Sommer Duenow

As someone who wants to turn their creative work into income, I’ve been sorting through my feelings about monetization lately, and I keep returning to the same uneasy place because I still don’t know what to do with it.

I want to write. I want to make things. I want to share the parts of my life that feel thoughtful and alive and human. And yes, I would love for my work to support itself. 

The issue is that content creation no longer seems to be about the work alone.

It increasingly asks creators to become part of the work themselves. Not just skilled or original, but consistent and always visible.

The work matters, yes, but the personality and life behind it seem to matter more.

That’s where I keep getting stuck.

For years, the internet trained people to expect access for free, or something close to it, because so much of it was funded by advertising. That ad-driven model made access feel open, but it also pushed creatives toward scale and clicks.

Attention, not depth, became what everyone had to chase, and our present-day creator economy grew as a reaction to that problem.

People got tired of building on rented ground and watching advertisers capture most of the value. Eventually, patronage-based platforms offered writers, artists, and niche educators more control and independence without needing mass appeal or institutional backing.

In many ways, it was a necessary correction, and one that made sense. 

What came from it, however, has become problematic, in and of itself. 

Somewhere in that shift, what once felt like sharing became divided into exclusivity and tiers. And because so many creatives live under very real financial stress, the pressure to keep turning attention into income never eases; if anything at all, it intensifies. 

I think that shift has changed the emotional texture of the internet.

Audiences feel pressed, used, and nickel-and-dimed, while creators increasingly feel exposed, dependent, and perpetually on the edge of not having enough.

The whole thing feels so fucking demoralizing! 

I mean, I know how to price a thing.

I make something physical, someone wants it, and money changes hands. The exchange feels legible; the terms are clear. My work exists in a form someone can actually receive. 

What I don’t know how to price is proximity. 

And I’m not sure I want to. 

Because how do I build a creative presence online when so much of this seems to involve selling not just my work, but also some version of myself? Not always directly, not always crudely, but enough that I can feel it.

Social media doesn’t just want us to make things; it wants us to create an environment around ourselves that invokes a sense of closeness and gives users a reason to keep checking back in. 

We’re expected to curate a feeling of familiarity and community alongside whatever our crafts and talents are, because keeping audiences online longer is how these platforms get paid, and therefore how we get paid as well.

It has very little to do with our actual work.

I also understand not everyone sees that as a problem. 

Plenty of people participate in these systems in good faith and are comfortable being compensated through that exposure. And I certainly don’t believe every creator who uses them is manipulative or unethical. 

But I do think these structures can blur relationships, generosity, and admiration in ways that are hard to discuss openly and honestly.

Mostly because those who quietly uphold them are the same ones who benefit from the unpaid participation, loyalty, and emotional investment. And the platforms themselves also understand how essential creators are to their bottom line.

Complicating this further is that creators generally offer little in return beyond continued access to the same people who give their time and money to support them.

That glaring lack of reciprocity remains hard for me to ignore, particularly in spaces with established followings, moderator teams, and regular guests.

Access and support should never serve as proof of care. Once payments start to carry emotional weight that exceeds the actual exchange, it feels griftish, at best, even when the participation is voluntary.

It also hasn’t escaped my attention that this particular economic model often falls hardest on those least equipped to bear it.

Mental health, poverty, disability, unemployment, and a desire for belonging are all ordinary human vulnerabilities that create conditions for easy exploitation by those who know how to profit from emotional need.

I think dynamics like these deserve far more scrutiny than they currently receive.

Again, I think it’s important to emphasize this doesn’t happen in every community, but I do view this as a largely systemic issue, as I’ve seen it happen in enough spaces that I can’t pretend I don’t see it. 

And I won’t pretend I feel comfortable building a creative venture for myself inside that same logic. Entertainment, journalism and commentary all have intrinsic value; Being inspired, comforted or made to feel less alone isn’t nothing.

But with influence comes great responsibility, and creators should hold themselves accountable while acutely understanding the power – yes, power –  that comes with choosing to participate in this kind of work. 

And it is work.

Despite my efforts to reason my way out of these feelings and the judgment they carry, they’ve not gone away. I’m also frustrated that I’ve spent so long trying to untangle and understand this discomfort that I’ve left myself stuck.

A creative life is where I feel most at home.

Not out of ego or because I believe I have anything especially original to say; it simply feels like the most natural way for me to move through the world.

And sometimes, I just want to be seen.

It really is that simple.

But sharing that life more openly does not feel instinctive.

I’m a hermit.
I’m self-conscious.
I don’t like being on camera.
Visibility does not feel natural to me.

Outside of the occasional blog bump, self-promotion feels like a dirty word. Not embarrassing exactly or beneath me, but I’m too self-aware to relax into it.

I simply cannot make peace with charging for proximity the way I would justify charging for an actual object. Nor can I find footing with the idea of asking people to fund me because they enjoy my perspective or feel connected to the environment I’ve created around my work.

Some expenses shouldn’t become communal obligations.

But I also don’t know how to build something when I don’t have a neat offering and there are major copyright constraints at play. Yes, writing is often my strongest work, but it’s exceedingly difficult to do without publishing houses. 

And all other routes lead back to the same place, which is me. 

My oddly specific knowledge. My face. My voice. My personality. My opinions. My availability and subsequent ability to keep people engaged with my existence.

Maybe all of this hesitation is trying to tell me something, and I’m just being stubborn. Maybe my expectations of myself are higher than they need to be.

Or maybe I’ve simply spent too long in my own head.

I tend to do that, a lot.

But as of now, this path seems to ask for a comfort with self-sale that I’m not entirely sure I have. Could that comfort be developed?

Maybe.

Even so, I refuse to believe there isn’t another way of doing this without feeling so much internal friction or compromising my sense of self along the way… 

I just haven’t found it, yet.