5 Simple Ideas for Growing a Creative Mini-Business Using Social Media
Starting a business or side hustle can feel like solving a Rubik’s cube for the unversed.
You just don’t where know where to begin.
But the truth is that social media enables anyone to dip their toe in without too much thought. Ways to grow and monetize are dime a dozen, and all you need is a little creativity.
But again, it can feel daunting to just get your feet wet.
That’s why I’ve collected a few profitable business ideas you only need social media for (= little to no overhead) and will give you tons of experience without massive time or effort invested.
Simple = fast & effective.
#1 Discord
1️⃣🔨Start a Discord server and have it act as your community hub.
2️⃣🔨Add bots that do the heavy lifting for you — moderate, play music, and give roles to each user. Get a few human moderators to help arrange events and keep order.
3️⃣ 💸 Charge a fee on Patreon for being part of your Discord server. Higher paid tiers can get access to exclusive text channels within the server where you hold live Q&As, masterminds, critiques of each other’s work, etc. You can run a lot with Discord.
#2 TikTok (+ Live)
1️⃣💡 Start a business on TikTok live where you take donations and offer small, random prizes.
An example I’ve seen are people going live to sell “mystery eggs” containing random trinkets and shipping them to whoever donated. You could substitute them for samples of your products, a chance to get a 1–1 consulting session with you, etc.
2️⃣💡If you’re a fan of anything collectible (NFTs, trading cards, figurines) you can live stream or record TikToks of you opening product and run giveaways.
3️⃣💡 Build a 1-product dropshipping or Amazon eCommerce business by making content around a single product and/or running TikTok ads.
#3 Twitter
Here’s how to build a following for any tiny (or big) business using Twitter:
1️⃣👉 Clearly title what your thread is about in the first tweet and add value to your niche. Treat the thread as a mini-article.
2️⃣👉 Write atomic/short-form and focus on concentrating as on imparting as useful of taking/knowledge/action you can onto your readers.
3️ 👉 When commenting: Add to the conversation (tweet/thread) in a comment/thread of your own in a way that alludes that there’s more to your knowledge. The curiosity gap can make people check out your Twitter page.
💡: This is a common method writers use to funnel new readers into their established writing business parts: Medium, their personal blogs, newsletters, etc.#4 Instagram
1️⃣🌱 Grow a theme page using a follow-for-follow method and curate content for your feed. This is a well-established way of establishing an audience interested in a single theme (like pets or make-up).
2️⃣🌱 Sell promo rates (fees for having a sponsored post on your page) to dropshippers and advertisers. They will likely approach you on their own because they’re always looking for pages to market their products.
3️⃣🌱 Use the page to market your own product(s) in the niche.
4️⃣🌱 You can also get into buying and flipping Instagram pages, but this comes with the risk of getting your page terminated as it’s against Instagram’s ToS.
#5 YouTube + Fiverr
1️⃣🔨 Create simple YouTube videos (doesn’t have to have your face or voice) answering searched-for questions using a free keyword research tool like:
- Keyword Surfer
- Exploding Topics
- Google Trends
- Or simply going into a private window and looking at the Google autocompleted results.
2️⃣🔨 In your videos, after providing the viewer with the value they searched for, advertise your services on Fiverr that can help them achieve what they were looking for. Perhaps you offer beta reading for novels, making thumbnails for YouTubers, creating customized Twitch emoticons, etc.
Pick your poison and learn a ton. The best part is that these can be overlapped + used to grow your creative projects like novels, artwork, games, etc.
Want to learn everything you need to make a living as a creative solopreneur? Follow my publication Build Your E-Dream.
If you’re enjoying Medium, sign up through my referral link. Thank you!
