcast doesn't provide.
Maybe they want advice on their own gardens. Maybe they'd pay to attend a workshop with an expert. Maybe they'd love to meet other gardeners in their area, exchange advice, and help one another solve problems.
None of those opportunities requires you to double your audience. They require you to understand what your audience values and find a way to deliver it.
Reddit is trying to generate more revenue from its existing traffic by changing how people access its platform. You can approach the same challenge differently by finding new ways to serve the people you're already reaching.
The next time you're tempted to ask, "How do I reach more people?" try asking a different question: "What could I offer the people I've already reached that they'd gladly pay for?"
You might discover that your next revenue opportunity doesn't require a bigger audience.
What if you didn't need a bigger audience to make more money?
You may already have an audience that could support a new revenue stream. The challenge is figuring out what you could offer them beyond your content.
In my free Beyond Content Workshop, I'll help you identify opportunities to generate revenue by bringing your audience together, even if you don't have a massive following.
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