Bret Shuford 0:00
Welcome back to the creative visibility Podcast. I'm Bret Shuford, your host and it is time for another visibility Thursday. Today we're going to talk a little bit a little bit I say a little bit a lot. But this really is one of the most common questions and essential things that I feel like so many artists and creators and creative entrepreneurs that come to me want to know is, how do I monetize my following? What can I do to make money? I love talking about this, because so many of us are sitting on top of a goldmine, when we have a following or engaged followers are the email list, we have a business we have friends even, and we're not taking advantage of the opportunities. And it makes sense because I think so many of us are afraid to come off as salesy or promotion, the it can feel gross to ask people to pay for things. And so that's the first piece of this is that if you really do want to start monetizing your following you got to reframe what it means to make money because making money. You know, a lot of times, I will never teach you how to like 10x, you know, your following I will teach you how to genuinely and organically and authentically grow your following and then how to make money doing that, right. But I think that understanding that all you're doing is offering people a chance to if you're creating content, you're putting things out there, you're offering your services, in exchange, you're asking people to support you, right so that there's an energy exchanged. That's all money is. And so when we're asking people, we're not even asking people to buy things. We're inviting people, it's just an invitation, think about getting invited to a party. And or actually think about when you heard there was a party and you weren't invited to the party and how pissed you would be even if you couldn't go and when someone just assumes, well, I didn't think you'd want to go right or I didn't think you'd want to drive all that way or whatever excuse people give you and you're like, Well, yeah, I probably don't, but like I would have at least like divin invited. So by not inviting people the to have the opportunity to support you. If you're putting free content out there, you're adding value, you're creating experiences for people, you're not just limiting yourself and your growth financially, but you're also just being rude. So number one, in order to start monetizing your following, you have to be willing to invite people to the party that is you. It's just an invitation, they can say no, right. So that's number one. And then the other part which I teach in the creative visibility programme, if you're interested in learning more about that, of course, you can go to Bret shuford.com, forward slash apply. That is my VIP programme to help creative entrepreneurs build their following and monetize it, I teach when I call is how to make space you want to make space in your business. Space is an acronym for the different ways that you can monetize. All right, and for different people will be different things. But the first one that I often tell people to start with is services, for instance, coaching, right? If I offer coaching, or you know, Steven teaches ballet, that's kind of an easy, and for someone like Steven, you're basically trading your time, right? You're saying I will give you an hour of my time in exchange for you paying for it. That's the quickest and easiest way to make the most money because by offering your services, and maybe it's your copywriter, you know, or you do editing, right things like that, that you can monetize the way you want, right? You get to own that you get to decide what the price point is, you get to decide when you do it, what hours you work, you have a little bit more control over monetizing that. And it's the quickest way for people to understand how to support you and you support them. Right. So one of the essential tools that you should add, you should always be making space in your business. But starting with something where can you trade your services? Okay, the second thing is products. So it could be a course, right? It could be it doesn't have to be physical products. And that's when people hear products. They think, oh, I needed to get merchandise. Well, I will tell you right now merchandise, you will get very, very little return on that profit, like the profit margins are way too low. Because creating merchandise, shipping all of that stuff, you lose that profit margin, but digital products, downloads, those are great. I'm trying to think of other things. But those are great ways to start right or,
you know, your own sort of bespoke things right. Couture things. People want to place orders. You can sell those products. If you're a designer, if you're a painter. That's another great way to monetize. So that's the P for space, then affiliates or sponsorships. Okay? This is so easy. affiliates and sponsorships are so easy because you could literally Google any product you use on a daily basis and find an affiliate link for it. You could go to Amazon and join the Amazon affiliate programme. Anything you use you could start making commission on. And those links you don't need. What's great about affiliates is you don't need permission from anybody you don't need, you just literally need to register to get the links. And these brands have affiliate programmes, and you earn a small commission on each time somebody purchases using your specific link or code depending on the programme that you're signing up for. So that is a great place to start. And then sponsorship is actually a little bit more involved, that's when a brand or you pitch to a brand. But that's when a brand actually signs a contract with you to make content on your account. You know, it's basically a commercial for them, right? That requires a little bit more involvement in that you have to have an agreement and they pay you there's an exchange of funds up front, you might get an affiliate as well. Oftentimes you get a discount code for your specific audience. But affiliates and sponsorships are a great way. If you grow your following to start to teach your audience I want to sell shit, right? Like, hey, like if I if I get affiliate links for these things, you can invite people every episode, you hear me do it here on the podcast, because every time you click and purchase something, it helps support me and this content. So please be willing to check that out. Speaking of today, I'm going to tell you about an incredible tool that I found through a YouTuber His name is Thomas Frank, not Thomas Frank, not only a super cute, super hot, so it's fun to watch. He's like a total nerd over notion notion is a productivity software that I've been slowly creeping into my business. But he created it's so customizable, that it can be a little bit overwhelming. But he created something called creators companion that is specifically for content creators. And it's a template within notion that I have integrated into my business. And I find it to be really, really great holding me accountable to getting episodes out. And then also keeping each episode and all my content organised in a way that I can always find it if I need to. It's searchable notion is it's customizable. And what I can give you attach here is a link to go download creators companion if you're a content creator, I'm telling you this changed the game for me, it has incorporated all the research tools you need for keyword research and all that stuff. And you can add teams to it. So of course, my team who helps me edit and all that stuff, they're attached to it as well. So go check out Thomas Frank and creators companion in the link in the description below. Again, if you decide you want to use it, if you're already a notion nerd, you'll love it. If you haven't checked out notion, this is a great way to get introduced to it. And if you use the link in the shownotes, you actually help support me in this podcast. So thank you for doing that. Now back to the show. So we're talking about making space. The last thing I talked about was affiliates and sponsorship, the next thing I talked about are courses, right. So products, like I mentioned could be courses could be merch. But I think courses are something that once you've taught for a while or you have created products for awhile, you can also create a course it doesn't have to be long and mini course, on how to create those products or how to do the things that you do. whatever services they are teaching courses is one of the easiest way to scale right instead of trading all those hours of working one on one with people course can help kind of consolidate your time and still teach people at a greater level. So you can scale your business and not work quite as many hours which is what I'm super excited I've been able to do recently, just having a kid and all of that launching courses is been a game changer and a life changer. And then lastly, for space making space in your business, you might want to think about how to create entertaining content that is behind a paywall. Right for for many years, people have used Patreon or only fans of course, only fans is trying very, very hard to create content
that isn't just adult nature. In fact, they reached out to me wanting me to to check it out. And honestly I just know I just has too much of reputation. But Instagram is getting in on this they now have subscribers you can have subscribers that pay a certain amount to become subscribers on your account. So if you're making separate content for your subscribers, your Patreon is whatever that is, that is another way to start monetizing cameo is another another tool that people use. We've used it on Broadway husbands, we don't promote it very often. But cameo is a great way to monetize creating content. And again, like it's kind of on your own time. So when people tell you about how to monetize their business they're following. Remember this acronym, make space in your business services, products, affiliates, sponsorship courses, and entertainment. I hope you take some of this to heart and that you find this really useful if you do make sure you go and leave a review on whatever podcast platform you're listening into this on take a screenshot share or tag me on your stories it really means a lot that you listen and make sure you go check out creators companion in the show notes below i'll talk to you next week
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
