Lessons

Counting who could find you

What it is

The number of people who could come across your work on each platform, written down with today's date beside it.

Why it matters

A buyer cannot pay somebody they cannot find. This is a baseline, not a scoreboard — the figure barely matters today, and it matters enormously in three months when you write the second row underneath it.

The method

Each platform separately, then totalled. Do not round up. A group you own — a mailing list, a chat group you admin — is worth more per head than followers, because the message actually arrives.

Example

Danish had about four thousand followers and almost nobody saw his work, because everything he posted was somebody else's. Findable and invisible are two different problems.