Having a look back in history leads us to a better understanding of how to reach our audience.
Have a look back in history. In the medieval time, 15th century, the population was approximately 0,45 billion people and, the wealth was distributed between about 10% of them. So 45 million people. 90% of the population was mostly peasants.
Nowadays, we are close to 8 billion on the planet. Of course, more people have access to better living conditions, which means a better wealth distribution. Really?
As of December 2020, there were estimated to be 47+- million millionaires or high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) in the world.
According to these figures, only 0.6% of the population are millionaires.
The difference between the two eras is overwhelming. In the medieval period, life was much harder than today, and most of the wealthiest were merchants, traders and high society folks. In today’s time, it is not only merchants and the high society people who are wealthy but also ordinary people. Surprisingly it seems that fewer people are wealthy today if you compare with the medieval time.
Fewer people will be wealthier and wealthier in the future. More they have and more they make. It is a normal thing based on our capitalist system.
Here is where I want to bring you.
Not everyone on this planet is willing to become a millionaire nor famous. Humanity is mostly composed of doers.
Only 0.03% of the population are business owners. If one business-one owner but, some owners have more than one business. The percentage is lower than that.
My questions are:
According to these specifics, how many people really want to change their life?
How many are motivated to improve their life?
How many have the capacity and abilities to improve their life?
This list can go on and on. I think more and more to deepen this subject.
I’ve been writing and reading about motivation and personal development for a few years now. I’ve found that it’s almost the same crowd that follows all the gurus on this topic.
I can say that roughly 1% of the active population is really interested in their life improvement. The rest, they just go with the flow. They are followers, not doers.
As writers on this platform or any others, we try hard to increase our followers but are they the real deal? I know that it is a numbers game.
How many followers you have on your Facebook? How many of them bring something back to you?
It is the same thing with any followers on social media. How many of your followers on Medium bring you something? Give you some feedback? Is it not the followers-doers that we want? The ones that can help us improve?
Instead of focussing on beating a new record of followers at any cost, we should take better care of those who respond to our writings. They are a great source of insights, and they probably read more than just a few lines of your articles.
Medium is an excellent community of writers-readers, but we need to take care of each other’s improvement. To help each other become better and, in the end, we will all make better revenues, stable in the long run, not just as a flash in the pan!
In conclusion
You want to write about self-improvement and personal motivation, right but, remember first that you will be in the jungle among many other writers, gurus, speakers, etc. All are talking and writing to about 1% of the population.
Your message has to be different and strong to reach your crowd, expecting some of them will become followers and a few doers-followers. Those will bring you what you want and need.