Unleashing creativity is no longer just about producing content. It's about leveraging it for financial gain. Explore six innovative strategies that creators are employing to monetize their work beyond the realm of content creation.
Leverage ownership: creating your own line of merchandise
Have a large audience with obvious merchandise tie-ins.
- Quality control over your products
- On-message, brand-specific targeting
- Building a company with an exclusive customer base already in mind
- You don’t have to launch your own brand at first.
Leverage Communities
Seek out communities and create new content for them.
- Twitter’s Ticketed Spaces are another potential source of revenue for creators with high-leverage social media accounts who aren’t sure how to monetize the small communities they’ve built (e.g., Facebook’s managed groups).
Create branded product lines or engage in brand collaborations
George Lucas took ownership of the rights to “Star Wars” merchandise, and sold it to Disney for $4 billion
Add sponsorships to newsletters, podcasts, and more
Smaller influencers-more “niche” celebrities than the silver screen stars of the past-are gaining new traction by niching down and finding more targeted sponsors.
Go real-world: expand into real estate
You don’t have to stick to digital real estate. Use your popularity with an audience to lend some buzz to an entirely new venture.
- A Beautiful Mess couple decided to purchase a duplex in Nashville and rent it out to anyone in their audience who might be interested in the duplex.
Partnership: leveraging an existing brand’s infrastructure
Leverage the existing structures of brands by negotiating exclusive tie-ins
- Camila Coelho did this with Revolve
- She started a fashion and beauty YouTube channel and worked with brands like Lancôme and Carol Bassi before launching her own line with Luxury Brand Group and Revolve
Diversify your income, not your time
Diversifying your income isn’t about the money grab. It’s about reclaiming your time to help avoid burnout.
- Scaling your offerings so you can reach more people
- Giving yourself more security in case your usual wells run dry
Create a scalable business model
Look for business ideas that don’t require your presence to create the product.
- Find the “embedded flywheels” in your audience to scale yourself, through collaborations, affiliate marketing agreements, referrals, and brand ambassador programs.
Remaining authentic and transparent as you scale
When you add scaling and monetization to your business, be honest about what you’re doing and why you are doing it
- Money blogger Jordan Page explains how she monetizes her blog without losing her personal touch
- Sponsored posts, giveaways, ads, affiliate relationships, etc.
Opportunity cost is notoriously difficult to nail down.
You don’t see what you’re missing until you’ve set up systems to tap it
- Austen Tosone, a fashion and beauty content influencer, makes the most from direct sponsorship deals with beauty brands
- Consulting workshops
- Platform incentives
- Digital products
- Advertisements
- Affiliate marketing
Find your sponsorship niche
Esports is a huge industry worth billions of dollars and full of consumer enthusiasm. One survey showed one out of every ten adults across the globe follows a gaming influencer of some kind.
- The problem is, everyone else knows it’s a huge market too. The strategy is to “niche” down and find sponsors in your unique space.
Expand into software and applications
You have a vital message you need to send to the world as a content creator.
- What you can do is scale your influence with software and apps
- Tori Dunlap with Treasury App and Her First 100k
- Educational videos and articles that taught Dunlap’s core concepts
- Investment management tools community members could use themselves
- Leveraged Q&A sessions that worked like consultations-but to larger audiences
Find the best partners for your audience
Find the win-win scenarios for your own target market and reach out to the brands offering a complementary fit
- Chamberlain Coffee teamed up with GoPuff
- A natural collaboration: Chamberlain Coffee delivered through the GoPuffs app
- Benefits to both parties: Chamberlain receives wider distribution, and GoPuffed reaches a new caffeinated audience
Ask for equity as a brand ambassador or advisor
How do you start a brand collaboration if you’re new to the idea?
Shift your resources toward digital product sales
You can still have a personal presence as long as you leverage specific events in the digital world
- Live events, Workshops, Online courses that feature you talking, as though one-on-one
- You don’t have to sacrifice your friendly persona
Scalable content helps you leverage your time
When creators run out of days in the week, they have two options: increase audience size or stop trading money for time.
- The solution is to expand by pivoting into scalable products and services such as Affiliate programs, Focusing on platforms with additional incentives, or Joining advertising programs that pay you for the traffic and clicks you generate
Seek power beyond pay-by-the-post
Some companies will be more than happy to trade equity for a creator who believes in their brand
- By vesting an influencer into a new product line, they capture the influencer’s interest in making the product line a success
- Taking on equity deals also helps creators leverage their time, scaling their business
Align with the brands you help
You don’t have to ask for ownership to take long-term ownership of your clients’ success
- Equity deals and partnerships are win-win situations
- They reward creators while giving companies long- term engagement with a new audience
Find sponsors for newsletters, podcasts, and other digital content
Every niche has a natural sponsor
- Harlow, a software company built for freelancers, might not want to sponsor a general “business/entrepreneur” podcast.
- But a freelancer podcast? Chef’s kiss Because of this match between sponsorship and content, the CTA is far more natural
- Offer access to a free month of Harlow with a newsletter signup
