Working to increase your engagement and overall following throughout every social media platform can be time consuming. In order to be successful on social media, you have to treat it as if it is at least a part-time job.
To make all of the time devoted worth it, you can try different methods of monetizing your social media profiles. When you monetize your social media profiles, you are able to generate an income directly from it, depending on how much engagement you receive.
So as you continue to work on increasing engagement, the amount you get paid will increase as well. Some of the revenue will be derived from where you send viewers to (your own links or those you promote), while others will stem from the platform itself.
Send Followers to Digital Products and Services You Sell
When you become popular online, it’s usually because of your style, your ideas, and your helpfulness. All of these things give you an opportunity to offer services to your following based upon your skillset.
There are many different product and services to offer your followers. You can offer self-help courses, depending on what your niche is. For example, if you are a fitness fan, you can offer a fitness training course, full of helpful tips and workouts to do over a certain time span.
Writing and publishing eBooks is sometimes easier than you may realize. It can be a nice way to generate a steady income, based off of sales. For example, if you write about entrepreneurship and working remotely, you could write an eBook that focuses on setting up an online business, with all of the details someone would need to know.
People often look online first for their questions to be answered, which may lead them right to your book. When people follow someone with a large following, it can often feel like they are joining a community.
To make things more exclusive, you can offer a membership to a different site (like Patreon) where you post special content that only members who subscribe can see. This incentivizes your followers to subscribe, so that they are a part of a smaller group who sees all of your content.
You’ll still want to post quality content on your public social media profiles, but you could tease your followers with shorter clips of your work, so that they have to subscribe to see the full process or clip of something you’ve worked on.
You can also set up your own membership site using a tool like AMember, and give buyers access to courses there. This allows affiliates to promote your membership, too and earn a commission.
If you are looking to get more personal than offering online courses, you may want to consider direct coaching. For example, instead of a fitness course, you could personally train some of your followers, and take them on as virtual clients.
You can work with them directly to help them reach their fitness goals. Graphic design work can be good, too. If you fall on the more creative side of content creation, you can offer your services as a graphic designer.
Brands are always looking to create a new look, and you can find a lot of clients by focusing on new businesses. On social media, everyone is looking to make a name or brand for themselves, so that they are noticeable and well known.
Your art concepts can help them with that. Freelance writing or editing is popular as well. Some people don’t have time to put in the basic work of creating written content for their websites or other social media profiles.
You can become a freelance writer or editor, and help other influencers with the basics so that they can focus on other things. When offering these products and services, you may want to consider offering a special discount code or coupon to your followers so that you can show them how much you appreciate them.
Cash in on Affiliate Promotions
You can use your social media profiles to take your followers elsewhere with affiliate links. If you live stream daily, but have a solid following on a different social media site, you can post a link on that one, encouraging your followers to go check out your livestream.
The goal is to get your followers to increase on every platform possible, so that your audience is as large as it can possibly be. Affiliate links can also be used for separate promotions as well.
For example, Amazon storefronts or other brands that you work closely with will provide you with special links to share on your other social media sites. There are some things you need to know about affiliate links and their usability on popular social media sites.
Facebook will let you link directly in a post, but some platforms are banned from being promoted on Facebook. Your best bet would be to do a quick search on the platform you are about to promote to find out whether or not your Facebook post will get removed.
On Instagram, you can post links using the “Sticker” option. You can even edit the title of the link so that it isn’t just a random bunch of letters. The only way you include a link on your Instagram post is if you have an Instagram Shop, but it has to be a direct link to that merchandise item.
Otherwise, you are left with the option to include one link on your Instagram profile, which will fall directly beneath your bio. So most users simply say, “link in bio.” But if you routinely change that, then past posts will become outdated and people won’t be able to find the link.
You can send any link through the chat feature, and you can include link “buttons” on any photo or video, which you can then send privately, or post on your public Snapchat story. If you want the chats with links to last, you can save them as well.
TikTok does not allow you to include links in your posts. You can paste them into the comment section or description, but they won’t be clickable. You can link both your Instagram and YouTube on your TikTok profile. If you have a business account, you can include one link in your bio.
With YouTube, you can include links everywhere. You can put links on your YouTube banner, in your about section, in video descriptions, and even in the comments as well. They’re very flexible with promotions.
For sites that only allow one link somewhere on your profile, you can use Linktree to combine and organize all of your important links into one, so that your followers have one central link to use.
Have Brands Pay You as an Influencer
An influencer is someone with a large following with niche interests who attracts a specific crowd. Influencers can focus on any category – from fashion and beauty to fitness, marketing and more.
Any category that involves a hobby or passion can be a source to an influencer’s following and status. In order to become influential, you have to build an audience that is loyal and impressionable.
Creating a space for your followers to feel like they are a part of a community and family is a great way to improve engagement. Your followers will feel like your friends, so they will make sure to comment and watch your content, because they feel connected to you.
Your friendliness and attitude are important. If you are a positive force to watch, your following will only grow. People love to watch others talk about their passions. It’s inspiring, and can be quite powerful and moving.
Your audience is more likely to care about what you are talking about when they can tell how much you care. Let your passion shine through, so that everyone who views your content will know that you love what you are creating.
Let your audience know what you want and how you feel. If you want to become an influencer, you have to be someone who stands out, and who is never afraid to be themselves.
Speak your truth, stand up for yourself, and show the world who you really are. An audience will be drawn in to someone who is captivating and not afraid to speak out about their opinions and feelings.
Showcase confidence. If you are afraid to be yourself, and feel like your own insecurities might get in the way, the influencer life may not be for you. There can be some mean people on the Internet.
If you can ignore them and remain confident and strong, an audience will be drawn in by your love for yourself, and the way you present yourself proudly. It’s okay to feel insecure sometimes, and you can be honest with your followers about that.
But overall, confidence is key. Once you have a solid following, different brands that fit within your niche will reach out with offers and promotional deals. You can get paid to discuss their products and share them with your audience.
Some will send you products for free, while others will pay you and send you products. It all depends on the type of deal you work out with them. Make sure you know what you’re willing to accept when different brands come calling.
Get Paid By the Platform Directly
Several platforms offer ways to get paid directly for views. Once you hit 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 public watch hours, you can begin to monetize your videos on YouTube.
YouTube will place ads at the beginning of and throughout your videos, and you will generate revenue based on the amount of views you receive. It may seem like a slow process at the start, but once your channel hits 1,000 subscribers, things really start to take off.
Once your channel starts to grow into the thousands with views and subscribers, YouTube is more likely to push your content to the top of users’ homepages, helping your revenue snowball.
Using the creator fund, TikTok pays their creators based on the amount of views they get. This option does not pay very well, as most creators only get paid a few cents for every couple of thousands of views.
TikTok has also introduced “gifts,” which is a way to directly earn money from followers, mainly during live streams. So if you can get your followers to view your livestreams, you are more likely to generate money through the “gifts” function.
Snapchat content creators can submit their best videos and photos to Spotlight (a tab on Snapchat similar to TikTok’s public feed). If the Snapchat you submitted goes viral, you can receive a Spotlight Payout, depending on the number of views.
Once you know what social media sites to focus on to directly earn money from views, you’ll need to learn what attracts views. Using the right hashtags are essential. They help both YouTube and TikTok algorithms place you in the correct feeds, so that the people viewing your content are more likely to enjoy it.
Using trending or popular hashtags can bring in more views, especially with TikTok. If the hashtag is trending enough, sometimes it doesn’t even have to relate to your video’s topic.
People watch video content to be entertained during the entire video. So your topics should be exciting and engaging, in order to captivate your audience and keep them coming back for more content.
You don’t have to go and do anything crazy, but that can often be the type of content that thrives. An audience is entertained when the person they are watching is committed to entertaining them.
Humor is one of the best ways to win any audience over. Humor can unite people with differing opinions, interests, and personalities. This is a great way to widen the scope of your target audience.
When your content is funny, viewers will be entertained and interested the entire time. When you create content, always keep the current trends in mind. Focus on what topics and ideas are trending, and get creative with your own original content that can still relate to those trends.
When you incorporate both your own voice, and popular content, you will be able to build up your own influencer platform. Although generating as many views as possible is the goal in order to get these social media sites to pay you, you still want those views to be authentic.
The goal is to turn those views into follows and comments, so that you are also increasing your engagement. If you’re bringing in viewers who have no interest in your niche, it won’t help you grow your brand, so be honest with your content creation.
Link to a Tangible Storefront Where You Sell Merch
If you’ve done well on social media and your profiles have gained attention, you may want to consider making merch for your brand. This could be any type of merch that you want, like hoodies, t-shirts, tumblers, hats, etc.
When deciding what merch to make, consider your brand and what you want it to stand for. If you create content about fitness and health, you could come up with fitness goals and inspirational sayings to put on your products.
If there is a saying you always say to your clients, include that in one of your designs. The whole point of creating merch for your brand is that it is personal and original, and can be directly related to your brand.
There are plenty of sites that allow you to create your own print design. You can work with a graphic designer, or create your own designs. Once you have a general layout for your design, you can begin selecting the items you would like your designs to go on.
The goal is to give your followers as many options as possible, while still being able to afford the whole process. You could ask your followers and poll them on what items they would prefer, so that you don’t end up wasting any money – or just do print on demand.
Once you have a layout of your catalog, you can create an online store using an eCommerce platform. For merchandise sites, most content creators use Shopify. Shopify is easy to use, and they have many templates for content creators who just want to sell a smaller selection of merch.
Squarespace and Wix are also great platforms to use. It all depends on what type of products you want to sell, and if you want to turn your store into something that sells more than just personal merch.
In order to encourage your followers to purchase your merch, you may want to offer a limited promotional code with a discount, just to get things started. Showcase your merch in your videos, so that people can see the clothing or other items being worn.
This helps them visualize what it would look like on them, which can push them to purchasing the clothing. If you choose designs that are related to an inside joke you have with your audience, you are more likely to sell your merchandise.
People like to feel involved and special, especially when it comes to being a part of a community. They will often request that you put out certain merch, so pay attention to comments and requests.
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