You will be told, repeatedly, that you need to build an audience. Almost nobody will tell you the more important thing, which is that you need to own what you make. Those are different projects, and only one of them survives a platform shutting down.

Read the sentence everybody scrolls past

Every platform you upload to asks you to agree to something. Buried in it, in almost every case, is a clause granting the platform a worldwide, royalty-free, sub-licensable licence to use what you post.

That clause is not automatically sinister — a service cannot display your photograph without permission to display your photograph. But you should know three things about it. It usually survives you deleting the post. It usually allows the platform to sub-license to third parties. And you almost certainly agreed to it without reading it.

You keep the copyright. You have also handed out a very broad permission. Both are true at once, and knowing that changes what you choose to upload where.

Keep the master

This is the single habit that separates people whose work compounds from people who start again every two years.

Whatever you make — a beat, a design, an essay, a short film — the version you upload is a compressed copy. Keep the original. The full-resolution export, the project file, the raw stems. Keep it in two places, one of which is not your phone.

Phones get stolen. Accounts get banned by an automated system with no appeal. Platforms shut down — ask anyone who kept their portfolio on a service that no longer exists. If the only copy of your work lives on a server you do not control, you are one policy change from losing three years.

Timestamp your work

If you ever need to prove you made something first, you will need evidence that predates the dispute. Email the file to yourself the day you finish it and never delete that email. The header carries a date you did not write.

It is crude and it costs nothing, and it is dramatically better than having nothing.

Build somewhere you can leave

Use platforms. That is what they are for. But treat every one of them as rented ground.

The test is simple: if this platform disappeared tomorrow, what would I still have? If the answer is nothing, fix that before you post again. A list of people who can reach you directly, held somewhere you control, is worth more than a follower count you cannot export.

Understand what your data pays for

You already know data is expensive. What is less obvious is that you are paying twice — once in naira for the bundle, and again in the information your activity generates, which is worth a great deal to somebody and nothing to you.

You cannot opt out of that entirely. You can be deliberate about it. Know which apps run in the background. Know what you have granted permission to. Know that "free" describes the price you pay in money and nothing else.

Five things worth doing this week

1. Find the original files for your three best pieces of work. Put them somewhere that is not your phone.
2. Email yourself your most recent finished piece. Archive it, do not delete it.
3. Read the content licence clause of the platform you post to most. Just that one clause.
4. Write down ten people who would want to hear from you directly, and how to reach them without an algorithm in the way.
5. Check what has permission to your camera, microphone and contacts. Revoke what you do not recognise.

None of this requires money. All of it requires deciding that what you make has value worth protecting — which it does, whether or not anybody has told you so yet.