Every month we run through a series of questions to help you run your freelance business like a bigger business—“self-coaching” your way to better results and a better life. 

Hey!

I was going to start us off this year with a systems check, but after seeing so many people in tears over the risk of lost income from TikTok, I think it’s a good time to revisit the dangers of digital sharecropping. 

In short, digital sharecropping is like the real world version—working on land that isn’t yours. You might be getting paid, but your risk exposure is high because you have little to no control over what happens with the land. (The concept’s always resonated with me since my grandparents were sharecroppers who left Georgia during the tail end of the Great Migration. They had to find opportunity and safety elsewhere.) 

Examples would be having all your income or leads coming from TikTok, or Vine (remember Vine??), or Twitter, or organic Facebook traffic…you get where I’m going. 

So this month, I want to go over four questions to ask to make sure we’re minimizing our digital sharecropping risk. 

#1 If it fails, do I fail? 

Sometimes it can be hard to tell if you’re deep into digital sharecropping risk, but there’s one simple question to ask. 

If this platform ends, will my freelance business fall to pieces?

Sometimes that answer can be kind of hard to nail down, because maybe you aren’t making money straight from a platform, but maybe all your leads are coming from LinkedIn or all your site traffic comes from Twitter posts.

If your answer is yes, then there’s no reason to panic, but you do have an area of high risk exposure that needs to be addressed. 

If you need some help figuring out whether you might be overexposed, drop by the Facebook Mastermind and we’ll see what we can help you with. 

Megan