Making money as an influencer
I’ve had this dream — okay maybe not a full-on life-long dream, really more like a mini-dream, but a dream nonetheless — to make money simply for sharing my thoughts.
Of course, I don’t think I could make money by opening my mouth and allowing the words to flow, but if I put in the work, and put myself out there, and stick with it, I could make a living, hopefully, even a comfortable one, simply because I’m out there, posting, tweeting, uploading, YouTubing and what not.
Sounds too good to be true, right? The crazy part is that it’s already happening. We’ve reached a point where being an influencer has become a legitimate career path. Social Media Creators come in all shapes and sizes; Micro-influencers have roughly 10k-100k followers, Macro-influencers 100k-1m followers, and Mega-influencers over 1 million followers.
When you’re a mega-influencer, you don’t usually need to knock down doors, because monetization opportunities often come to you. Brands, companies, and collaboration opportunities will likely be flowing in, and that may be enough for you unless you’re searching to create real one-on-one relationships and give personal value to your audience in addition to recommending new products on the market. However Micro and Macro influencers may not have such opportunities, and they are searching for other revenue options to grow their finances.
In this article, I will focus on the existing options out there to create more revenue opportunities for those wanting to increase or stabilize their income as an influencer.
Content platforms — It goes without saying, your main focus must be on promoting and growing your following on platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and FaceBook, to name a few — where the measure of followers and engagement is something of a new currency. Some of these platforms have their own monetization capabilities built-in, though, for those that don’t, it’s important to create a large and engaged following in order to open up external monetization opportunities.
I know there are those who believe you have to be present and accounted for on all of the social media platforms, and although there may be some truth to that statement, in actuality, growing multiple platforms at once is unsustainable (assuming you don’t have a team of experts working for you). I recommend choosing one main platform on which you will publish regularly and concentrate most of your attention, freeing you to focus on enhancing your content, growth, and audience. Only once you get a hang of it, and have begun building your presence is it recommended to divide your focus into building yourself on others.
Affiliate Marketing: You can become an affiliate on many e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Alibaba and when you post your unique referral links to products on those sites, you earn a commission on every purchase that comes through your referral. If there are products you are happy to support and are recommending to your viewers anyway, this is a really easy way to build up passive income without changing what you promote and how. In fact, my guess is your followers would be happy if you received kickbacks for their purchases, as long as you’re honest about it
Brand Ambassadors: Collaborate with specific brands to promote their products on your platform. My personal tip would be to choose one in which you, the brand, and your audience will benefit most, thereby creating more impact and value for all sides, and monetizing your content while maintaining authenticity.
Advertisements & Promotions: Offer your expertise and platform to companies interested in you advocating single products and merchandise. This approach will both allow you to choose exactly which products you’re backing while preserving authenticity, and perhaps growing your reach as well by affiliating with trending products. Similarly, you can sell ad space on your channel.
Merchandise review: If you aren’t looking to offer your review or opinion for hire, many companies are happy to send free merchandise to influencers in exchange for a product review. Choosing this path may not have as much revenue growth, yet it retains your status as an unbiased creator. However, there may be a downside in being too honest and perhaps causing companies to not want to work with you in the future if the reviews are always negative or harmful to the products.
Self-service Platforms: This is another blossoming field definitely worth investing in. Once you’ve established yourself as an influencer, and have built a following whom enjoy receiving your content and trusts your opinion, you can now monetize all that by selling your best assets — your experience and advice on these platforms. There are many ways to do so and there are many tools and platforms to help make it easier for you. These platforms range from selling merchandise (Fiverr, Etsy, Pinterest etc.), to receiving donations (Patreon, Ko-fi etc.), selling shouts (Cameo, Starsona etc.), and offering customized advice or exclusive content videos (Wisio, OnlyFans).
As you see there are many different options out there for monetizing your influence. From a business perspective, there is no doubt this is an exploding industry, promoting the exponential development of new market opportunities.
I would like to note if you aren’t a go-getter kind of person, and you would prefer to have someone else do the preemptive work, there are many companies and platforms who specialize in connecting between brands, companies, and influencers.
My recommendation — Focus on the platform you want to shine on most. Build your own growth strategy, understand your followers and what speaks to most of them, customize your content, and then take advantage of a few additional platforms external to the basic content platforms. It’s harder to grow when the competition is vast, however, being a leader in this has a great impact on your attractiveness to followers; find your way to continue creating that extra value.
Hope you enjoyed the read, if you feel I have left out anything or you have a comment, feel free to reach out.
Until next time,
T
