If you’re like me, you’re looking for methods of making money online. In this post, I cover just six of them. Check them out, and see if any of them resonate with you!
Methods of Making Money Online #1 – Freelance Service Provider
Maybe you picture yourself living a certain lifestyle, but you don’t quite have the means to be able to carry that vision out at the moment. One way that you can fund the lifestyle that you want to have is to become a freelance service provider.
You’ll be able to set your own hours, be your own boss and make your goals or dreams come true. Working from home at your leisure is a big perk many people wish they had, and now they can!
How Working for Others Can Grow Your Income Fast
You have to have money to fund your lifestyle. If you’re like most people, you don’t want to take years to build up your income. One way to grow it fast is to work for others. When you work for others, there’s no wait time for you to get started.
You can land projects to work on right away. As your own boss, you don’t have to take on the projects that you don’t feel will be a good fit or that don’t pay what you want them to pay.
Working for others is the fastest way to get money in the bank. There are other ways – like building a blog as affiliate – but it takes time to build that kind of income. In some niches, it can take nearly a year and a half to even hit a four figure month.
You might be someone who’s working a side hustle and you’ve been busy creating your own products. That takes creative energy, plus time. You have to come up with the idea, then write it up or outsource it, develop the graphics if you have any, and get it on your website or third party platform.
Then after that, you have to work to promote it and then hope your audience responds favorably and purchases the product. So building a blog or creating info products can both be good ideas, but as a way to build income fast, they’re not.
The income you want to make is in the service industry. Working for others allows you to take on projects quickly. You can take on as many as you feel like you can handle and still be able to deliver quality work.
As a freelance service provider, you’re not limited to any particular niche. You’re only limited by your knowledge and skill set – but you can grow both of those. If you’re wondering what type of services you can offer, the answer is whatever you like as long as there’s a market.
You’ll be able to tell if there’s a market for it easily. All you have to do is go to a site that connects jobs with service providers and look at the categories or job offers that have been listed in the past.
This will show you what others are looking for. Some of the most common areas of freelance services are things like writing – including ghostwriting, copywriting or technical writing.
Some people are also looking for content writers or creative writers. There are other jobs waiting for people who can provide content that includes graphics or design work.
You can offer your skills as a virtual administrative assistant or as an editor.
You can offer transcription services or photography. Almost any online or work from home job that you think of can be offered as a freelance service. You can search Google to see what kinds of freelancers people are hiring, too.
Finding Projects and People to Secure as Clients
One of the first things that people who are new to the world of freelance service ask is how do they find projects and get clients. If you’re worried about that, you can relax.
There are more jobs offered for freelancers than there are people to take on the work.
So you’ll have plenty to keep you busy and you’ll be able to find work. There are places like UpWork that you can sign up for. You can look for the type of project you’d like to do by using their search function.
Or, you can use their category finder under “types of work” and just click on one of the links. For example, Sales & Marketing leads to more than 30 different projects listed. You’ll find everything from a social media manager to YouTube freelance gigs for jobs like video editing, keyword research and more.
If you’re thinking that these projects are all low paying, they’re not. Some are for the inexperienced but for people with experience, you can earn a lot of money providing your services.
The site lists the pay for each project so you know up front which ones to consider submitting a proposal for. Fiverr is another site where you can land projects. Once you sign up and create an account offering your skills or knowledge, you can get hired to do projects known as gigs.
When the company first started, all the gigs were $5 but now, the gigs can be in $5 increments. So you’ll see people offering their services such as “starting at $275” or some other amount.
You can offer freelance services such as proofreading, design, building websites, coaching, consulting and more. It’s not unheard of for people to be earning $500 and more per gig.
The more experience you have or gain, the more you can make. One woman named Charmaine Pocek used her skills and experience and made a million dollars on Fiverr.
Another way to find projects and gain clients is to network.
Word of mouth networking with marketers can quickly get your name out there and from that, you can get client referrals that will help to grow your reputation. You can do this online or in person.
Hang out in places where marketers hang out. Make it a point of telling them what you do and that you have openings in your schedule to grow your client list. If you don’t have your own website, then you definitely need to set one up.
There are a lot of ways that you can gain clients by having a space online where they can find you and learn more about your services. You can also find projects and clients on sites like LinkedIn, which lists thousands of jobs including ones for freelance service providers.
Be sure to check out places like guru.com, flexjobs.com, and mediabistro.com, too. Having your own website where you detail your skills and talents and list pricing will help you get more jobs, too.
The Most Common Freelance Gigs Available
On all of the freelance job sites, there are many different categories listed. If you have a specific skill such as in the IT industry, there are some sites that are dedicated solely to that niche and don’t offer other categories.
So if you have a specialized skill, you can also do a search for your skill, plus the words “job board” or “work from home” and you’ll get dozens of results for what you’re looking for.
However, there are some common freelance gigs available because these tend to be the ones that people are outsourcing or hiring for. These are skills that are in high demand so you won’t have trouble finding clients.
On Upwork, there’s good demand for gigs in virtual assisting, administrative task managing, editing, design, and writing. You’ll find a lot of different clients and can pick and choose the ones that you want to work with.
For example, under the editing category, you might decide that you want to edit audio projects or visual projects. But there’s also a category for editing written material like speeches, papers, guides, eBooks and more.
You can also work as a writer and the type of work that you do will relate to the skills that you have. Some people work as a resume writer. Others work as a blog writer or content marketing writer.
The better you are at what you do and the better the customer service or satisfaction you give, the more money you can make on any of the sites. On Fiverr, what people are often looking for are those who have skills or experience in categories such as graphic design.
They might want things like a logo or social media headers done. Or they may want a book cover designed. Another category there where people are always looking for a good service provider is in the area of writing.
People are always looking for someone to write cover letters or website content for their business. It doesn’t matter what type of writing that you do, there’s always a market for it because many people either don’t have time to do the writing, aren’t interested in doing it themselves or don’t know how.
Virtual assistants in administration gigs are always needed on Fiverr. You can offer things like social media management, customer support, scheduling, research, data entry and more.
If you have a knack for creating and editing video clips, this may come in handy. There are many people who need short branding videos known as intros and outros to use in their online video marketing efforts.
What Your Clients Expect for Top Dollar Earnings
There’s no room for mediocrity if you want to fund your lifestyle as a freelance service provider. You have to be the best that you can possible be if you want the top dollar earnings.
In a world where “good enough” often seems to be the mark, people get tired of substandard efforts. They’re looking for freelancers that know how to take care of them as a client.
If you want quality clients that pay big bucks, then you what you offer also has to be quality. Having the mindset that everyone is just trying to save money and won’t pay extra or what you’re worth is wrong.
There are plenty of clients willing to pay more to get more. Clients expect that the work you’re going to do for them will be great. That means that you should do your best to make sure it’s mistake-free.
If your service is writing, that means you should have a good grasp of how to write well. With all of the books and videos and tutorials that are freely available, there’s no excuse for not knowing how handle anything you need to write if that’s your skillset.
It’s the same in any niche. You may not know everything there is to know in that area, but you can learn whatever it is that that your client wants. You may be someone who’s never written a real estate blog post in your life, and you don’t understand half the terms.
But you can learn what you need to know and leave the client with a well-researched post that’s so well written and knowledgeable, it makes him glad that he hired you.
Besides making sure that you know your stuff when delivering whatever type of content you provide, you need to be sure to ask questions when you don’t fully understand the scope of what the client wants.
Some people think that asking questions will make them seem like they don’t know what they’re doing. But clarifying something makes you a service provider who cares about the outcome of the job and it helps the client know that you get whatever it is they want.
Make sure that the content you deliver is unique. Don’t rely on what everyone else is writing or designing when working on a job. Be creative and create with the client in mind.
When you do a job, go the extra mile. If you see something that could add more value to the project, let the client know. If you know a resource that can further help them with their project, you can recommend that, especially if you know they’re still looking for that.
Your clients will expect you to meet your deadlines. Nearly every service provider in the world has dealt with an emergency situation that’s impacted their ability to get a job done.
But those situations are rare. When you take on a job, make sure that you can meet or turn in the project earlier than the client needs it. This will mark you as someone who cares about the client’s timeline.
You don’t want to get a reputation as someone who holds up a client’s project because you couldn’t get stuff done on your end. For top dollar pay, clients expect you to be friendly, but remain professional.
They don’t want to be your therapist, your best friend or your coworker. They just want you to get the job done and do it right. This takes a load off their shoulders, which is one of the reasons they outsourced to begin with.
Getting Follow Up Gigs with Ease
Landing a client really isn’t that difficult, but you don’t want your clients to be the type who are one and done. You want them to need your services so that you can establish a long term working relationship with them.
There are dozens of strategies that you can use so that your clients will immediately want to give you more work. You can start by letting them know, as soon as whatever current job you’re working on them for is finished, that you have room in your schedule if they want to go ahead and book more work with you so that you’ll have time.
This comes across like you’re giving them a preferred space and makes them feel important. Make it a point of staying in touch with your clients. Check in with them via your normal contact routine to let them know you enjoyed working on their project.
You can even suggest additional work by mentioning something you may have noticed about their site, like the need for a lead magnet or whatever. You can also offer a bundle service during this follow up email.
This would be consider a bulk service buy. For example, if the client hires you to do the text content for his website, you can give a small discount if he also adds a graphics package to the project.
When you do this, always mention what they stand to get out of it. You could tell them how something you offer could increase traffic or improve conversions. This is one of the biggest ways to make sure that you get repeat clients.
You must know what it is that they need because when you tap into their need, you find out what it is they’re missing that you can provide. Some clients are overworked and too busy to handle everything on their own, which is why they hired you.
They may not realize that the same overwhelm is going to happen to them again the next month. You can turn them into a repeat client by offering your services on retainer. This retainer can be divided by different work categories, too.
For example, maybe they hired you to write blog content, but they also need someone to write their social media content or to publish it all, as a virtual administrative assistant would. You can offer to do both as part of the retainer.
Becoming an online freelance service provider is a great way to earn the kind of money that will meet your basic financial responsibilities and also provide for an increase to your lifestyle.
It provides you with the flexibility you seek in a work day and gives you the power to pick and choose who you work with. This is much better than applying for a strict 8-5 job where you have no say over when and if you get a raise, or which clients you’re assigned.
Methods of Making Money Online #2 – Affiliate Marketer
When you set out on a mission to become a successful online entrepreneur, you will be faced with the decision of which business model to pursue. This decision should be based on a mix of the profit potential you desire as well as your personal preferences for the types of tasks you will be carrying out.
One of the easiest, most lucrative, and quickest ways to earn a living on the Internet is by becoming an affiliate marketer. Not everyone who chooses this career will be able to earn a living at it.
This is not because the business model itself is flawed, but because many individuals fail to understand the proper strategy that will help them achieve the level of earnings they want.
What Does It Mean to Be an Affiliate Marketer?
When you become an affiliate marketer, you are taking on the role of an expert and guide who is willing to take your consumers concerns and needs and steer them in the right direction to a product that will provide the solution they are seeking.
Affiliate marketers, in their most distilled form, are middle men between a consumer who has money to spend and a problem to solve, and the vendors who have created the solution in the form of a digital or tangible product.
Vendors recruit affiliates, or approve them when they apply, in an effort to get more eyes on their products. It takes a lot of money and effort for them to organically attract (or pay for) traffic to their product sales pages.
That’s where you step in. You will serve a role in casting a wide net to bring more people to their site so that they can increase sales. In exchange for your efforts, you will be paid a commission that is typically 50% of the sale, but not always.
There are some vendors who pay less than half of the sale, and some who pay more. You can even find products that you can promote and earn 100% commission on. This is especially true with digital products.
As an affiliate marketer, it doesn’t mean you do not have the responsibility showcasing your expertise as a niche leader. In fact, you still have to prove to your target audience that you are a leading expert who can guide them in their decision making process.
It will be your responsibility to sift through the hundreds of competing products in the marketplace, and let buyers know which ones would be best for their purpose. You can do this through blog posts, email autoresponders, social networking posts, and more.
You have a duty to be honest with your readers and protect them from spending money on products that would not benefit them. You have to have your ethics intact so that you are not simply seeking a commission, but instead take pride in becoming the go to leader people can trust.
Your Investment of Time and Money
With any business model that you are considering as an online entrepreneur, you want to look at both the time and money you will be spending in order to build your business. The great thing about affiliate marketing is that there is a low upfront cost.
In fact, there are ways to conduct affiliate marketing without spending a dime. However, it’s always best to own your own digital space online. Therefore, purchasing a domain name and small hosting account would be wise.
You can get a domain name for as little as $0.99 if you look for a coupon code or GoDaddy. Otherwise, the domain will cost you anywhere from $12 to $17 per year. A hosting account is very inexpensive and should never cost you over $10 per month.
As time goes on, you may decide to build additional websites in other niche markets or outsource the creation of your affiliate content reviews. These are costs you can incur at a later date, and pay for them by reinvesting your initial earnings if you want to.
Another place affiliates sometimes spend money is in purchasing and reviewing the products for their blog. This is not a requirement, but it can help you gain more trust with your audience.
Typically, if you are reviewing a digital product, you have the ability to secure a complimentary review copy before the launch of the product to prepare your review. Not every vendor is willing to do this, so you may have to shell out a bit of money if you want to personally check out the product.
Tangible products will usually need to be purchased by you, because most manufacturers will not send free items out to affiliates. However, as your online reputation grows as someone who consumers are turning to for advice, you can expect companies to reach out to you and offer to send their products free in exchange for a review.
Keep in mind that your followers are depending on you to maintain and ethical approach to your reviews. If you are giving companies a positive review, simply because they sent you the product, then you are failing your audience.
You will lose their trust, which will result in your earnings diminishing. Because your influence dwindles, companies will no longer want to send you products. So it is imperative that you be upfront with companies that your reviews will be honest and truthful.
In terms of the time you will be investing as an affiliate marketer, you have much more control over this than you would in other business models. If you were a digital info product creator, you would be working under a deadline for a launch.
But as an affiliate marketer, you get to go at your own pace. Of course, the more content you publish, the more you stand to gain in a shorter amount of time. If you are only able to create two product reviews per month, it’s going to take you a long time to gain any traction.
Ideally, you need to be reviewing products once a day, or several times per week minimum. The time it takes you to create a product review will vary from person to person.
Some people are able to create a product review in five or ten minutes, while others may take hours to create and publish their review. It also depends on what type of product you are reviewing and how you are doing it.
For example, if you are reviewing a tangible product, it may take you less time to discuss the features and benefits. If you are reviewing a digital course, it may take you hours or even days to go through the entire thing.
You may not be one of those affiliates who are simply discussing what is in the product, but prefer instead to create a case study that showcases your experience with the product.
In this case, it may take days or even weeks to get the final results and publish your review. With case study reviews, you may be publishing it in a series format, where a new segment goes live every day.
Finding the Best Niches to Earn in as an Affiliate
In any business model that you pursue online, you have to make a careful analysis and decision about which niche topic you will get into. Everyone has different priorities in terms of what is important to them.
Some people just want to stay busy and explore their passion and enthusiasm for a niche topic, with money as a secondary concern. Others have an immediate focus on the income stream, with their personal satisfaction for the niche not as important.
Ideally, you want to focus on a niche that provides both for you – a good influx of profits as well as a high level of appeal for the topic itself. If you focus on the money only upfront, you will eventually burn out and feel very dissatisfied with your career and having to immerse yourself in that topic day after day.
There are so many different niches to choose from, that it’s almost impossible for you to not be able to find a niche that is both lucrative and personally satisfying. Make a list of all of the topics in life that you enjoy to start with.
You might enjoy things like gardening, your cats, cooking for your family, getting fit at the gym, learning about and applying anti-aging efforts, making money online, traveling, etc.
You also want to include things that you not only enjoy, but that you have a great deal of knowledge in. It’s okay to list things that you are a beginner at, because part of what is wonderful about affiliate marketing is sharing your learning process and the products that helped you figure things out.
Next, you want to look at the niches that offer you dual income profits. What this means is that you have the ability to bring in commissions based on the promotion of both tangible and digital products.
There are some niches that only provide for one or the other. For example, if you are in the toy niche, it is primarily tangible items only. But if you are in the motivation niche, it is a digital one.
Most niches provide the ability to earn dual commissions. For example, if you are in the anti-aging niche, you will be promoting products about how to get fit and stay healthy over at the age of 40, and you will also be promoting tangible products such as at home exercise equipment, anti-aging supplements, skin creams, and more.
You want to look at the ability to earn income from your niche topic for a long time. Evergreen niches are those that will be around now and many years from now with no sign of disappearing.
You don’t want to target a topic that is solely trend based and has a high degree of trending downward quickly. While you might be able to make money in spurts like this, it doesn’t provide for the growth of a long term business.
You want to take your list of niche topics and begin looking at the various affiliate programs and products that are available for you to earn money with. If you have chosen a niche that has a few products, and not many sales, then that would not be a good fit for your business.
Start by going to Amazon and looking at both the nonfiction books and the tangible products that are available to the target audience for this niche. You want to see how vast the product lines are, how many brands are competing for this target audience, and how many sales are coming in based on the number of reviews.
When you’re looking at these reviews, you want to make sure that there are enough products that are highly rated for you to promote. If you have chosen a niche where customers are hard to please and most products have a three star or lower rating, that may be a sign for concern.
Next, go to Commission Junction and Share a Sale and look to see how many products you can find to promote there period. When you’re done, go to ClickBank, Warrior Plus, Udemy, and JVZoo and see what types of digital products you can find to promote.
Make sure you’re looking at the commission levels of all of these to ensure that you will be making enough money with your affiliate promotions to earn the desired income you hope to achieve.
Once you have found a niche topic that looks to be profitable and one you feel you will enjoy being involved in on a day to day basis, go ahead and conduct some research for keywords and choose a domain so that you can get your affiliate site set up.
Creating Product Reviews That Can Rake in Commissions
When your site is set up for affiliate marketing, it will be time for you to start creating product reviews that will begin bringing in the kind of commission you are hoping for. Being consistent with your review publications will help grow your income for a variety of reasons.
First and foremost, search engine bots will be crawling your site and your rank will increase if they can see that you are keeping your blog fresh with new content. In addition to that, human visitors will appreciate that they can come back to your site on a regular basis to find new information about products and a niche they are interested in.
There are many different types of affiliate product reviews that you can write that will earn you money. If you are limited on the amount of information that you have about certain products, then you may want to create a list review.
This is when you have something such as a top ten list of products, where you name and hyperlink the product and give a simple one to two paragraph summary of the benefits and features the product has.
This is typically information that you can gather on the sales page or product listing. You don’t need any personal, hands-on experience with the product. But you do still need to recommend items that are rated well.
Another type of review that you can do as an affiliate is a thorough individual product review. This is when you dive deep into a product to cover all of the features, benefits, and drawbacks of a product as well as discuss tips on how to use the product or maximize their return with it.
These are generally the kind of reviews that you will conduct through ownership or personal experience of the product, but not necessarily. If you are willing to gather information from other sources that give you insight into the performance of these products without personally owning it, then you can create a thorough review for your readers.
You never want to mislead your audience and make them believe that you have personally tried a product, when you haven’t. It’s okay to make recommendations based on the general marketplace availability of products, without owning each and every one.
Another type of product review that you can create is one that pits two products against one another. This is basically a compare and contrast review, where the individual features, price points, and benefits are analyzed to see which product is an overall better buy and a final recommendation is made between the two.
Increasing Earnings Over Time
As time goes on, you will be able to level up with your earnings. What started out as a simple and consistent publication of blog post reviews can transform into a multimedia empire where you are covering all bases with an audio podcast, video reviews, graphics and infographics, and of course, text.
If you want to grow your earnings outside of your blog, make sure you have a presence on all relevant social media networks where the target audience for your niche is active. You’ll want to check out sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Pinterest, YouTube, and more to see if you can grow up following.
Make sure you are driving traffic back to your website, where they can read the numerous product reviews that you have put up in detail with the links. Depending on the social network rules, you may be able to link out to individual products from each item that you publish there.
One thing you may not have considered as an affiliate marketer, is that you can build a list of subscribers. This is not something that is your reserved solely for digital info product creators.
As an affiliate, you can reach out to your loyal subscribers on a regular basis whenever you have a new product review ready for them to consume. You will also be able to steer them in the right direction whenever you find out about a special discount or sale that they need to know about.
Make sure you create a lead magnet offer that entices people to sign up to your list. This could be a buyer’s guide or a tip sheet that helps them learn how to shop smart for the niche products they are interested in.
Once you have these people on your list, you can not only send them to your blog to consume the product reviews you have posted, but you can also make recommendations directly within the email itself, depending on the rules of the platform you are promoting.
Methods of Making Money Online #3 – Digital Info Product Creator
If you’re looking for a very lucrative business model to launch in the year 2022 as an online entrepreneur, you might want to consider becoming a digital information product creator.
Decades ago, when a consumer wanted to learn something, they either had to take classes about it or read a book. But now, regardless of what time of day it is, they can download it directly onto their computer and consume the information instantly.
Digital info products sell at a much higher price point than a book you might pick up at Barnes and Noble or on Amazon. Plus, you have the added ability to recruit affiliates to promote your product for you and add to your revenue.
Digital Info Products Are a Lucrative Business Model
So just how much money can be made from selling a digital info product? Well if you are unknown, have failed to network with anyone, and don’t have a list, it won’t be as much as someone who has taken the steps to make sure their launch will be a success.
When you go through the proper product creation and launch steps, you stand to make thousands of dollars in a few days. There are some info product creators who bring in four figures in four days, and some who bring in seven figures in the same amount of time.
What you need to be focused on is creating an entire line or library of info products for your brand. It’s not just about creating a single product to put out in the marketplace – it’s about developing a series that people will keep coming back for.
When you have more than one digital info product, the sales build upon themselves. For example, your first product may have been about how to create a niche blog. your second product might be about how to rank your blog for proper search engine optimization.
Months later, you release a new product about how to be an affiliate marketer. The people who come to your sales page and buy this product as their first product from you, will see your back list of existing digital info products and want to buy those as well if the quality of the first one they own is up to par.
You can also use your backlist of existing digital info products to build your revenue in other ways. You can use it as a bonus whenever you promote someone else’s product, or you can package them up and offer a bundled discount for a special occasion such as your birthday or a major holiday.
You can’t just quietly create an info product and list it for sale under the radar and expect it to succeed. You have to be willing to put yourself out there and build a buzz for your launch that helps you increase earnings substantially.
Choosing a Topic for Your Product
Choosing the topic for your product can be a daunting experience. Many people procrastinate and delay their launch because every idea they come up with feels wrong. They worry about the fact that the competition has already done something similar.
If you go look on the bookshelves of a major bookseller, you’ll see the same topic being done by multiple authors. Consumers like to have a variety of styles to learn from, and your insight and ability to lead your audience will be completely different from someone else.
Assuming you already have your niche topic, you will want to conduct some research to see what the top problem areas are for that audience. You may want to create a broad digital info product that covers everything as a whole.
If you do this, you won’t be able to go in depth with each subtopic. But that’s okay. You can have a broad overview of the topic with tips in it, followed by a series of in depth and targeted info products on each of the sub topics that go into detail.
For example, you might have and info product called Internet Marketing for Newbies. This would be a broad overview teaching them what it means to be an online marketer, and what opportunities are available to them.
Then, following up in your series, you could have individual info products on each of the topics that you discussed in the original course. You need to conduct some research to find out what the main problem areas are for your niche audience.
The first thing you can do is look at the marketplace to see what is already being sold in your niche. If you are in a niche like weight loss, you may notice a trend for one certain type of diet plan that you can start with.
The next place you can go, after looking at places such as Amazon, ClickBank, Warrior Plus, and JVZoo is to the forums that consumers gather at in your niche. In these forms, people often gather to discuss problems and solutions, as well as products they recommend.
Once you are finished gathering information there, head to a keyword tool of your choice to find out what your target audience is typing in to search engines to find information about.
This will help you compile a list of product ideas for your series as well as the outline for each individual info product that you will be creating. As you conduct your research, make sure you are making a mental note of the comments from buyers or prospective consumers who have felt that something was lacking in the products currently in the marketplace.
You will want to make sure that your info product addresses those needs. You can also make sure to add it to the bulletpoints on your sales page so that the audience knows they will finally have a product that delivers for them.
Media Formats That Sell Well as Info Products
After you have the idea and outline for your digital info product, it will be time to begin creating the content for it. You need to decide what media format you will deliver to your audience.
The two most prevalent media styles for digital info products are text and video. You will have consumers who complain about each one of them. Some people hate to read, and others hate to watch video.
There’s no way to please everyone unless you decide to create a hybrid info product, where you create a set of video modules and pair them with a text transcript in the form of a PDF download.
That way, there is something for everyone. However, this is a time consuming process, so you will have to factor that in when you determine your launch date and how much time you need to create your info product.
You also want to base your decision on what you are good at. For example, you may be a wonderful writer, but struggle with the technology or competence that is needed for the creation of video content.
Luckily, both of these media formats can be learned and improved by you if you are willing to take time to level up. But if you are not, you should pick the media format that you are better at.
The great thing is, you have the ability to polish up anything you create that appears substandard in terms of quality. If you want to create a text eBook as your digital info product, you can always create the content and then outsource it to an editor for the polishing process
If you are not good at creating video, you might want to record the audio portion and hire someone who can create the slides, intro and outro for your professional video modules.
Then, you can simply use a tool such as Camtasia or CamStudio and lay the audio file over the video one to merge the two. Always make sure that you check all of the files for quality control once they are complete.
You may also want to enlist the help of some consumers and give them a free review copy in exchange for honest feedback about what they liked, didn’t like, and what could be improved upon.
This will give you a chance to make changes or edits before the info product goes live to ensure you are releasing a top quality product under your brand. You don’t want to put something on the marketplace that is deemed low quality because it will impact your future sales.
Pick Your Platform and Start Earning
The next step in your digital info product journey is to choose a platform where you want to list your info product. There are many different options available to you. Most people list their product on one of the top three digital product platforms.
The first one would be ClickBank, which has a digital marketplace in many different niches that affiliates can go to in order to find items to promote to their target audience. Or, you might want to consider JVZoo, which also has many different digital products in a variety of niches.
Another popular marketplace is Warrior Plus, which has an easy to use system and a knowledge bank to walk you through it all. If you don’t want to use any of these platforms, you can also choose something like Udemy.
All of these options allow you to have a built in affiliate program so that you can recruit people to promote your info product for you and they will get paid through the system itself.
You also have the ability to gain more attention being listed on one of these sites because they have top ranking pages where you can see what the bestselling products are.
This makes consumers want to own those products, but it also makes affiliates want to promote them because they know the traffic is being converted into sales. You also have potential to be listed on their affiliate launch calendar.
Although these options are nice for the added exposure, they’re not your only choice. You can also install a product such as AMember and launch the product through your own site, with your own built in affiliate system.
This may help you cut down on some of the fees that you have to pay, even though they are usually taken out of each sale rather than something that has to be paid separately. If you choose to simply put up a buy button through PayPal, without any sort of affiliate system, you will be unable to recruit people to promote for you.
Ways to Increase Earnings for Your Launches
You want to earn the most amount of money possible whenever you launch a digital info product. There are strategic ways you can ensure your launch will be able to maximize its revenue.
First and foremost, whenever you are planning your product launch, don’t stop with a single product per launch. You want to have a complete funnel in place that satisfies the consumer’s desire to get several good deals, and meets the requirement of the affiliate to be able to earn enough money to promote.
If you only have a front end product for $9.95, must have filiates will pass up the opportunity to promote that 50% offer of commissions because it’s not enough to make it worth it to them.
However, if you have several upgrade options, which are higher priced at anywhere from $27 to $97, you will have a better chance of recruiting top affiliates. Just make sure that your upgrade offers are complementary to the front end product, without making it appear as if they must own it in order for the front end to work.
This is a common frustration for many consumers of digital info products because the vendor insinuates that unless they buy the upgrades, the entire system they just purchased on the front end will be worthless.
Conduct a bit of background research to find out who the best affiliates are in your niche and then approach each one with a personalized message, a link to your JV (joint venture) page, and a complimentary review copy for them to examine.
Another way that you can increase the earnings with your digital info product launch is to offer additional rights to the product. In most cases, digital content vendors simply release a personal use only license.
This means the buyer can only read, watch, absorb, and use the lessons that are taught in the course. They cannot share or pass them on to other people or claim them as their own.
However, in some cases, you will see a digital info product that has two options on the sales page. The first one is the usual personal use license. But the second one will be and upcharge that allows the buyer to own private label rights to the course.
When they own private label rights, they have the ability to edit and alter the course and put their name on it as the author so that they can resell it. They can’t resell it to others with the same private label rights, but they can sell it with personal use rights for others to read.
Earning money as a digital info product creator is rewarding when you take the steps needed to release a top quality product that both consumers and affiliates will be satisfied with.
You will be building a list of buyers that you can cater to for years to come as you branch out and release additional info products as well as promoting your competitors who release those of their own.
Methods of Making Money Online #4 – Selling Private Label Rights
If you’re looking for a content-based stream of income, which does not rely on you trying to dominate in the search engine results pages or drive a high level of traffic to your site, then you may want to consider getting into the business of becoming a private label rights (PLR) vendor.
Private label rights is a business where you are selling content that you create for other people to buy. It’s similar to a freelance service provider situation, where you would be ghostwriting content or creating graphics or other media formats of content for others and letting them use it as their own.
The only difference between the freelance service provider and a private label rights vendor is that you are selling to multiple buyers over time, as opposed to exchanging hours for a set dollar amount.
If you were ghostwriting for someone, the two of you would agree on a project with a certain number of pages or pieces at a specific price point – but with PLR, you have a product to sell and use in your business and there are no limits to what you can earn with it.
Content Demands Mean PLR Sells Well
If you’re going to become a private label rights seller, you may have worried because you have seen people asking if PLR is dead. They have been asking this for more than two decades.
It’s never a true statement, and the worry is completely unnecessary. In fact, more and more men and women are becoming online entrepreneurs who work from home and who are trying to build their own business.
Because of this fact, they all need content. Many people fail to have the time, expertise, or talent to create content for their niche audience. That’s where you step in. You will be providing them with one piece of the puzzle that helps them complete their online business goals.
While they are working on strategy and networking (as well as other planning elements), you will be creating the products that they will be able to use to attract people to their website, cater to their subscribers, and build a loyal following online.
You may also be the direct resource of the very products that they will be selling and earning a living with. There are many people who find out about a lucrative niche, but they don’t have the leadership to guide an audience themselves.
They will be relying on you to create complete info products that they can use and brand as their own. The great thing about selling private label rights is that when a consumer begins to utilize this type of service and product, they will often keep coming back for years to come.
This is a very convenient, affordable, and easy way for them to cross off a task on their to do list. Content demands never end for an online entrepreneur. They need to post to their blog frequently in an effort to appease search engine bots and prove that they have a fresh website.
They have to do the same when catering to their email subscriber list. They need lead magnets in order to build a list. Not just one lead magnet, but a variety of them so that they can split test and attract subscribers who have different needs.
They also need to have products to sell, scripts for video content they can create or audio podcasts that will help them build an audience, and more. This doesn’t just happen for one day or one week, or even for one year.
It’s a continual process that lasts every day of every year, and it’s what will help them sustain their business growth over time. The second they stop publishing and catering to the needs of their niche, they will fall to the bottom of the marketplace as a more consistent marketer takes the lead.
Start By Picking a Good Topic
When you think about what topics to sell as a PLR vendor, not everything will necessarily be a good option. If you are trying to choose a low traffic topic that has very few products, then you likely will not find many buyers who are willing to pay for content.
That’s because there are not as many competitors and they can rank easily by publishing less often and using their own written words. There are many evergreen topics that you can create PLR packages on that will sell wonderfully again and again.
For example, success or online marketing is a top seller for most PLR vendors. You can also target the same audience with topics such as time management, motivation or inspiration, etc.
Other topics that are highly in demand because they have a huge audience are those such as diet and exercise, stress relief, pets, anti-aging, survival, and more. These aren’t the only topics that will earn you money, however.
For example, there are many real estate agents who need content to bring in clients and customers, but very little PLR that addresses that. They do not have time or sometimes talent to create the content they need for their website, so they look for readymade content from people like you.
You can teach people how to stage their home, how to sell or buy a home, how to you get their finances ready for a mortgage, etc. Don’t dismiss the idea of capitalizing on major trend topics, which may not be evergreen.
Sometimes they are an offshoot of an evergreen topic. For example, survival and prepping is a topic that is thriving online and has been for many years. However, at one time there was an Ebola patient that was brought to America, and sales of that specific niche topic soared as people wanted to know what it meant and how to protect themselves.
When you go to pick a topic for your PLR bundles, you want to look at what has already sold to PLR buyers in the marketplace prior to your launch. You can check sites like Warrior Plus and JVZoo as well as PLR vendor sites directly.
If they are creating ongoing packs about a specific topic, you can bet they are making sales. Another thing you can do is go to sites like Amazon and look for both the tangible products being purchased on the bestsellers list and also look at the book bestseller lists so that you can see which topics are selling well decide if it would be a good fit.
For example, you might find that micro habitats is a topic that is selling well on Amazon, and this would probably make a great slant for work at home entrepreneurs, allowing you to capitalize on the trend.
Create Content They Can Use in Many Places
The purpose for your buyers in purchasing your products is to alleviate their own task list, which often consists of publishing content in a variety of places. The first thing they will want are articles that they can publish to their blog so that their domain begins to rise in the search engine results pages and receive organic traffic.
These can be anywhere from 400 words and up, and many people will pay $2 per page for articles that are longer in length. Another thing they will want to post to their blog are product reviews.
These are especially crucial for tangible product reviews, which have to go on their blog rather than in their email autoresponder, according to some platform rules such as Amazon.
The product reviews that you write can be for both digital and tangible products, and they can post them to their blog, and on social networking sites. Many marketers will be using your product reviews and other forms of content as a script for them to create audio podcasts or YouTube videos.
You want to make sure that they have enough content to nurture their audience via email. List building is one of the most important tasks that a marketer has. Unfortunately, many do not know how to provide value, and that’s where your content can be of use.
You can create individual emails or those that unfold in a series, which will help them maintain subscribers and keep their unsubscribe rate low. They can also use this email series as a lead magnet offer, rather than a simple PDF download that someone can grab and then unsubscribe.
Many PLR vendors also create specific content for a variety of social networking sites. For example, you might find items in a bundle that are specific for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram.
These might be short snippets of one sentence each that can be tweeted out to their audience, or an infographic or image along with a brief bit of text that can go on another social site, such as Instagram.
Multiple Ways to Earn from PLR Sales
Selling PLR means you have at least four different ways to profit from your business model. Each one gives you a different amount of money in a different timeframe. First, you’ll want to start doing launches for the packs and bundles that you create.
The launch is the first thing that’s done with new PLR because many buyers rush to buy content they can own and use early. So you’ll see a fast influx of sales during your initial launch period, which can be anywhere from 72 hours to a full week.
With a PLR launch, you’ll select your topic, outline what will go into the pack, such as 35 articles or six short lead magnets, for example. You’ll create a joint venture (JV) page detailing the launch and announce it to prospective affiliates.
While affiliates are readying their bonuses and promos, you’ll be working on creating the content. During the launch, if you have recruited top affiliates, you can see anywhere from a few thousand to well over ten thousand dollars come in during that short launch period.
You’ll also be building a list of PLR buyers. Another way to produce income from your PLR sales is by promoting your competitor PLR vendors to the list of buyers you built. Make sure you only promote reputable vendors or you’ll lose their trust.
Once your PLR launch has ended, make sure you put the packages of content on your PLR store. You can use AMember to build a store and leave your content there for sale at full price (as opposed to the discount you offer during the launch).
Your content, if it’s evergreen, will sell for months and years to come. You can recruit affiliates for your store, too – not just your launch. You can offer them coupon codes to give their buyers, too, if you want.
Another way to profit from the PLR you’re selling is to bundle things up once in awhile and sell it at a discount. For example, let’s say you had several bundles on the topic of personal development.
You first launch each one at a discount price of $17. Then they go on your store for the full $35 price tag. After a bit of time has passed, if you want to bundle a few or all of them up into something discounted, you can do that.
So instead of paying $35 per pack, or even $17 per pack, they can get five bundles for $37 – helping them save money and helping you earn some. Never do this right after a launch – this is to be done much later when the content earnings have dwindled.
And lastly, you can earn by using the PLR yourself as content to grow a website, create info products, or use as product review content. Just because you’re selling it to others doesn’t mean you can’t own a license yourself.
Maximizing Your Earnings By Using PLR for Bonus Income
We mentioned previously that you could promote your competitors. Because you’re selling PLR already, you can create packages of private label rights that are reserved exclusively as bonuses for people who buy through your link.
For example, let’s say one of your competitors is having a launch with a three-part funnel of PLR. You want to promote it. You can create a package that never gets launched or goes on your store and increase the odds that people will buy through your link if it’s the only way to get access to it.
You can do this for PLR launches as well as other digital info product launches. Most people buying a digital product would appreciate having some sort of content they can use on their site.
The content you use doesn’t have to be new and exclusive, though. It’s always going to convert better if you do it that way, but you can also tempt people with volume of older content, as long as it’s still relevant and not outdated.
Selling private label rights is a great business model to pursue for an income that provides large spurts of cash as well as a slower growing residual revenue stream. If you can create text, image or video (or even audio in some cases) content, then you should have buyers willing to pay you to do this task for them.
Methods of Making Money Online #5 – Self-Published Author
Maybe you have an idea or a story that you’d like to share with the world. If you’ve ever dreamed of being an author, there’s no better time than right now to achieve that goal. Sure, there are a few things that you need to learn to make it happen, but you can do it.
There are many would-be authors who have never been able to find an agent and get picked up by a publishing house. But self-publishing allowed them to find a rabid and loyal fanbase helped then become a fulltime author.
Taking a non-Traditional Route
Years ago, everything had to be traditional. If you wanted to publish a non-fiction or fiction book, then you had to submit it to a publishing company. Many of these publishing companies wouldn’t even look at a manuscript if it didn’t come through a literary agent.
Literary agents were extremely selective in the clients that they took on. Some writers were refused – not because the quality of the writing was bad – but because the publisher or agent had already taken on a book that had a similar theme.
Many would-be writers gave up on the thought of publishing anything because it was just too difficult to break through. That’s sad, because there are no doubt many great stories that were lost due to the power of the traditional route of publishing.
There’s a lot to be said for traditions. But not all of them are good if they keep your dreams from coming true. When you have an idea or a story to be told, you deserve the chance to bring it to life – to get it into the hands of readers.
There are so many people that you can entertain or that you can help with your knowledge. Now, more than ever, it’s a lot easier to get published. You don’t have to bide your time and wait for a publisher to accept you.
You don’t have to send out queries and hope a literary agent will pay attention and want to sign you. If you want to become a published author, you just need to make the decision that it’s what you want.
Yes, it really is that easy. You may have seen the prestigious lists that showcase traditionally published books. The New York Time’s Bestseller list routinely mentions the books that sell well.
So does the USA Today bestseller list. If you’re like some people, then you probably think that hitting either one of these lists is something that’s reserved solely for those in traditional publishing.
But that’s not true any longer. You don’t have to go through a publisher to get your book on a list. There are certain criteria that does have to be met, which is basically that you need to sell a number of books in order to be considered a bestseller.
But that’s really not as hard to do as you might think it is. Plus there are numerous steps that you can take to make sure your book is one that sells well. So if you have a book in you that you want to get out, now’s the time to make that happen.
And the good news is that you can take a non-traditional route to publishing whether you write fiction books or non-fiction books.
Learning Your Craft Means More Than Just Writing
The first piece of advice you may hear about writing is to learn your craft. What that basically means is that you need to know what you should do in order to tell a good story.
But it’s not just about the writing. It’s also about selling. The more that you learn about the art of writing and selling that writing, the more money you’ll make and the better your book will be received by readers and reviewers.
As a self-published author, it’s going to be up to you to make sure your book sells. But that doesn’t mean that you have to reinvent the wheel. There are already so many ways that you can get your book in front of an audience.
You need to make sure you have a strong online presence. This means you have social media accounts that you update regularly. Each social media platform has ways that you can use them to promote your book.
Part of your online presence means having a website or blog where people can visit to find more information about your current books, upcoming books, etc. You want to be sure that your book blurbs are spot on.
The best way to write a blurb is to write one that’s geared toward your genre. For example, if you’re writing suspense, go look on Amazon’s top 100 bestselling books in that category.
Study how those blurbs are done. What you’ll usually find across all the genres is that the blurb introduces the main character, the trope or inciting event and the conflict. You should also learn how to use ads to market your book.
There are low-key or free places you can use to place ads, such as with sites that are open to self-published authors. These might be places like blogs with decent followings, influencer’s social media platforms, etc.
But you can buy ads on places such as Amazon. A word of caution: don’t just slap up an ad and hope it does well to advertise your book. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re wasting your money.
Learn how to do Amazon ads. That means you should know your target audience. You should understand and use relevant keywords. You need to know how to analyze your ad campaign to see what’s working.
You can also advertise on Facebook. You can set up your author page and then create your ad campaign. Though the site will walk you through it step by step, just like with Amazon, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you need to learn.
Otherwise, you’ll waste your hard-earned dollars. You can find free tutorials on ads for authors simply by doing an online search. Branding is something else that you need to learn about the craft.
This is a term that just means it’s what your readers can know or expect from one of your books. For example, if you’ve built a readership by writing sexy or steamy novels, it would be out of your branding to suddenly introduce a sweet novel.
When an audience of readers sees your name on the cover of a book, they know exactly what kind of story they’re in for. Across your books, you may have similar colors, fonts or book covers as part of your branding. It’s something that unites your books.
Writing to Market and Editing for Success
There’s a lot of confusion about writing to market and exactly what it is. Some writers think it means you have to write books that you don’t enjoy writing. That’s not true. You can write what you want.
When you write a book to market it only means that you’re writing a story that has a market or audience that wants to read that story and you’re meeting their expectations. This market is already there and it’s found in the type of genre you write in.
For example, you might write in the romance genre. If you look on Amazon under that genre, you’ll find it broken down into subcategories. These can be ones like romantic fantasy, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, etc.
Sometimes categories are listed by a trope such as “holiday romance.” When you’re writing to market, what you want to do is locate your main genre’s top 100, then drill down to the stats on the books that are the top sellers in that genre.
You’re paying attention to the book ranking because it will tell you if that category is oversaturated or not or if there’s a market or not. The less saturated a market, the less books you have to sell to hit Amazon’s top 100 list in your category.
What you want to find is the spot where there’s a market for your book, but not necessarily one where you wouldn’t be able to stand out. Writing to market means that in any given genre, your audience wants something specific.
For example, in paranormal romance, you’ll find that shapeshifters are a hot seller.
Now if you were to write something totally obscure like penguin shapeshifters, more than likely, you’ll find there’s no market for that.
So first, find the genre you enjoy writing in and then look at what’s selling in that genre. Look through the subcategories to find one that you feel best suits you. Once your book is written, it must be edited.
If you’re starting your career as a self-published author and there’s just no budget to hire an editor, you can either read the manuscript aloud to yourself – which helps to catch mistakes – or you can find beta readers.
You can find beta readers to help catch typos and grammar mistakes in your book in groups that you can find on Facebook. Just keep in mind they’re spending their time for free to help you with your book, so they’re doing you a favor.
Be polite and professional even if they don’t like your book. You should never turn in a first draft to an editor or beta reader. Edit the manuscript yourself by giving it at least one pass to check for consistency, plot holes, typos and grammar issues.
If you can afford to outsource to an editor, you’ll want to choose the type of editing that’s most needed for your manuscript. If you have a good grasp on sentence structure and you’re great at spelling, then odds are you probably don’t need a copyeditor or a proofreader.
What you may need is a developmental edit. This is when an editor looks at the entire book. He or she will check the pacing of the book, the emotional growth of the characters, conflict, the dialogue, and more to make sure everything is well done and balanced out. If you’re new to writing, you may benefit most from getting a developmental edit.
Picking the Right Platforms to Publish On
There are plenty of platforms to put your book on. Some authors stick to one, while others put them on several. This is a practice known as going wide. One of the easiest platforms to use is Amazon’s Kindle publishing.
Amazon is one of the first places that comes to mind when it comes to self-publishing. That’s because Amazon has a huge audience reach and actively promotes the books on their site.
Plus, if you choose to, you can upload both eBook and print versions of your manuscript on the site. The amount of royalties you can earn will depend on the price you set for the book as well as whether or not you set it up for the book to be exclusive to Amazon.
While you earn more royalties if you do that and may get better advertising from the site, if your book is pulled for any reason, then all of a sudden that income is gone. This is why many authors don’t put all their financial eggs in one basket and choose to go wide.
Another platform you can use to publish your book is Apple Books. It’s a simple step by step process to upload your book to the site. You can upload your book in something like Draft2Digital, which is a publishing aggregator.
This is a service where you upload your book in the site and in turn, it handles the distribution of your book to various platforms so that you don’t have to do all the work.
You can also sell your book through Ingram.
This is a site that can also distribute your book. Many self-published authors also use Kobo. All you have to do is upload your manuscript. You can choose the price, line up pre-orders and the site adds your book to their list of books for sale.
You do not have to be exclusive with Kobo, so you can choose to use multiple platforms to sell your books. Barnes & Noble is another platform for self-published authors to use. Their site is called Barnes & Noble Press.
To put your book on the site is similar to how you would do it on Kobo. You upload it and choose the pricing. Barnes & Noble will showcase your book using their marketing materials, such as their promotional emails.
Whichever platform you choose to use, you’ll have to make sure that you understand the terms of service, because violating it will get you kicked off the platform. Since percentages that each platform takes can vary, you’ll also want to make sure you set your price point to earn the amount of royalties you want to get after the platform’s cut.
Following Up Your Success with a Series
If you choose to, you can write a standalone book. Sometimes a standalone book takes off and does well financially and helps make the author a recognizable name among readers.
However, a book series can bring in more success, especially financially when they’re done right. Some self-published authors earn six figures by writing a series. A series can become part of your brand.
For example, if you write multiple books in a series about a detective, that detective series becomes what you’re widely known for. When readers get hooked with book one and love the character, they’re going to want the rest of the books in the series.
They become a fan and they want more to keep feeding their hunger for the world or the character. By creating a series, you’re building what’s known as a backlist. For example, let’s say you’re now writing book seven in a series.
Books one through six are known as your backlist. You can use book seven to promote your backlist simply by talking about it in the back of the book when you’re linking readers to your website or social media sites.
In books one through six, at the back of the book, you can offer a taste of the next book in the series as a way of hooking the reader in. When they read the first chapter of the next book that you show in the previous book, they want to continue the series.
You don’t have to stick to just one series, either. You can have multiple series. If you find that at the end of the series, readers are asking what happened before the characters came to life in book one, you can go back and write a prequel book and readers will buy that too.
The great thing about writing a series is that one book can hook your readers all the way through. Each series that you write stands to earn you more in royalties because readers will go through and buy them all at once.
Plus, you can take each series if you choose to and put them in what’s known as a box set. This is when you bundle the books and instead of selling them individually, you sell them lumped together for one price.
You stand to make more money in royalties that way. Readers love feeling like they get more for their money. What you have to keep in mind is that readers don’t like waiting forever in order to get the next book in a series.
So write ahead. That means you should wait until you have more than one book in a series before you upload it to any platform. Many self-published writers wait until they have three books already written and ready to go.
They create a publishing calendar and stick to it. It can be something like a book every two months or whatever you can handle. If you choose to write a series, use a planner of some kind to keep track of all of your characters, timelines, world building, publishing schedule (including pre-order dates) and marketing.
Methods of Making Money Online #6 – Social Media Influencer
One of the fairly newer business models that has solidified in recent years as a specific career option is that of a social media influencer. There have always been individuals, primarily celebrities, who have attracted the attention of brands and been gifted free products in exchange for a mention of them in public.
But now, anyone who can build a social following has the potential to become and influencer and build a formidable business out of their efforts. This can be done on almost any social media platform – including sites and apps like Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube and more.
With social media influencing, it’s a little harder to nail down the exact monetary compensation you might enjoy with this career. It will vary based on the niche, the number of followers you have, and the products that you are discussing.
However, what starts on a small scale may grow into a product empire of your own, if past success of other social media influencers is anything like your own path. Once you understand what makes a brand want to invest in your social media marketing, you will be able to expand those efforts and duplicate them so that you maximize your earnings.
What Is an Influencer?
A social media influencer is a person or account that has achieved a level of recognition due to their ability to persuade their followers to want to wear what they wear, eat what they eat, listen to what they listen to, and more.
This is a very aesthetic and socially engaging career. It took off primarily on Instagram, which is a social media site and app based on images, and later video. Some of the influencers developed a following that exploded almost overnight based on a few strategic posts.
This is almost identical to the business model of affiliate marketing, in regards to the way someone has to become a leader and guide in a niche in order to be able to make recommendations that are high converters.
When you decide to become a social media influencer, you need to know exactly what performs well on the social app or site that you intend on using. You need to study the images or videos to see what the aesthetic and technical details are like, including the length of videos.
Because these tools are often changing, you will be required to stay on top of the features that are released so that you can be one of the early users of whatever is new to the platform.
Becoming a Brand Ambassador
There are many social media influencers who start out as simple brand ambassadors. As your account begins to grow, you will have many different brands reach out to you wanting you to use their products or mention them in a good light to help bring about awareness of their products.
The payment for this type of online career can be anything from being gifted free products to earning a salary of up to $50,000 per year. Some brand ambassadors don’t just use their online platforms to create messaging for the company, but also represent the brand at special offline events.
When you set out to become a brand ambassador, make sure you become known for one major thing. Whether it’s beauty products or fitness, cooking or something else – build your channel and account around that topic.
Work on creating an aesthetic or style for your account that is easily recognizable. You don’t want to have a mix of content that doesn’t match well. If you want to, you can leverage the influence of others, too.
Using certain sites like Tik Tok, you can duet or stitch your video with that of someone else. A duet is a side-by-side video (or above/below), while a stitch starts out with one video, and then leads into the other person’s.
This can lead to some strategic collaborations if both audiences like the two of you working together. Just make sure you watch comments to see what the reactions are from the audience.
You can have guests on your channel to help with content creation. People love it when their favorite social media influencers crossover into other accounts. Just be strategic with who you do this with.
Bringing in Affiliate Influencer Income
The great thing about affiliate influencer careers is that it’s often built in a very natural and organic way. Oftentimes, the individuals who achieve influencer status are simply showcasing how they are living their life, and the way in which they do it attracts an audience that wants to mimic them.
You will be able to create posts, stories, and videos to attract and cater to the target audience that brands are hoping to reach. You want to have a voice and personality with your account, not simply say whatever a company has you read.
Make sure you are paying attention to trends that are happening on whatever social media site or app you are using. For example, on Tik Tok, there are certain sounds you can use that will be popular one day or a week.
When you use that song or sound in your own content, others can find it by looking at all of the videos using that particular sound. You can tailor your message to fit a brand’s request and capitalize on the popularity of the trend at the same time.
When your posts begin to show great success and engagement for the brand, they will be more likely to hire you again and pay more the next time. So do your best to achieve organic results and never try to game the system with false followers or engagement they might be able to discover.
You’ll often see “follow and I’ll follow back” requests in the comments section of your posts. Never agree to these. These people will follow you, get you to follow them, and then unfollow you.
It’s better to focus on creating value-based, unique and original content that your target audience enjoys and attract a genuine following of people who like the type of content you’re putting out.
There are some influencer positions you can apply for with companies and brands, but most will seek you out. They will contact you via private message or direct message with an offer or opening discussion.
Consistency with your posts will be key to your success. You can’t expect to be paid as a social media influencer if you’re constantly abandoning your audience and only showing up whenever you feel like it.
This should be treated like a fulltime career, and ideally, you’ll be posting at least once per day, if not more. You have to take into consideration the time it requires to edit, post and share your content with others, making sure you use the right keywords or hashtags to help your content get found.
If you need to create any graphics for your channel or account, you can either do it yourself using tools like Canva, or outsource it to other individuals who work as freelancers on sites like Fiverr.
Charging for Sponsored Ads
Charli D’Amelio is a good example of someone who earns a great deal of money from sponsored ads as a social media influencer. What started out as a fun Tik Tok account of lip syncing songs and dancing, has transformed into a business, TV show, and a lot of sponsored revenue.
She is the most followed creator on the app, and brought in over $4 million on her very first year as a Tik Tokker. Brands like Dunkin’, EOS Cosmetics, and Hollister pay her money for sponsored ads.
Understand that you’re not going to land a major account like these right off the bat. It takes time to grow your account to the place where brands would be interested in paying you money to mention their name.
So do some research about which brands in your niche deal with social influencers and then work to strategically land the smallest account, first. As other (bigger) brands see that you’re being hired and that your posts are working to increase brand awareness and sales, they’ll be more willing to take a look at what you can do for them.
You can find partners to work with if no one is approaching you by using services like Valued Voice. Here, you can create a profile and showcase your accounts. You’ll pick categories and what you charge to promote.
Brands can find your listing there, check out your channels, and contact you for a possible promotion opportunity. These platforms are typically free to use and they will take a small portion of the agreed upon price.
When you get a sponsor, you can create videos or take pictures of you using the product. Make sure you use the hashtags related to the product and come up with a good caption for it.
Partnering with Others for Income
From time to time, you will be approached with the offer to collaborate with another social media influencer. Sometimes, there are automated bot accounts that comment on your posts, but other times they will be genuine collaboration offers that may work out well for you.
You have to be careful about who you partner up with, because if they become known for anything unsavory, that may taint your reputation in the social stratosphere. Make sure you do adequate research beforehand about the other person prior to sealing any kind of deal with them.
There are some scams involving collaborations or social media ambassador positions, where they will ask you to purchase the product up front, and they will reimburse you at a later date (or so they say).
You never want to pay for a product that someone else is asking you to promote. If they want you to mention it, it needs to be gifted to you so that you can make an informed decision about it before you discuss it with your followers.
Embarking on a Product Creation Path
When your account grows substantially, you’ll want to consider creating products of your own. You can quickly and easily use online tools to create print on demand products like t-shirts, and also write and self-publish a book.
If you’re doing something like a beauty or skincare line, you can work with a company that can formulate it and design a product brand for you based on your name recognition.
If you want to see what some of the top social media influencers are doing with their accounts, you may want to check out individuals like Addison Rae, Khaby Lame, or Huda Beauty.
All of these have found influencer success and have companies and brands reaching out to them, or have created their own products based on the response they garnered on social media.
James Charles and Jeffree Star are two men who embarked on beauty influencing journeys. Both created their own product line of cosmetics, which were showcased in major retailers and allowed them to rake in over $22-200 million.
These two have both experienced drama and public “cancellations” due to previous or current behavior, but not before each earned millions to fund their lavish lifestyles and purchase mansions.
Keep in mind that social media stars will often be dragged into drama and situations that others will enjoy, so steer clear of any negative interactions with others. Brands won’t want to hire you – and consumers won’t buy your products – if they see you as tainted.
Addison Rae and Charli D’Amelio both have products, ranging from beauty to fashion. Emma Chamberlain has a coffee line, since she was frequently seen with a cup of coffee in her online social media posts.
Social media shows no signs of slowing down at this point. YouTube is the second largest search engine in existence. Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok see billions of users every month, followed by the popularity of Snapchat.
Keep an eye on the development of future social media so that you can create and position yourself on the site or app early on in its development. If you are using this strategy to create a career, you want to immerse yourself in everything there is to know about the social media platform you intend to use.
Becoming a social media influencer can be a fun and exciting journey. Not only do you get to inform and educate your audience, but you get to do so in a way that allows you to be creative and showcase your personality.
Don’t worry about any haters who try to stir up negative emotions in you along the way. This is to be expected and engaging with trolls only makes you look foolish, and will attract more of the same.
