You make content. Now it’s time to get you paid for it.
No bullshit — let’s exhaust every single possible way you can be paid to make things on the internet.
The smartest creators:
- have multiple streams of income
- do what’s easiest to them
- give their audience what they’re asking for
YouTube ad revenue
The basics:
- YouTube pays you a certain amount of dollars per 1,000 views
- To be eligible, you need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours in the past year
Brand deals
The basics:
- Newsletter/podcast/YouTube/short-form sponsorships
-
Company pays creator to either:
- make content about the company
- insert ads for the company into your content
My thoughts:
This is typically the most common way creators think to get paid.
“Sure, I’ll promote your company in my content!”
My main thought is to only take brand deals from companies whose products you’d actually use. The term “sellout” applies to creators who choose money over actually helping their audience. For example, Adobe paid me to create content for them — that’s awesome, I use Premiere every day of my life and it’s what my audience uses, too. When a company reached out wanting to send me an exercise bike to make content with… I politely declined.
My other thought is that you shouldn’t take a brand deal for less than $500 at any point.
Creators to follow on this:
- Justin Moore (Creator Wizard)
- Tom Boyd (Bonus Footage)
Services
The basics:
- You have a skill people want and have the time to do it for others
- You can charge a flat fee on a project basis or have clients on a monthly retainer
- Over time, you cut into your margins by hiring others who can do the work and grow to a bigger scale.
My thoughts:
This is often where expert creators start. For example, I’m a fast video editor who knows the short-form industry — it was easy for me to start a short-form video editing agency because I could display my expertise and get recommended. It’s the fastest way to make a few thousand bucks per month with the creator skills you already have.
It’s easy to overthink pricing, business models, and systems at the start. My advice is to do a bit of up-front work and make yourself the first client of your own agency. Take yourself through the customer journey. What’s easy about your system? What parts of the work do you hate doing? Build a V2 and go hard promoting it on social and your network.
Here’s a few more tips I have on this:
- Be the person others can recommend. Make it extremely clear what you do.
- Never charge hourly. Don’t punish yourself for being better & faster at your skill.
- If you do what you say you can, you will succeed. You’d be surprised how many people can’t.
- Partner with an operator and get out — just be the face of it. You don’t want to be in the agency game forever as a creator. It takes away from creating, which is why you have a following in the first place.
Affiliates
The basics:
- Take a cut of the sale for giving out the purchase link
-
For example:
- Launch someone else’s course in your newsletter and take 30% of the profit
- Link the products you recommend and receive a cut of the sale
My thoughts:
There’s a reason every tech YouTuber’s video description looks like this — it’s one of the truest forms of passive income for creators:
This is one of the lowest-lift ways to make some change on the internet. Again, just like brand deals — be very selective of what you push to your audience.
Fitness creators → supplements, weights, bands etc.
Videography creators → cameras, lenses, stands etc.
Beauty creators → makeup, clothing, shampoo etc.
You get it.
Digital Products
The basics:
- Digital courses
- Paid communities
- Templates
- Software/Apps
- Ebooks
My thoughts:
Our team at HeyCreator once worked on a digital course launch for a popular fitness creator that did $120,000 in a weekend. You’ll see lots of people shit on course creators, but there’s such an upside to creating something people actually want once, and marketing it properly forever.
Same thing with communities — if you can create a space online where people can learn from, grow with, and enjoy other like-minded people. HeyCreator brought 500+ people into a paid community upon the first launch, completely jumpstarting the business.
I won’t pretend to be an expert on templates/ebooks/software, but the idea of building something once and selling it forever should stick in your brain as you create content. The truth is that you have skills already that someone else wants to acquire — the sooner you can package your knowledge and sell it, the better.
These products sell best in an email newsletter. I’d recommend Automatic Evergreen, the team that helps you send profitable newsletters on autopilot. Click here to learn more.
Physical Products
The basics:
- Merch
- Consumer packaged goods (CPG)
- Hardware
- Books
My thoughts:
Merch is another first step many creators take to monetize. There are countless companies now that will take your designs, turn them into products, and ship them to customers for you — without you ever holding inventory.
Big-time creators can start their own CPG companies. Think Mr. Beast with Feastables or Cole Bennett’s recent launch of Lyrical Lemonade. Remember, Mr. Beast isn’t in the factory making the actual chocolate bars — he’s partnered with a company to do it for him.
Hardware is an interesting category — one that I’m not entirely too familiar with on how to start. I know fitness creators like Ben Patrick have their own equipment for sale, but — again — they’ve partnered with an operator to make it happen.
You’re also seeing creators get book deals or partnering with publishers. I love how Jason Levin published Memes Make Millions.
You can also partner with existing companies to put your name on one of their products. Peter McKinnon has his own ND filter (nerdy camera thing) with PolarPro.
Equity
The basics:
-
Own a piece of someone else’s business in exchange for value:
- Help them make strategic decisions
- Give them the creator skills they don’t have
- Make them the presenting sponsor of your show
- Attach your name to their brand
My thoughts:
This is becoming a common thing for big-time creators. Marques Brownlee got an equity deal with Ridge. My friend John Barchard once called me to tell me that I needed to start thinking about owning other people’s businesses in exchange for content, and it blew my mind.
This can be the local deli or dog store, all the way up to 9-figure companies.
Referral fees (aka finder fees)
The basics:
- Connect two people who need each other and take a %
- For example, your connection at a company needs a video editor and you have someone in your network to recommend — so you take $ from the editor as soon as their deal clears
My thoughts:
I do not like this one at all — you should constantly be doing this out of kindness, not money, but it happens, so I have to say it.
Premium Content
The basics:
- Put your content behind a paywall
- Paid newsletters, podcast feeds, videos, access to you, etc.
My thoughts:
If you are truly great or unique at what you do, people will pay for it.
I feel this way because I’m subscribed to a few creators that give me that feeling of, “I need to read this immediately.” There’s nothing wrong with giving your audience an opportunity to dive deeper into your content in exchange for a few dollars per month. In fact, your most loyal supporters will ask you how they can give you money.
In-Person Events + Live Shows
The basics:
- Bring your online community together in the real world
- Host meetups, summits, live shows for an entry fee
My thoughts:
I just signed up to go to my first one ever — The Ringer NFL Draft Show LIVE here in Detroit. I’m excited to see one of my favorite podcasts in-person, and $25 isn’t a steep price to pay for it.
When you have a following, you can put events on in different cities where your audience is.
Livestreaming + Donations
The basics:
- Take donations while you livestream
My thoughts:
I won’t pretend to be an expert on this one, but so many streamers make a killing off of in-stream donations.
What did I miss?
This is every single way I’ve seen creators build businesses online, but I’m sure I’m missing something. Is there a way you love that I missed?
Do you have any questions on any of these? Let me know.
Tim