8 Ways To Make Money as a Content Creator

Making money as a content creator can be tough. You want to get paid to do what you love, but it can be hard to figure out the best way to monetize your talent as a content creator.

In this article, we’ll highlight 8 methods of making money as a content creator so that you can turn your side-hustle into your main hustle.

How to Make Money as a Content Creator

1. Sell Presets and Templates

Creators and creative agencies do not always have the time or the resources to make that animated infographic or come up with the right presets for their photographs. That’s where digital asset marketplaces come in.

Platforms like FilterGrade and Canva are excellent places to sell the presets and templates that you have already created to other content creators. For example, Filtergrade lets you buy and sell everything from motion graphics like Premiere Pro templates to stock video assets and more.

What’s excellent about this money-making strategy is the fact that you’re selling digital products, rather than physical products which would involve lower margins and complicated logistics.

2. Do Brand Deals on Social Media

Photo: Pexels

Social Media Marketing is both the present and the future.

If you are a creator with even a decent following on social media, you should leverage that following by collaborating with brands to promote their products to your audience. Content creators with less than 10,000 followers, also called micro-influencers, are heavily sought after these days due to the tight-knit communities they are able to curate.

To get your first brand deals, consider reaching out to the marketing teams at your favorite brands. Almost every company has an influencer strategy these days, so you’d be surprised at the response rate. In addition to this, you can join a marketplace for influencers to get exposure to more inbound deals.

Related: 20 Apps to Find Gigs as An Influencer

3. Sell Courses to Your Audience

Are you a creator who has found success in a specific niche? Well, there are hundreds, if not thousands of others who are still trying to figure out ways to be successful in your specific niche.

Leverage your success, and build a course on how, and what leads one to similar success. You can use platforms like Gumroad to sell your course.

Similar to selling presets and templates, courses are especially great ways to make money because you’re producing the course one time and selling it forever. Courses typically generate high margins as well, since they’re digital products.

4. Speak at Events

When we mean events, we just don’t mean those with a large audience. Not every speaking gig has to be in front of a huge audience.

There is a large market for speakers who are willing to do some personal coaching or attend company events to speak in front of employees, and they get paid a good chunk of money for their time and knowledge.

For example, if you are a digital marketing professional with a lot of expertise, you could attend a marketing summit conducted by a company to share your expertise in digital marketing with their employees.

Photo: Pexels

5. Create UGC for Brands

User-generated content (UGC) is a content style that has been taking the world by storm, and there is a good reason behind it. UGC is content that is made by people, rather than brands. This type of content performs much better than traditional branded content, and as a result, brands are constantly looking for more of it.

There are tons of content creators that have little to no following who are making UGC-style content for brands. Whether it be videos for ads, testimonials, product videos, unboxings, etc.

Strike up a deal with brands to take care of creating and implementing a user-generated content strategy for them. As a creator, it’s a relatively more straightforward task to do since you’re a content creator at heart. Brands understand that you can most likely create better content than they can for this reason, and that’s why they will pay you.

6. Sell Merchandise

If you’re a content creator with a loyal audience, this one is for you.

You have an audience that engages with you on a regular basis, and you are someone who knows what your audience likes because that’s how you have managed to retain them all this while. So, why not create products that your audience will be tempted to buy?

For example, let’s imagine you are a chef with a following that loves to see you cook unique dishes. You can sell custom cutting boards or aprons with your branding to your loyal audience members. These are likely things that they will need anyways since they most likely cook as well and that’s the reason they’re watching you.

7. Become an Affiliate Marketer

Affiliate marketing was all the rage at the beginning of last decade, and it’s still popular at the beginning of this decade. What that tells you is that affiliate marketing is here to stay. And if you are a content creator, you should leverage your ability to create good content and make affiliate income.

Affiliate marketing is the act of referring people to a product or service and receiving a commission when they make a purchase. Different companies pay different amounts for their affiliate programs. It is best to find a company that resonates with your brand and you can reach out to them about becoming an affiliate.

This is a great way to monetize as you’re selling someone else’s products, so you don’t have to worry about creating your own product.

8. Make Content on Instagram and YouTube

While a lot of us have made at least one Instagram reel since the feature was launched, how many of us know that we can make actual money out of it? Yes. Instagram has a fund to pay bonuses to creators of reels based on the number of views and a few other factors. Currently, this feature is limited to the US, but it is expected to be rolled out in other countries as well.

YouTube is also the highest paying platform when it comes to what they pay content creators. While creating a YouTube channel is hard work, you can most definitely make a monthly income on the platform with some persistence.

Wrapping Up

Just because you love creating content, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look for ways to monetize it. We hope that we gave you just the right ingredients to kick start your journey as a money-making content creator.

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