How to Make Money as a Content Creator
The first question that new-born content creator asks
“How to earn money?”
You’re working a lot, trying, experimenting to get better results.
But you get back to old hateful work because you can’t make money out of creativity. Or maybe you don’t know right instruments?
You need four things:
- plan,
- experiments,
- paranoia,
- luck.
Yep, crazy combination. All this creative world is crazy, so be ready to act differently.
These are lessons that I’ve learnt from book Great by Choice by Jim Collins and how we can apply it in modern influencer economy.
Part 1 - Left Step. Right Step. Repeat.
Being creative is a hard process. So that’s why you need to use concept called “20 miles march”.
What does it include?
1. You set clear milestones
My example:
Phase 1 – transition from local Russian market and become global – 80% of work should be in English. This phase is completed. I build international business and work with English-speaking clients.
Phase 2 – reach stable $10k MRR (Monthly recurring revenue) from my business in 1 year: sell ads spots, digital products, services, etc. That’s what I’m doing right now.
Phase 3 – create at least 3 independent and passive sources of income, not connected with my business. That could be stock market, investing in startups, etc. I don’t think a lot about it, because I need to finish previous phase.
As you can see, it’s pretty clear goals and you can break them into tasks you need to complete to reach these milestones.
Without measurable results it will be hard to be on track with your goals and further actions.
2. You set voluntary limitations
We live in crazy world which becomes wider and more complex with every sunrise. And this is a huge problem. Problem of infinite choice.
It’s like when you’re in new restaurant and you don’t know the style of kitchen. It’s hard to choose a meal. You want to try everything at the same time.
The same with the content. During last 9 years I tried a lot of genres of content making: videos, podcasts, photos, live-streaming, design.
Plus several completely different niches in two languages.
After trying so many niches and styles of content I finally found what I want to create – automated online business selling digital courses and coaching programs.
When I understand what I want – It becomes much easier to say “No” to different random opportunities.
Only after achieving success it will be a time to move further and explore new opportunities, business models, platforms to expand business and my brand.
3. Plan fits for you
You need to understand that everyone is different.
What fit for you probably won’t work for other person.
I have different and wild background. English is my second language and level of complexity is higher for me. I don’t know a lot about English market and how it works.
But this is not a problem because I want to be global. This is my plan and I accept potential problems which will be in future.
This language limitation opens wider opportunity – simply because English audience is much bigger.
Understand what you like to do and plan your activity around your advantages.
4. You set proper deadlines
It should be located in the middle of range where on left side you don’t have enough time to do this and on right side you have so much time to do this.
It will help you keep in shape of your activities and don’t overload yourself. Slow but stable work is more important than
(a) doing one task per month,
(b) working 14 hours/day.
For example. I had only one deadline for my YouTube-channel – publish one long-form video per week.
Some weeks I could be more productive and create 2, 3 videos in one week. During other week my performance can fall down because of external sources and other tasks.
This plan worked a year ago. Now conditions are different and I rarely post long-form YouTube-videos.
That leads to the next point.
5. You develop this plan by yourself
You know yourself better than anyone else. You can copy someone’s schedule, but probably this won’t work during a long-time.
My main recommendation – try, evaluate and iterate.
Another example. When I’ve studied in the University I lived by one schedule that Uni dictated.
When I was waiting my sea contract onshore – I had all time of the world. I created ton of content during that time
When I was working on a tanker locating in the middle of sea – it’s simply impossible to live by old settings.
So that’t why understand how you live, by whose schedule, where you have bottle-necks (in terms of productivity), how you can optimize your life.
I have another article about productive creativity – recommend to take a look. (btw it was written when I was on a tanker):
Being creative can be hard. How to create more content using easy-to-implement tips and life-hacks.
6. You can control performance of this plan
It’s important to know where you can make an impact and where you can’t.
I can’t control YouTube algorithm but I can control and change my videos to comply with this algorithm.
I can’t control viewer to open my digital store and buy everything in store but I can use ads, discounts, upselling, email marketing, making dedicated videos to increase my sales.
Control what you can control.
7. Plan is your first priority
All previous points are supporting this point. Final bold dot in this 20 miles march.
Making proper plan with correct deadlines, clear milestones and what to do list, understanding own limitations and do everything that you can control.
There will be a lot of distractions. Make your plan your first priority.
To achieve your goals you need proper workflow and systems in place.
I shared more tips about it in my free guide. Get it clicking on button below:
Part 2 - Bullets First, Cannon Balls Later
It’s important to experiment a lot.
But be careful. Don’t put all energy in one activity. Especially when you can’t guarantee the final outcome.
If you want to try something new, use this approach:
You have one small idea and you need to put small efforts into realisation – this is our bullet.
If you firstly shoot a bullet, it won’t be a big problem if this idea is dead on arrival.
Cannon ball is something big, expensive and not agile.
If you get confirmation that this idea has potential – prepare your cannon ball and shoot!
That’s important to shoot a lot of bullets in different directions finding what works the best.
Bullets are everything – freebies, posts for LinkedIn, low-ticket products, videos, guests for podcasts.
Cannon balls – are the same as bullets but on scale.
Even this article is a bullet:
- I don’t know the result because creating blog posts is completely new activity.
- I never did a book review in this strange way. But at the same time it fits for my niche and for my personal brand.
At the same time while I’m writing this article, I work on selling my video editing courses and posting on LinkedIn regularly. All these are my bullets.
I can also try to use affiliate marketing, sponsorships, collaboration, making content on other platform and not only.
It can become harder if your outcome is not predictable or requires years to get the results.
For example, you can post YouTube-video that won’t get views during first week, but it can generate thousands views in next years.
So keep longevity of the content in mind.
One of my YouTube tutorials that has “long tail” of views. If you want the same for your brand, contact me.
Part 3 - Productive Paranoia
Next big theme in the book is about productive paranoia. It collects different approaches to survive in our very unstable world using several methods:
1. Create reserves to stand on feet during bad times
First obvious reserve is money. How to survive if you can’t pay salaries of your employees. In case of YouTube you can have back-up videos which you can publish in case of something and earn money placing sponsorship in it.
About back-up content and other creative hacks I wrote in this article. Check it out later.
This is win-win for everyone: you, advertisers, viewers. Additional point is making second YouTube-channel or develop other social networks.
Again, in case of something, for example, YouTube can implement more strict rules about copyright and a lot of your videos couldn’t comply with this policy.
One click and your channel is blocked. You can’t predict future, but you can be ready for a bad future.
2. Risk management
Previous point is about different risks. Making money reserves is important but this is only one type of risk management.
When you’re small creator who just make videos for fun you can simply do and publish whatever you want without worrying.
But when you’re full-time creator, it’s very important to think about future, have a plan for future topics.
If you’re speaking about filmmaking, it will be strange if you start speaking about wardrobes, how to create them and what the difference between different types of wood.
Goodbye, views, audience, street credibility.
But if you create additional channel where you will speak about this topic, this is excellent solution.
Check Peter McKinnon with two separate channels:
- first one is still about creativity, photography and filmmaking;
- second one is about completely random things.
Another example is closely connected to me. I want to produce and sell different physical stuff.
For example, I have $3.000 as my backup-reserve and I have two ways how to spend it:
- This is 4 months of freedom when I’m able to not work on regular job. I can use this time to build successful blog and several income sources like selling online courses.
- Or I can put all this money into production, advertising and selling physical stuff (t-shorts, pins, prints, etc.).
It’s very risky – I don’t have guarantees that I will sell these products.
I have a lot of risks:
- don’t know how to find right audience, don’t know how market works;
- how to organise world-wide delivery;
- how to calculate selling price with all additional expenses;
- list goes on…
So that’s why I picked the first way. Because it’s safer way.
It’s important to avoid this death line where your business won’t be able to survive.
3. Learn a lot about your industry
You need to constantly use two angles – first one is wide angle where you can check new trends, new important information and tech which develops your industry.
For example, NFT-market. It was insane time in 2021. First creators earned the bank because they were able to track this new technology and jump on this hype train.
But where are NFTs now? Still exist but hype (= higher prices = higher ROI for creators) is gone.
Second angle is the close one.
Basically, it’s about asking the same question over and over again:
What do you do and how do you work?
Speaking about YouTube – you have a lot of data in YouTube Analytics and you can learn a lot from these numbers and graphs.
What is your average view duration, click-through rate, watch time? Where is a room for improvement, reducing your costs, increasing the quality?
Sometimes to make a breakthrough you need to slow down and evaluate how you work.
Part 4 - Your Old Friend Luck
And last part of the book is about luck. Luck is very important and we need to make maximum effort from luck-event.
This is type of event when:
- It’s independent.
- Event has sufficient consequences. It can be both good or bad for you.
- You can’t predict this event.
For example, your old video started getting thousands views because this topic became trendy or algorithm liked this video and started showing it to others.
Basically, in case of this luck-event you need to be ready to take maximum of out it.
If it’s bad – minimize losses.
If it’s good – maximize profits.
Well, this chapter is closely connected with concept of Black Swans.
It’s a big book full of deep thoughts and someday I will create something about it.
Of course, if this bullet with book review will get positive feedback from you 😉
Read other blog posts:
Simple step-by-step process how to edit videos fast and efficient. In any app.
Being creative can be hard. How to create more content using easy-to-implement tips and life-hacks.